Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

Narrowed down

76 practices
Area
How long you have · Twenty minutes
Who it is written for
Where you are right now
On your own, or with someone · Both of us together
Theme
Approach
When

The more one person checks up, the more the other hides, and the more they hide the more the checking looks justified. Both are responding reasonably to the last move and nobody is having a good time.

Getting out of it usually means the monitoring comes down first, which feels like the wrong direction to whoever is doing the monitoring. A workable…

Twenty minutesRemembering to do itADHD skillsQur’an 3:159

Ask your child to show you their feed and explain it to you. You are asking to be taught rather than to inspect, and from the other side those feel nothing like each other.

Something shifts when the young person is the one who knows more. They slow down, they explain who these people are, they tell you which bits are…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionCBTQur’an 24:31

Ask two questions and then sit with the difference. How much time on this would you like? And how much do you think is actually good for you?

Almost nobody gives the same answer twice, and the gap between the numbers is more persuasive than anything you could have told them, because they…

Twenty minutesScreens and attentionADHD skillsQur’an 18:46

When someone reminds you often enough, things do get done. But the sense of time doing the work is theirs, which is why it all collapses the moment they stop.

Worth naming out loud in a household, because the reminding costs the relationship something and never builds the missing part. A better arrangement…

Twenty minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 103:3

Take the Friday deadline and walk it backwards onto the days. What happens Monday, what happens Tuesday, written down where both of you can see it.

Children with this difficulty rarely generate the sequence themselves, and asking them to is asking for the thing that is hard. So supply it, on…

Twenty minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 36:38

A friend or a counsellor telling you that you are not a monster helps, and it only takes you so far. The shame usually sits with one particular person, and it eases most when that person hears the thing and stays.

So aim a disclosure carefully rather than widely. Choose the person the shame is actually about, pick a moment with room in it, and say the small…

Twenty minutesShameEmotionally focusedQur’an 66:8

Telling someone it was not their fault often bounces straight off, and there is a reason for that. Self blame can be the safer of the two stories, and you are asking them to give up shelter.

So do not lead with the correction. Say instead that it makes complete sense they landed there, that a child needs their parents to be good more than…

Twenty minutesShameTrauma informedQur’an 15:56

In a bad moment your attention, your seeing and your remembering all narrow onto the threat. So your memory of the row is a partial recording, and so is theirs.

Worth holding on to before you go back over who said what. Neither of you is necessarily lying when the two accounts differ. Starting with here is…

Twenty minutesThe moment before you snapCoreQur’an 7:154

Regular massage has been studied with restless, distractible children and teenagers, and their teachers noticed the difference in class as well as the young people noticing it in themselves.

The pattern in these studies is modest and repeated: short sessions, twice a week, over several weeks, with mood and behaviour improving rather than…

Twenty minutesTouch and bodyworkMedical and treatmentQur’an 17:24

In placebo studies, people improve even when they have been told outright that the pill is inert. They also usually spend half an hour talking with someone who is paying attention.

That half hour is easy to dismiss as a detail of the study design, and it may be most of the treatment. Which is oddly encouraging: careful listening…

Twenty minutesTouch and bodyworkMedical and treatmentQur’an 2:263

Do not write off simply sitting with someone. When researchers looked into why dummy treatments helped, one of the things they kept finding was half an hour of a person's full attention.

Thirty minutes of someone listening properly to your difficulties is not filler around the real treatment. Across the talking therapies, who the…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 3:159

Coaching for adult ADHD comes down mostly to one thing: a standing appointment with somebody who will ask how it went. That sounds thin until you have tried keeping a plan alive entirely on your own.

A coach is not a therapist and does not need to be. They hold the horizon you keep losing and the fortnight that has quietly gone by, and they make…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationCBTQur’an 42:38

Relationships take a lot of the strain here, and the usual shape is one person quietly carrying all the planning while the other feels constantly told off. Both halves are worth naming out loud before resentment sets hard.

The practical work is splitting the load by what each of you is actually good at rather than down the middle, and putting the shared admin somewhere…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 11:118

ADHD reaches into a marriage in ways couples rarely say out loud: attention drifting during a conversation that mattered, or a partner who has started to feel like an unpaid manager. It is a fair thing to talk about and to get help with.

The hurt usually comes from what each of you concludes rather than from the behaviour itself. One reads distraction as not being loved, the other…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 11:118

Your family had its own rules about anger, quite apart from anything cultural. Those are the ones that shaped you, and they can be renegotiated.

Name two of them plainly. Nobody leaves the table. Whoever shouts loudest wins. We do not mention it the next day. Then ask which you still want.…

Twenty minutesWhat anger actually isCoreQur’an 2:263

Connection settles people, but the right amount of it varies enormously. Some settle with a house full of family and some with one person and no talking at all.

If closeness costs you something, plan around that rather than pushing through. Shorter visits, sitting side by side instead of face to face, a walk…

Twenty minutesYour nervous systemBody basedQur’an 2:260

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