Areas › Worry and anxiety › Treatment and medication
Plenty of people carry a tablet for years and almost never take it. What it is mostly doing is reassurance, and that is worth knowing about it.
Being able to reach for it is what makes the shop or the motorway bearable, which is a real help and a quiet cost at the same time. The cost is that the calm keeps getting credited to the tablet rather than to you, so the fear is never quite tested. You do not have to throw it away. It is enough to notice, now and then, that you got through today without touching it.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Qur’an and Sunnah
I am near. I respond to those who call Me (Quran 2:186). There is a nearness you are already carrying that never needed to fit in a pocket.
وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌۖ أُجِيبُ دَعۡوَةَ ٱلدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِۖ فَلۡيَسۡتَجِيبُواْ لِي وَلۡيُؤۡمِنُواْ بِي لَعَلَّهُمۡ يَرۡشُدُونَ
[Prophet], if My servants ask you about Me, I am near. I respond to those who call Me, so let them respond to Me, and believe in Me, so that they may be guided
Qur’an 2:186read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Programmes built on acceptance and mindfulness, which work by letting a feeling be there rather than removing it, reduced anxiety in people with diagnosed anxiety conditions compared with control groups, with effects broadly comparable to established therapies in the trials available. That is a different route from carrying something that promises removal. The trials available were limited in number, so hold the comparison with established therapy lightly.
Haller H, Breilmann P, Schröter M, Dobos G, Cramer H. (2021). A systematic review and meta-analysis of acceptance- and mindfulness-based interventions for DSM-5 anxiety disorders.. Scientific reports doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Something that makes a feared place bearable can also stop you finding out that you could bear it.
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
Nothing you take can act on something that is not there to be acted on. It is a plain limit, and it explains a good deal of the disappointment people carry about treatment.
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.
Anxiety comes in two rough families. Fear is the sudden bodily kind that arrives in a rush, and worry is the slow kind that circles and will not settle.