Areas › Anger › Making it stick
This goes the way learning a bicycle went. You could not, then you could but only with all of your attention, then one day you rode without thinking about it. The middle bit is the ugly bit.
In that middle phase the skill works but it costs you everything to use, and it looks clumsy from the outside. That is where most people decide it is not for them and stop. Nothing has gone wrong at that point, you are just in the part nobody enjoys.
Qur’an and Sunnah
You will progress from stage to stage (Quran 84:19). Being in an awkward stage is described as the ordinary human pattern, not a sign that you were not made for this.
لَتَرۡكَبُنَّ طَبَقًا عَن طَبَقࣲ
you will progress from stage to stage
Qur’an 84:19read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A clinic study of nearly two hundred anxious young people found that dropping out of treatment was common and predictable from identifiable factors, a reminder that most stopping happens before a skill has settled. It was observational, in one community clinic, so it describes a pattern rather than explaining it. If you are thinking of quitting, it is worth knowing this is the usual point at which people do.
Gonzalez A, Weersing VR, Warnick EM, Scahill LD, Woolston JL. (2011). Predictors of treatment attrition among an outpatient clinic sample of youths with clinically significant anxiety.. Administration and policy in mental health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Skills feel effortful before they feel automatic, and that order does not run backwards.
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
Rehearsing a calmer response is not thinking about change, it is the change. Each repetition makes that route slightly quicker to reach for.
If a practice looks pointless, you will have dropped it by Thursday. Before you take on anything new, get clear on what it is meant to be building in you.
Skills bring the flare ups down in number and in heat. What they leave standing is the layer underneath: what you believe you are owed, and how you think people ought to behave.