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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309 practices

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Anger numbs. If it is doing the work of a painkiller for you, it will be hard to put down while the pain underneath is still untreated.

Ask what tends to be there in the half hour before you flare: a bit of shame, feeling small, an old fear about being left. The anger often arrives to…

Twenty minutesCool the body firstCoreQur’an 94:1One line of research

If the irritability came in alongside a low patch, or a spell of racing thoughts and hardly any sleep, have the mood looked at rather than treating the temper on its own.

Irritability is part of depression, and it belongs to the mixed and elevated states of bipolar disorder too. Anger skills are still worth having, and…

Twenty minutesCool the body firstBody basedQur’an 78:9One line of research

Whatever you reach for is probably doing something real for you. Naming that job honestly gets you further than calling yourself weak.

Researchers take the relief seriously enough to study the same receptor systems as possible medicines, which tells you it was never imaginary. So ask…

Five minutesWhen you use something to copeMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:219One line of research

If you smoked or drank during a pregnancy and have spent years holding yourself responsible for how your child turned out, you are allowed to put some of that down.

The picture is genuinely tangled. The same traits run in families, so a parent is both more likely to pass something on and more likely to have been…

Five minutesWhen you use something to copeMedical and treatmentQur’an 6:54One line of research

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

Tolerate distress

Feelings and focus

Grounding and settling

Structure and routine

Being seen and judged

Moving your body

What worry does

Question the thought

Practising under provocation

Exercise, food and other supports

Emotions as signals

Feeling from the inside

Growing empathy

The cost of avoiding

Treatment and medication

Choosing your response

Cool the body first

When you go numb

Living with uncertainty

Posture and how you carry yourself

Breaking the worry loop

Facing it a step at a time

Making it stick

Remembering to do it

Self-compassion

Bringing the future closer

Breathing

Use your strengths

What you are actually defending

Repetition is what makes anything stick, and it does not check whether the thing is good for you. That is most of what addiction is.

It is the same machinery that lets somebody pick up a language or a trade, running in the part of the brain built for wanting rather than the part…

Five minutesWhen you use something to copeDBT skillsQur’an 91:8One line of research

Drink can make talking easy and still leave you with friendships that feel like nothing. Worth noticing which of those two you actually came for.

One young woman put it plainly: drinking took away the worry about what she was saying, and the people she grew close to were mostly the ones she…

Five minutesWhen you use something to copeDBT skillsQur’an 5:91One line of research

Sometimes the drinking or the smoking is not the first problem at all. It is somebody's own treatment for an attention difficulty or an anxiety nobody has looked at yet.

You can usually tell from what it is used for: to speak in a group, to sit still long enough to work, to sleep. Where that is the shape of it, work…

Twenty minutesWhen you use something to copeDBT skillsQur’an 13:11One line of research

Draw your own chart of the moment you usually give in, with the questions you actually ask yourself, and put it where you will see it.

One woman smoking around ten bowls a day made hers as a set of branches: is it a working day, have I been to work, are the errands done, are the…

Twenty minutesWhen you use something to copeDBT skillsQur’an 16:67One line of research

Choose one person and tell them you will send the finished thing by a set time. Not a conversation about how it is going, just the file, the photo, or the word done.

The sending is the whole mechanism, so keep it small and exact: what, and by when. It does not have to be someone qualified to judge the work, and it…

A minuteSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 2:282One line of research

If you cannot start, the step is too big. Shrink it until it sounds daft: open the document, write the date, put one plate in the sink.

The catch is that the daft step has to be the whole of what you agreed to do, not a trick for getting yourself to do the enormous thing. Most days…

A minuteSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 65:3One line of research

Put something you genuinely want at the end of the chain, and keep it where you can see it. A reward far off in the future is much the same as no reward at all.

Name it before you begin and write it at the top of the page. Keep it close: this evening rather than next term. It does not have to be impressive.…

A minuteSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 2:286One line of research

Putting something in the diary does not guarantee it happens. It gives it a chance it did not have before. That is the honest promise, and it is still worth having.

Expect a fair few blocks to pass unused, particularly in the first month. That is not the system failing, it is the system doing what it does, which…

A minuteSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 3:159One line of research

If a course has no fixed time, give it one. Write down which day and which hour you will watch it, put that in the calendar as though somebody else set it, and tell one person.

Five minutes every Sunday: when am I watching this, and when am I doing the work that comes after it. Then one short message midweek to whoever is…

Five minutesSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 2:282One line of research

Writing the list is the easy half. If twelve things are down on paper and you still cannot move, the missing skill is choosing, not capturing.

Decide with a question rather than by feel: what actually happens if this is not done by Friday. Anything with a real consequence goes to the top,…

Five minutesSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 12:47One line of research

There is a corner of the week that is neither urgent nor important, and it is where avoiding lives. The real cost is rarely the lost hours. It is what you end up saying to yourself afterwards.

Learn the difference between resting and avoiding, because from outside they look identical and they feel nothing alike. Rest leaves you lighter.…

Five minutesSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 7:31One line of research

Some things can only be done between nine and five, and those are the ones that quietly fail. Ring the bank, chase the appointment, sort the form: give those a time before anything else.

The failure is silent. You mean to do it all day, the office closes, and it rolls to tomorrow where the same thing happens again. Go through your…

Five minutesSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 2:189One line of research

Difficult things come out more easily when your hands are occupied and you are not looking straight at the other person. Walk side by side, drive somewhere, wash up together, keep the sewing going.

If you are the one listening, offer it first. Most people assume that picking something up would look rude or half interested, so they sit still and…

Twenty minutesSystems for daily lifeMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:159One line of research

Not knowing how to do an ordinary thing, a bank transfer, a form, a phone call to book something, says nothing about your intelligence. It says nobody ever sat down and showed you.

These gaps hide well, because they embarrass people in a way that larger problems somehow do not. Someone can talk fluently about difficult ideas and…

Twenty minutesSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 5:2One line of research

Some things only happen when another person is there, even if they are doing something entirely different. Ring a friend and clean your two kitchens together with the phone on the counter.

This works for studying, tidying, paperwork and the weekly shop, because what you are borrowing is presence rather than help. Agree a start time and…

Twenty minutesSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 5:2One line of research

Sorting goes better fast than carefully. If every item stalls you, ask someone to sit in the room while you work, not to help but to keep the pace up.

A person nearby changes what the hour feels like, and they can be reading their own book the whole time. What they supply is momentum, which is…

LongerSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 18:95One line of research