Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
The first day back is worse than the weeks before it, not better. Plan for that spike rather than letting it take you by surprise.
Anxiety climbs as the return gets close and peaks somewhere near the doorway, then it comes down, but only for someone who stays long enough to find that out. Put the supports in place before the date arrives: who meets them, where they can go if it gets too much, what the first hour actually asks. Deciding all of that on the morning, in tears, rarely goes well.
Qur’an and Sunnah
We shall certainly test you with fear and hunger, and loss of property, lives, and crops. But give good news to those who are steadfast (Quran 2:155). The fear is named in advance here, which is a kind of preparation in itself.
وَلَنَبۡلُوَنَّكُم بِشَيۡءࣲ مِّنَ ٱلۡخَوۡفِ وَٱلۡجُوعِ وَنَقۡصࣲ مِّنَ ٱلۡأَمۡوَٰلِ وَٱلۡأَنفُسِ وَٱلثَّمَرَٰتِۗ وَبَشِّرِ ٱلصَّٰبِرِينَ
We shall certainly test you with fear and hunger, and loss of property, lives, and crops. But [Prophet], give good news to those who are steadfast
Qur’an 2:155read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Reviews of exposure therapy written from an inhibitory learning view argue that what makes approaching a feared thing work is the gap between what you expected and what happened, and that quiet forms of avoidance blunt exactly that gap. These are theoretical reviews drawing laboratory and clinical findings together rather than a trial of going back to school. Read at that level, they explain why a long absence leaves the frightening prediction untouched and loud.
Craske MG, Treanor M, Conway CC, Zbozinek T, Vervliet B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: an inhibitory learning approach.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A fear that has gone months without being tested has had nothing to shrink it, so it turns up at full size.
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
The target is getting through the door, not feeling calm about it. Calm tends to arrive afterwards, and mostly for people who went.
If a child can go to the school office whenever they like and stay as long as they like, that is an exit rather than a support. Agree a length, and a gap between visits.
Listen for the moment a young person starts explaining why home is better. A preference with reasons attached is much harder to shift than plain distress.