Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
Say the difficult parts out loud before you begin: the parent doing this alone, the younger sibling who now wants to stay home too, two adults who disagree, the week when it all slips.
None of those mean the plan was wrong. They are the ordinary weather of this work, and a family who heard them named in advance treats a bad week as a bad week rather than as proof that nothing works. Sibling knock on is worth planning for from the start in particular, because a rule that applies to only one child in a house rarely survives the month.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do you suppose that you will enter the Garden without first having suffered like those before you? (Quran 2:214). The road is described with its difficulty included, which is kinder preparation than being promised an easy one.
أَمۡ حَسِبۡتُمۡ أَن تَدۡخُلُواْ ٱلۡجَنَّةَ وَلَمَّا يَأۡتِكُم مَّثَلُ ٱلَّذِينَ خَلَوۡاْ مِن قَبۡلِكُمۖ مَّسَّتۡهُمُ ٱلۡبَأۡسَآءُ وَٱلضَّرَّآءُ وَزُلۡزِلُواْ حَتَّىٰ يَقُولَ ٱلرَّسُولُ وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ مَعَهُۥ مَتَىٰ نَصۡرُ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَآ إِنَّ نَصۡرَ ٱللَّهِ قَرِيبࣱ
Do you suppose that you will enter the Garden without first having suffered like those before you? They were afflicted by misfortune and hardship, and they were so shaken that even [their] messenger and the believers with him cried, ‘When will God’s help arrive?’ Truly, God’s help is near
Qur’an 2:214read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Cumulative meta-analyses of acceptance and commitment therapy for depression and anxiety found the evidence built up steadily over the years, with effect sizes that stayed modest. That is an honest picture of a serious approach rather than a poor one. It is also a reasonable expectation to pass to a family: real progress, unevenly, over a stretch of time, rather than a switch being flipped.
Hacker T, Stone P, MacBeth A. (2016). Acceptance and commitment therapy - Do we know enough? Cumulative and sequential meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials.. Journal of affective disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A setback you were warned about stays a setback, while one you were not warned about feels like failure.
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
Somewhere between five and ten children in every hundred struggle to get to school at some point, and one or two of those need real help with it. Your family is not a strange case.
When the fear is about being seen, being asked, being judged, you can build the steps out of real moments: the doorway, the corridor, the dining hall, answering once in a lesson.
Put it the way a grandmother would. Eat your peas and carrots and then you can have your pudding: go in, and then the thing you have been wanting.