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.

What matches

731 practices

Narrow these down

Listen to how you explain your own good news. If every success gets put down to luck, timing or somebody not looking closely enough, while every failure gets put down to you, the books are not balanced.

It is one of the more reliable signs that shame is running underneath. The pattern is worth catching in the act, so next time something goes well,…

Five minutesShame and stigmaADHD skillsQur’an 4:32One line of research

Once you have a reputation for being late or forgetful, people begin watching for it. The rate of your mistakes may not have moved at all, and the number that get noticed keeps climbing.

This is a real effect rather than you imagining things, which is worth saying, since most people in this position have been told they are…

Five minutesShame and stigmaADHD skillsQur’an 49:12One line of research

A man in a support group said his sisters can arrive two hours late to a family barbecue and nobody comments, while he is ten minutes late and everyone starts. That is unfair, and the noticing is also real.

Holding both at once is the only position that goes anywhere. Hold only the unfairness and you get to be right while nothing changes. Hold only the…

Five minutesShame and stigmaADHD skillsQur’an 2:225One line of research

When you have stopped believing you can change anything, the reflex is to avoid and to scroll. What breaks that is not encouragement, it is one small thing actually finished.

Pick something small enough to be sure of: one drawer, one email, one form. The point is not the drawer. The point is a fresh piece of evidence that…

Five minutesShame and stigmaADHD skills

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

Qur’an 39:53

One line of research

The same plan works in a calm week and falls apart in a chaotic one. That is not motivation coming and going. You began the chaotic week with less in reserve and spent most of it before the decisions that mattered arrived.

By the time you reach the important thing, a good deal has already gone on finding keys, apologising, rerouting and starting over. Which is why the…

Five minutesShame and stigmaADHD skillsQur’an 6:132One line of research

The rawness around rejection usually has a history. Ask an adult where it started and you tend to land on a childhood of being asked why they could not manage what everyone else managed.

That matters, because it means this was learned rather than fixed in you from birth. Thousands of small moments of being corrected, mocked or left…

Twenty minutesShame and stigmaADHD skillsQur’an 49:11One line of research

When a young person with ADHD goes through a first breakup or loses a friendship group, stay closer than usual. Do not wait for the next arranged contact.

Rejection lands harder here, and impulsivity shortens the gap between feeling unbearable and acting on it. A short unannounced check in, a lift…

Twenty minutesShame and stigmaADHD skillsQur’an 39:53One line of research

It usually travels in stages. Something in how attention and planning work becomes a story you tell about yourself, then becomes the story other people tell about you, and by then it is much harder to shift.

Knowing which stage you are at tells you what will help. Early on, practical strategies do most of the work. Later, when a family or a workplace…

Twenty minutesShame and stigmaADHD skillsQur’an 17:53One line of research

No food in the house means eating out late, which means a late night, which means a late start, which means no time to shop. It is not a character flaw. It is a loop.

The parts that feel most like personal failure, the takeaways, the extra coffee, the money going nowhere, are mostly downstream of a plan that never…

LongerShame and stigmaADHD skillsQur’an 2:286One line of research

You do not have to use it perfectly for it to help. Using it half the time makes your week roughly half better, and that is a real gain rather than a consolation prize.

Watch for the all or nothing turn, because it is what usually ends these attempts. One missed entry, then the whole thing gets declared broken and…

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 2:185One line of research

Writing Tuesday at two in your diary is not a vow. If Tuesday comes and something else matters more, move it. At least it had a chance of happening.

A surprising number of people avoid writing anything down because it feels binding, as though the ink made it a promise. Left unsaid, that quietly…

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 4:28One line of research

If you are the sort who leaves at the last possible second, the entry has to hold everything you need in order to walk out of the door. Address, door code, what to bring, who to ring if you get stuck.

At five minutes to, you cannot search well and you cannot think of what you have forgotten. That is the wrong moment to be finding anything out. Get…

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 24:36One line of research

Putting something in the calendar does not sign you up for life. If Wednesday turns out wrong, drag it to Thursday. The entry is a plan, and plans are allowed to change.

People who fear being locked in tend to end up with an empty calendar and a full head, which is the worse of the two problems. Say the permission out…

A minuteStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 25:62One line of research

A deadline you privately know is soft has no pull at all. If six o'clock really means midnight, then ten in the morning means nothing, and the whole day drifts until the panic arrives.

One man working from home lost his evenings this way for years, and it was his relationship rather than his employer that paid for it. If the true…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 78:10One line of research

Put the rules up on the wall where everyone can see them, and put the child's own version on a card on their desk.

A rule that lives only in memory is not there in the second it is needed, which is the second something more interesting has just walked past. A card…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 11:114One line of research

Some children need to move, and the choice is whether that movement is allowed for or whether it arrives as a disruption later on.

A ball chair, a standing desk, a seat near the front, or permission to walk to the back and return with a nod and nothing said: any of these let the…

Five minutesStructure and routineADHD skillsQur’an 4:103One line of research

Anger can feel good for a moment, righteous and awake and clear. That warm rush is exactly why it is hard to interrupt at the only point where interrupting works.

If you wait until you feel like stopping, you will not stop, because in the first seconds the anger feels like the correct response rather than a…

A minuteThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 17:11One line of research

The threat system fires in under a second, and conscious oversight needs two or three. A time-out is not a clever technique, it is just a way of surviving that gap.

Decide now what you will do with those seconds, because you will not invent it on the spot. Mouth closed, feet still, one slow breath out, or a plain…

A minuteThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 7:200One line of research

Once it starts rolling, it gathers. A small exchange becomes a shouting match becomes something with consequences, and every step feels reasonable given the one before.

The cheapest place to stop is early, at the first sharp reply, long before you can see how far it has gone. Naming it out loud helps: "we are…

A minuteThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 2:268One line of research

Let the strength of the feeling be your signal. When it is this loud, your judgement is temporarily unavailable, so the rule is simply no replies and no decisions at this volume.

Noticing intensity is far easier than working out whether you are being fair, and it still works when you are overloaded. Set the rule while you are…

A minuteThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 8:29One line of research