Areas › Worry and anxiety › What worry does
Pulling away from people sits upstream of a good deal: low mood, social fear, and the slow shrinking of where someone is willing to go. Whatever the eventual label, getting a person back into contact is rarely wasted work.
You do not need the diagnosis settled before you start. One regular arrangement with one person, at a fixed time, somewhere easy to reach, does work that talking about it will not do. Begin from the amount of contact that is actually possible now rather than the amount that ought to be possible, and let it grow from there.
Qur’an and Sunnah
I am near. I respond to those who call Me (Quran 2:186). Nearness is stated first, before anyone has managed to reach out.
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
A meta-analysis found that intolerance of uncertainty, the sense that not knowing is unbearable, runs across generalised anxiety, social anxiety, panic, agoraphobia, obsessive compulsive difficulties and depression rather than belonging to any one of them. Ingredients shared between these conditions are real, which is part of why working upstream can make sense. That analysis concerns one particular ingredient, so it supports the general idea rather than proving anything about isolation itself.
McEvoy PM, Hyett MP, Shihata S, Price JE, Strachan L. (2019). The impact of methodological and measurement factors on transdiagnostic associations with intolerance of uncertainty: A meta-analysis.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Time with people feeds several problems at once, so it is worth working on before you know which one you have.
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
Listen for the words I can't. When anxiety is doing the talking, that phrase turns up long before any evidence does. Let us try and see is the same situation with the door left open.
Watch for the moment a what if turns into a when. That small slide, from a possibility into something you can already picture in detail, is where worry does most of its damage.
Strong feeling about injustice can look a lot like being argumentative. Do not file conviction as defiance without checking.