Areas › Worry and anxiety › Breaking the worry loop
With a child, make it a job rather than a lesson. They are the detective, the worried thought is the claim, and the task is to collect what supports it and what does not before deciding anything.
Two columns on a page, in their handwriting, not yours. Ask what a friend would notice, what happened the last three times, what would have to be true for the worry to be right. Children take to the role because it gives them something to do, and it quietly turns the thought into an object on the table rather than a truth they have to defend.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these (Quran 17:36). Checking what you actually know is asked of you, which is exactly the detective's job.
وَلَا تَقۡفُ مَا لَيۡسَ لَكَ بِهِۦ عِلۡمٌۚ إِنَّ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡبَصَرَ وَٱلۡفُؤَادَ كُلُّ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ كَانَ عَنۡهُ مَسۡـُٔولࣰ ا
Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true: ears, eyes, and heart, you will be questioned about all these
Qur’an 17:36read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised experiment with volunteers who had generalised anxiety disorder or depression, training people to read ambiguous situations in a more benign way reduced their worry and rumination. How an unclear situation gets interpreted is part of what drives the loop, which is what the two column exercise works on. That was a short training study in volunteers, so it supports the mechanism rather than this particular exercise with children.
Colette R. Hirsch; Charlotte Krahé; Jessica Whyte; Sofia Loizou; Livia Bridge; Sam Norton (2018). Interpretation training to target repetitive negative thinking in generalized anxiety disorder and depression.. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Once a thought is something to be investigated, it stops being something to be believed.
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
Sometimes there really is evidence for the fear. Say so. The balance comes from the other column being fuller, not from pretending the first column is empty.
Every worry has something you love sitting underneath it. Fear about the exam means you want to do well. Fear about your mother's drive home means she matters to you.
Say the coping sentence aloud instead of thinking it. Some people generate very little of that inner commentary on their own, and hearing it in the room does the job the inner voice was supposed to do.