Areas › Your body › Grounding and settling
Attention problems often travel with anxiety or low mood, and those two eat working memory as well. Settling that layer can make everything else look quite different.
If you are anxious most of the day you will lose track of things, forget what you came into the room for and struggle to hold a plan, whether or not you also have an attention difficulty. It is worth treating the anxious or flattened part in its own right rather than filing everything under one label. People are often surprised how much of what felt permanent turns out to have been the anxiety talking.
Qur’an and Sunnah
when their very souls closed in around them (Quran 9:118). The closing in is named as an affliction of its own, worth attending to in its own right.
وَعَلَى ٱلثَّلَٰثَةِ ٱلَّذِينَ خُلِّفُواْ حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا ضَاقَتۡ عَلَيۡهِمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضُ بِمَا رَحُبَتۡ وَضَاقَتۡ عَلَيۡهِمۡ أَنفُسُهُمۡ وَظَنُّوٓاْ أَن لَّا مَلۡجَأَ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ إِلَّآ إِلَيۡهِ ثُمَّ تَابَ عَلَيۡهِمۡ لِيَتُوبُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ هُوَ ٱلتَّوَّابُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ
And to the three men who stayed behind: when the earth, for all its spaciousness, closed in around them, when their very souls closed in around them, when they realized that the only refuge from God was with Him, He turned to them in mercy in order for them to return [to Him]. God is the Ever Relenting, the Most Merciful
Qur’an 9:118read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Across 21 randomised trials, compassion based programmes produced moderate improvements in compassion and wellbeing, and small reductions in depression and anxiety. Small is the honest word, and a small change in a layer that has been there for years can still be noticeable. These were trials of one family of programme, not a comparison of everything on offer.
Kirby JN, Tellegen CL, Steindl SR. (2017). A Meta-Analysis of Compassion-Based Interventions: Current State of Knowledge and Future Directions.. Behavior therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Worry takes up the same mental room that holding a plan needs.
When not to
Persistent anxiety or low mood deserves proper assessment rather than being handled alone with a practice.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
You do not need a diagnosis to be worth teaching this to. Something that takes seconds, costs nothing and travels with you is worth having before you need it.
Keep a short list of things that settle you, and choose from it by how you actually are, not by which one you like best. Wound up and racing needs something different from flat and switched off.
Start with a couple of minutes of movement before any of the difficult talking. Not a warm up for its own sake: a body that has moved is easier to think in.