Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
Ask when it began and what that first week was like. What now looks like a teenager enjoying their freedom often started as fear that nobody could reach.
Patterns drift. A child frightened of the dining hall in September can, by March, be a young person with a settled day at home and a set of arguments ready to defend it, and looking only at March means treating the wrong thing. The early story usually still matters, and saying it out loud without accusation often softens a conversation more than any argument about attendance.
Qur’an and Sunnah
do not despair of God's mercy (Quran 12:87). Jacob says it when the trail has gone cold and years have passed, which is roughly the point at which families give up on these situations.
يَٰبَنِيَّ ٱذۡهَبُواْ فَتَحَسَّسُواْ مِن يُوسُفَ وَأَخِيهِ وَلَا تَاْيۡـَٔسُواْ مِن رَّوۡحِ ٱللَّهِۖ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يَاْيۡـَٔسُ مِن رَّوۡحِ ٱللَّهِ إِلَّا ٱلۡقَوۡمُ ٱلۡكَٰفِرُونَ
My sons, go and seek news of Joseph and his brother and do not despair of God’s mercy- only disbelievers despair of God’s mercy.’
Qur’an 12:87read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
An empirical review of acceptance and commitment therapy for anxiety and obsessive compulsive problems found that psychological flexibility, measured with the standard questionnaire, is consistently related to anxiety. Much of that evidence is cross-sectional and rests on one self-report measure with known limitations. Even so, it supports the idea that an anxious core does not simply vanish when the surface behaviour changes shape.
Bluett EJ, Homan KJ, Morrison KL, Levin ME, Twohig MP. (2014). Acceptance and commitment therapy for anxiety and OCD spectrum disorders: an empirical review.. Journal of anxiety disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
What starts a problem and what keeps it going are frequently different, and both need looking at.
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
Offer school again at ten, and at eleven, and after lunch. One refusal at half past seven should not be allowed to decide the whole day.
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.
Physically taking a refusing child should be rare, and only with a young child, two adults at home, two staff waiting at school, and a plan for keeping everybody safe.