Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
Halfway up the argument, ask yourself one question. What do I want here, and who am I trying to be. Winning the sentence is rarely worth what it costs by bedtime.
It is a simple move and it is genuinely hard, because the moment is loud and the long view is quiet. A short version helps. Not in front of the children. Or simply, I love her. One phrase chosen in advance, small enough to arrive in the middle of a row. It does not stop the feeling. It sometimes stops the next thing you were about to say.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend' (Quran 41:34). It is a promise about the long view, made about the person standing right in front of you.
وَلَا تَسۡتَوِي ٱلۡحَسَنَةُ وَلَا ٱلسَّيِّئَةُۚ ٱدۡفَعۡ بِٱلَّتِي هِيَ أَحۡسَنُ فَإِذَا ٱلَّذِي بَيۡنَكَ وَبَيۡنَهُۥ عَدَٰوَةࣱ كَأَنَّهُۥ وَلِيٌّ حَمِيمࣱ
Good and evil cannot be equal. [Prophet], repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend
Qur’an 41:34read 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 imaging studies found that reappraising an emotional situation draws on frontal and parietal control regions, which then modulate the amygdala's response. Changing how you frame a moment is real work with a real effect, and it is the kind of work that gets harder the more worked up you are. Imaging averages will not tell you which phrase to use.
Buhle JT, Silvers JA, Wager TD, Lopez R, Onyemekwu C, Kober H, Weber J, Ochsner KN. (2014). Cognitive reappraisal of emotion: a meta-analysis of human neuroimaging studies.. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Bringing the long view into the moment gives the feeling something to be weighed against.
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
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.
When your child comes to you in a spin, the kind thing is to stay warm and steady rather than to promise that it will be fine. Reassurance settles the next ten minutes and feeds the asking.
Pulling back from things is easier. That is not the same as safer. The cost of a smaller life arrives later and quietly, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed.