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

13 practices

What you are actually defending On my own Any ordinary day Clear all

How long you have

A minute 2 Five minutes 10 Twenty minutes 1

Who it is written for

Someone I care about 13 Me 13 A practitioner 13

Where you are right now

Coping, mostly 12 Struggling right now 1

On your own, or with someone · On my own

On my own 13 Both of us together 1

Theme · What you are actually defending

Your nervous system 81 Medication and how it works 69 Get started 61 Systems for daily life 52 What anger actually is 50 Your sense of time 48 Food, caffeine and fuel 43 The moment before you snap 42 Choosing your response 41 Exercise, food and other supports 40 Moving your body 37 What ADHD actually is 35 Treatment and medication 34 Bringing the future closer 33 Equanimity and perspective 33 Grounding and settling 31 The fear underneath anger 30 When everything feels flat 29 Screens and attention 28 Touch and bodywork 27 Structure and routine 25 Getting assessed and diagnosed 25 Practising under provocation 24 Shame and stigma 22 Feelings and focus 22 Making it stick 20 Treatment and medication 19 What worry does 19 Cool the body first 19 Being seen and judged 18 Remembering to do it 17 Growing empathy 17 Breathing 17 When you use something to cope 15 Feeling from the inside 15 What you are actually defending 13 Fondness and admiration 12 Reading, numbers and learning differences 12 Obsessions and compulsions 10 Answering bids 10 Tolerate distress 10 Righteous anger and perfectionism 10 Staying regulated in conflict 9 Use your strengths 8 Self-compassion 8 Knowing your partner 8 Shared spiritual life 7 Breaking the worry loop 7 Facing it a step at a time 7 Gratitude 7 Question the thought 6 Anger, alcohol and the body 6 Emotions as signals 6 Posture and how you carry yourself 5 Shame 4 Living with uncertainty 3 Your worth is not conditional 3 When you go numb 3 Notice the pattern and flex 3 When anger turns to harm 3 Repair after rupture 2 Act on your values 2 Meaning after harm 2 Keep the bond 2 Get it out of your head 2 Find meaning 2 Face it gently 2 Work with your brain 2 Rest and pacing 2 Listen to the body 1 Rebuilding trust 1 Safety and grounding 1 Your window of tolerance 1 Panic and the body 1 The cost of avoiding 1 Affection and touch 1 Care for yourself in loss 1 Listening and understanding 1

Approach

Core 8 Mindfulness 5

When · Any ordinary day

Any ordinary day 13 Under stress 4 Coming and going 1 After a row 1 In a change 1 Something good 1

Respect comes from the Latin for looking, with the prefix meaning again. It is literally the second look, the head that turns as somebody important walks past.

Knowing that does something useful. A word that felt close to sacred turns into a plain social behaviour you can examine: who gets looked at twice,…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 31:18

Your mind is always slightly behind what is happening. Reality moves and you are the response, which leaves you permanently a step late and permanently not quite sure.

Put that way, uncertainty is not a flaw in your thinking, it is the position you are standing in. You are flying into the next moment without having…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 16:23

If you can see yourself, you need other people to do it far less. That is really the whole aim, and it is what takes the sting out of being misjudged.

Being seen properly by others is lovely, and it is also occasional, partial and outside your control. What you can do daily is notice what you did…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 91:9

Try saying the word until it goes silly. Respect, respect, respect: a socially agreed comment on how tall you are supposed to be.

The point of the joke is not to demolish respect, which is fine and worth having. It is to shrink the fear of not getting it, because that is the…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 7:48

Here is an uncomfortable way to look at it. To value someone is often to find them useful, and paying respect is a bit like looking after your tools: being nice to you is nice for me.

It is not the whole truth about people and it is not meant unkindly. It is useful because it makes generic respect a strange thing to organise a life…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 49:13

A lizard's temperature is whatever the rock is. A mammal shivers, sweats and pants, and stays roughly the same whether it is a good day or not.

Self-esteem works like the lizard. It rises when things go well and drops when they do not, and other people supply the weather. Self-acceptance is…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 39:22

Esteem shares a root with estimate, and estimating needs a measure. Look at what you are measuring yourself with and you will usually find it was handed to you: money, height, thinness, numbers on a screen.

Those measures move. They differ between one country and the next, and between your grandfather's time and your own. Anything you score yourself on…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 53:32

Feeling good about yourself is not the safe end of this. The high and the low come from the same borrowed source, which means the high can be taken back at any point.

You feel valuable while you are fitting in and worthless when you are not, and neither reading was ever yours. It is why an insult can go off like a…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 2:34

A lot of angry certainty is frightened certainty. Needing to know exactly what is going on, and exactly who is at fault, is more comfortable than admitting the situation cannot be fully read.

From the outside it looks like arrogance, and from the inside it feels like clarity. Underneath it is usually the same discomfort as any other…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 17:36

Not knowing is not a fault in you. It is the ordinary condition of being alive, and much of the distress comes from the belief that it ought to be otherwise.

There is the discomfort of not knowing, and then a second layer on top: the sense that you were supposed to know by now and something has gone wrong.…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 49:12

Righteous anger pays you something. It burns off doubt, hands back a sense of being in charge, and can feel very close to intoxicating.

Any plan that treats anger purely as a skills problem runs into this. You are asking somebody to give up a thing that works, and it is fairer to say…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 12:53

Understand more so that you may fear less. That line is the whole point of learning how your anger works: not cleverness, just less fear.

People with a temper are rarely persuaded by being told to calm down, and are often genuinely interested in how the machinery works. Knowing what…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 16:90

A small child works out how to feel about itself by looking at its parents' faces. If that face was missing, or busy, the looking does not stop, it just moves on to teachers, coaches, friends and strangers.

It is part of why being disrespected can feel so much larger than the moment deserves. Some of that old search is still running. The work is slow and…

Twenty minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 50:16

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