Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
Instead of stopping the worry, follow it all the way to the end. And then what happens. And then what. At each step, ask whether you could bear that.
Most catastrophes stop being catastrophes somewhere along the chain, and the place where you say no, I could not bear that, is the useful discovery. Very often it turns out to be something about you rather than an event: that you would be humiliated, or that people would finally see. That is the thing worth working on, and it is far more workable than the original vague dread.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'where there is hardship there is also ease' (Quran 94:5). The chain does not end at the worst step, which is roughly what this exercise is for.
فَإِنَّ مَعَ ٱلۡعُسۡرِ يُسۡرًا
So truly where there is hardship there is also ease
Qur’an 94:5read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis of 212 studies covering 80,850 young people set out how coping and emotion regulation relate to internalising and externalising symptoms. It supports the broad point that how you handle a worry matters and not only how much of it you have. It was not a test of this particular exercise, so what you have is a technique consistent with the evidence rather than one proven by it.
Compas BE, Jaser SS, Bettis AH, Watson KH, Gruhn MA, Dunbar JP, Williams E, Thigpen JC. (2017). Coping, emotion regulation, and psychopathology in childhood and adolescence: A meta-analysis and narrative review.. Psychological bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The real question is almost never how likely something is, it is whether you believe you could survive it.
When not to
Not one for someone in acute panic, and not one to do alone if the chain ends somewhere frightening; that belongs in a room with a therapist.
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
If your only system for remembering things is your head, of course you are anxious. Nothing is safe in there and some part of you knows it.
Being far apart is not the same as being out of touch. What usually stops contact is the question of who starts it, not the miles.
A reward that is far off has almost no weight in ADHD. Tying the task to something you actually care about gives you a reason that does not depend on the payoff arriving soon.