Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
There is a particular good feeling in getting out of something you were dreading. Give it a name at home, because it is exactly what makes tomorrow harder.
Children recognise this straight away when it is put plainly: the lovely feeling when you find out you do not have to go. Adults know it too, in the cancelled meeting and the message left unanswered. Once everyone can name it out loud, nobody has to play the villain in the morning, and you are all looking at the same trap instead of at each other.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Did you think you would enter the Garden without God first proving which of you would struggle for His cause and remain steadfast (Quran 3:142). Relief is real and welcome, but it was never the route.
أَمۡ حَسِبۡتُمۡ أَن تَدۡخُلُواْ ٱلۡجَنَّةَ وَلَمَّا يَعۡلَمِ ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِينَ جَٰهَدُواْ مِنكُمۡ وَيَعۡلَمَ ٱلصَّٰبِرِينَ
Did you think you would enter the Garden without God first proving which of you would struggle for His cause and remain steadfast
Qur’an 3:142read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Work on getting the most out of exposure notes that how much fear drops during a practice does not predict how well things turn out later. That comes from theoretical reviews pulling together laboratory and clinical studies, and the picture is not tidy. The implication is still worth passing on: feeling better in the moment is not the measure of whether something is working.
Craske MG, Kircanski K, Zelikowsky M, Mystkowski J, Chowdhury N, Baker A. (2008). Optimizing inhibitory learning during exposure therapy.. Behaviour research and therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A good feeling that arrives right after you escape something is what trains you to escape it again.
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 escape is holding the pattern in place, the plan closes off the escape a step at a time. If what waits at home is holding it, the plan moves those good things to the other side of the effort.
Whoever is standing in the hall at half past seven needs to understand the trap as well as the child does. A plan agreed on a Tuesday afternoon will not survive a Wednesday morning otherwise.
A child coming back after weeks away is walking towards a mountain of missed work. Cut that mountain down before the return date, or it will punish them for coming.