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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731 practices

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Somewhere between five and ten children in every hundred struggle to get to school at some point, and one or two of those need real help with it. Your family is not a strange case.

It feels rare because nobody mentions it at the school gate. In a school of a thousand that is a dozen or more children needing active support at any…

A minuteThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 2:214One line of research

Avoiding something makes today easier and tomorrow harder. Say that plainly, to yourself and to whoever is in it with you.

Without that sentence, asking someone to face a frightening thing looks like cruelty, and every conversation about it goes badly. With it, the choice…

A minuteThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 62:8One line of research

Anxiety is the most common mental health difficulty of childhood, with something like a third of young people meeting the threshold at some point and a smaller group badly held back by it. Both halves of that are worth saying.

The first half is for the shame: this is ordinary, and keeping it secret is its own kind of avoiding. The second half is so that nobody hears…

A minuteThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 39:53One line of research

Offer school again at ten, and at eleven, and after lunch. One refusal at half past seven should not be allowed to decide the whole day.

Morning dread usually peaks around the time they would be leaving and then drains away over a couple of hours. A child who could not face it at half…

A minuteThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 12:87One line of research

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

The cost of avoiding

Obsessions and compulsions

What worry does

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Breathing

Emotions as signals

Feeling from the inside

Being seen and judged

When you use something to cope

Breaking the worry loop

Treatment and medication

Remembering to do it

Practising under provocation

Bringing the future closer

Growing empathy

Structure and routine

Exercise, food and other supports

Question the thought

Posture and how you carry yourself

When you go numb

Making it stick

When anger turns to harm

Letting it out safely

Self-compassion

Facing it a step at a time

Living with uncertainty

What you are actually defending

Rest and pacing

Panic and the body

Anger, alcohol and the body

Use your strengths

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Nobody is asking you to go cold. Comfort your child properly, and watch where it lands: alongside them as they go, rather than waiting for them if they stay.

A hug at the door and a hand on the back on the way to the car sit on the side of going. A whole afternoon of being looked after because they did not…

A minuteThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 2:155One line of research

Some people are not scared of the day, they are flattened by it. Staying home lifts the weight for an hour, then removes the few good things the day still held.

Low mood makes school heavy rather than dangerous: no energy, no interest, everything asking too much. Staying away helps at first and then takes…

Five minutesThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 94:7One line of research

If staying home means an anxious child gets more of you, your comfort is quietly part of what keeps them there. That is not a failure of love.

This one is hard to see precisely because the soothing is kind and the distress is real. The usual shape is a fought over morning, the child stays,…

Five minutesThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 65:2One line of research

On a day at home, be the person who supervises rather than the person who keeps them company. The warmth is not cancelled, it moves to the evening.

Hovering, chatting, sitting alongside them with a cup of tea: all of it is lovely, and all of it makes the day at home better than the day at school.…

Five minutesThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 65:2One line of research

Find one adult in the building the child already trusts, and have them meet the child at the entrance. The doorway is the hardest minute of the day.

The job is small and specific: be there at the door, walk with them to their locker, get them started, be findable later on. It turns the worst…

Five minutesThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 13:11One line of research

A plan followed on some days and not others can be worse than no plan at all. Choose the smallest version you are sure you can keep to, and keep to that.

When staying home works on one morning in four, that occasional success makes the pleading more determined rather than less. Cut the plan back until…

Five minutesThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 18:23One line of research

When someone with attention difficulties loses the structure around them, the difficulty shows in full. Nothing has got worse in them; the scaffolding that carried part of it has gone.

Bells, a timetable, a teacher at the front, other people visibly working: all of that was taking some of the load. At home the load falls on whoever…

Twenty minutesThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 2:45One line of research

Physically taking a refusing child should be rare, and only with a young child, two adults at home, two staff waiting at school, and a plan for keeping everybody safe.

It goes wrong easily. Someone gets hurt, a younger sibling watches it happen, and a child learns that the adults will use force, which is not a…

LongerThe cost of avoidingCBTQur’an 2:45One line of research

If most of your talking happens somewhere everything gets counted, likes, views, replies, then of course a room full of people feels like a scoreboard too. The habit was learned somewhere real.

Notice when the feeling arrives. It is usually before anyone has said anything: a sense that a number is being kept on you. Then name where you…

A minuteBeing seen and judgedCBTQur’an 3:29One line of research

Unless you have turned up somewhere in fancy dress, you are not the main thing on anyone's mind. Most of the people around you are working out where to park and what they are going to eat.

This is not a trick for making the feeling vanish. The feeling usually hangs about for a while. It is more that when you walk in and the whole room…

A minuteBeing seen and judgedCBTQur’an 49:12One line of research

If getting to the appointment frightened you, then you have already done the first hard thing. Walking in and talking to a stranger about yourself is the ladder, not the preparation for it.

Nobody watching later can see it. What they see is someone sitting there talking, and they miss the week of dread and the near cancellation. Say it…

A minuteBeing seen and judgedNarrativeQur’an 4:149One line of research

If you grew up praised for turning up rather than for how it went, the first time something you did is properly judged can feel like the floor giving way. Avoiding it afterwards is not weakness. It is what most people would do.

It shows up as putting off the assignment, the audition, the interview, the group chat where people say what they think. The useful move is not to…

Five minutesBeing seen and judgedCBTQur’an 49:13One line of research

You might manage the smile and find the hello impossible. That is not the day going wrong. It is the ladder showing you where the next rung actually belongs.

One student recognised a man in her class who used to be a customer where she worked. She had a choice of look, smile, nod or wave, she chose the…

Five minutesBeing seen and judgedCBTQur’an 28:34One line of research

Social fear does not always look like hiding. Some people are the ones organising everything and talking to everyone, running a hard commentary on themselves the whole time.

From outside it reads as confidence, which is why it gets missed, often by the person living it. The marker is not what you do in the room but what…

Five minutesBeing seen and judgedCBTQur’an 40:19One line of research

Social fear usually has a first address. School corridors, a year when appearance decided everything, a group that made a project of you. Knowing where it began does not undo it, but it stops it feeling like a fact about your character.

What often keeps it alive is that the rules of that place travelled with you. The hierarchy ended at graduation and the watchfulness carried on.…

Twenty minutesBeing seen and judgedNarrativeQur’an 24:15One line of research

Sometimes the help you need is not insight. It is someone sitting with you while you sort out what actually happened this week and which bit of it mattered.

When anxiety is running at full speed, everything arrives at the same volume and nothing can be ranked. A bad week becomes one undifferentiated bad…

Twenty minutesBeing seen and judgedNarrativeQur’an 15:97One line of research