Practices

Picture somewhere peaceful and then walk in it. Feel the ground under each foot, your legs moving, and count the steps up to twenty.

The counting keeps you there instead of drifting off, and the feet are the important part. A calm scene that stays a picture in your head does very…

Cross your hands to the opposite shoulders and stroke slowly down to your elbows and hands, like a hug you are giving yourself. Three to five strokes, unhurried.

Then, if you want the rest of it: from the middle of your forehead out to the temples and along the hairline to the ears, from the crown down towards…

Pain is rarely one thing. There is the raw sensation, the memory of every other time, how you feel about it now, whether you think you can cope, and what you conclude about yourself.

Pulling those apart is useful because they do not all move together. You may not be able to change the ache itself, and you can often change how…

Ordinary harmless sensation competes with pain on its way up. Rubbing, squeezing or stroking near a sore place gives the nerves plenty of other traffic to carry.

This is why everybody rubs a banged elbow without being taught to. The useful part is that you can do it deliberately: firm strokes along the limb, a…

Squeeze slowly down one arm with the opposite hand, then the other, and work over whatever muscles you can reach. No table, no appointment, nobody else in the room.

Firm and rhythmic beats fiddly. Give the forearms, upper arms, shoulders and thighs a proper squeeze and release, a few seconds each. Doing it…

Something that settles a surge of panic within minutes and something that changes how often the surges come are doing two different jobs. A person can need both, and it helps to say which is which.

The fast option is a rescue. It works quickly, it is meant for the worst moments, and its usefulness is measured in that hour. The slower option is…

How well something works in the moment and whether it is right for the long run are two separate questions. Fast relief is extremely convincing, which is exactly why it is worth pausing over.

When something reliably ends the worst feeling within twenty minutes, what your body learns is to reach for it sooner next time. That is not…

There is an older antihistamine used for anxiety that works by making you drowsy and carries no risk of dependence. It suits a rough stretch, and it is a bridge rather than somewhere to settle.

The costs are the ordinary antihistamine ones: dry mouth, constipation, and for older people a genuine risk of confusion and falls, with effects on…

Wanting it to stop right now is not a character flaw, it is what anxiety does to a person. Saying the hurry out loud, instead of acting on it quietly, keeps it from making the decisions.

That urgency is the reason people creep a dose up, hop between supplements, and abandon anything slow before it has had a chance. Treating the hurry…

When what is keeping you awake or on edge is your situation, a tablet can only do so much. That is not a failure of the medicine and it is certainly not a failure of you.

Noise, an unsafe home, night shifts, someone you are frightened of: none of these are altered by anything you swallow. The medicine may still be…

If thoughts of ending your life turn up, tell someone that day. Do not wait to see whether they pass, and do not wait until you can explain them properly.

Feelings can arrive at full volume with ADHD, and the gap between a thought and acting on it can be short, which is why waiting it out alone is the…

The part of you that detects threat is very old and does not take instructions in words. Telling yourself to calm down mostly demonstrates that.

It explains why sensible arguments made to yourself mid-surge do so little. What does reach it goes through the body and through attention: a longer…

Anger runs through all of you at once, in the breath, the muscles, the gut and the thinking. Which means there is more than one door into it.

You do not have to win the argument in your head to bring it down. Slowing the out-breath, unclenching your hands, standing up and walking into…

Anger is not a state you sit inside. It is the opening move of a sequence, and a sequence can be interrupted.

Think of it as a run of steps: something lands, the body leans in, the story forms, the mouth opens. Every step is somewhere a wedge can go, and the…

Anger is a genuine body event, not a thought you can talk yourself out of mid-flow. Expect it to keep running for a while after you have decided it should stop.

Which is a reason to have something prepared rather than something clever. A short sentence you have used before, a move you have made before, an…