Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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304 practices

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Say the difficult sentence out loud, on your feet, in something like the real conditions. Thinking it through in your head is a different skill from getting it out of your mouth when your pulse is up.

Acting it out feels awkward and that awkwardness is part of why it works: the version of you who has to speak is the aroused one, so that is the…

Twenty minutesThe moment before you snapCBTQur’an 41:35One line of research

A hard feeling is not damage and it is not a bad attitude. It is a feeling, meant to be felt, and the only real question is at what pace.

Plenty of people were raised to treat their own sadness or anger as a failure of character, so the feeling arrives and shame arrives just behind it.…

Twenty minutesTolerate distressDBT skillsQur’an 21:83One line of research

Putting a film on, reading, letting the internet have an hour, all of it counts as a real skill when you choose it on purpose and know what you are choosing it for.

The version that hurts is the one you fall into without deciding and feel ashamed of afterwards. Choosing changes the whole thing: I am not up to…

Twenty minutesTolerate distressDBT skillsQur’an 73:10One line of research

Regular massage has been studied with restless, distractible children and teenagers, and their teachers noticed the difference in class as well as the young people noticing it in themselves.

The pattern in these studies is modest and repeated: short sessions, twice a week, over several weeks, with mood and behaviour improving rather than…

Twenty minutesTouch and bodyworkMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:24

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Food, caffeine and fuel

The fear underneath anger

When you use something to cope

Facing it a step at a time

Anger, alcohol and the body

What worry does

The moment before you snap

Structure and routine

Making it stick

When everything feels flat

Equanimity and perspective

Righteous anger and perfectionism

When anger turns to harm

Letting it out safely

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Obsessions and compulsions

Rest and pacing

Being seen and judged

What you are actually defending

Growing empathy

Choosing your response

One line of research

In placebo studies, people improve even when they have been told outright that the pill is inert. They also usually spend half an hour talking with someone who is paying attention.

That half hour is easy to dismiss as a detail of the study design, and it may be most of the treatment. Which is oddly encouraging: careful listening…

Twenty minutesTouch and bodyworkMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:263One line of research

Two ideas will let you judge most claims for yourself. In a good trial nobody involved knows who got the real treatment, and a study of five people can be swung by one of them having a good month.

Researchers want their treatment to work, and that hope leaks into how they rate what they see, which is why the person handing out the pill and the…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:36One line of research

Programmes built on crossing the midline or on balance and inner ear work do not appear to beat ordinary exercise. If movement is what you are after, movement is available free.

These packages come with a theory about why they work, and the theory is usually where the confidence comes from rather than from the results. What…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 22:78One line of research

Massage may well leave you calmer, and calmer is worth having. It is not a treatment for ADHD, and the two are worth keeping in separate boxes.

Living with ADHD is stressful in a measurable way, so anything that genuinely lowers that load is doing real good and deserves a place. The error is…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 4:28One line of research

Said plainly, because it should be: medication is the most effective treatment for ADHD, and by a good margin. Everything else in this area is something you add to that decision, not something that replaces it.

This is not a push to medicate. Families weigh side effects, age, other conditions and their own convictions, and those are proper things to weigh.…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:69One line of research

Rather than memorising which treatments to avoid, keep a few questions you can put to any of them. New products arrive faster than anyone can keep a list.

Ask how it was tested and by whom, and whether anyone independent of the company has looked at it. Ask what it costs, whether insurance touches it,…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 42:38One line of research

If a treatment comes with a contract, take it to a solicitor before signing. Not because you cannot read it, but because that puts a few days between the pitch and your signature.

Being told not to sign rarely helps, and it asks somebody to admit in the moment that they might act rashly, which almost nobody does in front of a…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 65:2One line of research

Roughly, the order runs like this. Stimulant medication does the most, the non stimulants help but come second, and after that exercise, omega oils, accommodations and therapy are the ones worth your time.

Decent sleep, ordinary good food and keeping screens within reason sit underneath all of it as support rather than treatment, and a sleep study is…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:69One line of research

Do not write off simply sitting with someone. When researchers looked into why dummy treatments helped, one of the things they kept finding was half an hour of a person's full attention.

Thirty minutes of someone listening properly to your difficulties is not filler around the real treatment. Across the talking therapies, who the…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:159One line of research

Before anything else, the people around the child need to understand what ADHD actually is. Everything else works better once that has happened.

The chain is quite direct. Understanding changes how behaviour gets read, how it is read sets what a parent expects, and expectations shape the tone…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationADHD skillsQur’an 16:43One line of research

Move the family's picture from a child who will not do as they are asked to a child whose capacity for holding themselves in place is genuinely limited. It is a change of category, not a softening.

The moral version has a quiet arrogance in it, the assumption that the child could manage if only they cared enough, and everyone in the house can…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationADHD skillsQur’an 24:61One line of research

Changing how the family understands the child comes before the medication, before the charts, before the meeting at school. It is step one, not a friendly introduction to the real work.

Skip it and the behaviour plan still gets written, but it gets delivered with an edge, applied on the good days and abandoned on the bad ones. When…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationADHD skillsQur’an 20:114One line of research

A ramp does nothing for someone's legs, and it gets them into the building. Timers, visible clocks, a shorter task list and a calendar somebody else keeps do the same job here.

Accommodations are not treatment and they are not pretending to be. What they do is take the parts of the work that live inside a person's head,…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationADHD skillsQur’an 4:28One line of research

Paediatric and psychiatric bodies have moved towards treating earlier than used to be usual. The reasoning is that the damage builds on itself.

A year of falling behind makes the next year harder, a reputation among classmates is quick to form and slow to shift, and a household that has been…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 39:53One line of research

One social approach does have a real evidence base behind it, and what makes it different is who delivers it. Parents do the coaching, in the middle of actual play with actual friends.

In practice it looks small and ordinary. You set up a play date, you stay within earshot, you give a nudge before things tip over, and afterwards you…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationCoreQur’an 13:11One line of research

One psychiatrist took up a dance class in lockdown, three times a week, at something he was frankly not good at. Being bad at it was the reason it kept working.

A repetitive session on a machine asks very little of you once your body knows it. Something with steps to follow, in time with other people, keeps…

Twenty minutesUse your strengthsADHD skillsQur’an 29:69One line of research