Practices

Before a step, write down what you will do when the fear arrives. Which breathing, what you will say to yourself, who you will speak to. Nobody invents a plan in the moment, they only follow one.

Keep it short and specific enough to be followed while frightened. It also gives you something to go over afterwards: what you used, what you forgot,…

No step happens without the person agreeing to it. Not ordered, not dragged, not talked round in a bright voice. Agreement is a condition of the thing working, not a courtesy.

Coerced exposure teaches two lessons at once: that the situation is dangerous, and that you are not safe with the people who arranged it. After that…

Ask which step they are willing to try, and then go with their answer. A smaller step they chose themselves tends to get attempted, and a bigger one you chose for them often does not.

In practice this means holding the ladder loosely. You keep the shape of it, they pick the rung, and if they pick lower than you hoped you take the…

When something frightens you the mind offers one option: do not go. Force out two or three more before judging any of them, daft ones included. Choosing needs something to choose between.

There is an order that works. Say what the problem actually is, in one sentence. List some options without weighing them yet. Then go through what is…

Years of avoiding people leave real gaps, not only fear. How to start small talk, how to join a group already talking, how to get out of a conversation. Those can be taught, and being taught them is not an insult.

Sending someone into a peer group without the ordinary moves risks a genuinely bad afternoon, which then teaches exactly the wrong lesson. Practise…

Put a number on each step, nought to ten, and let it be your number. Two people facing the same school will not agree about which part is worst, and the ladder has to belong to the person climbing it.

One child dreads the bus and is fine once inside the building. Another would happily ride the bus all morning and cannot get through the front door.…

Run it in your head first, then act it out with someone safe, then do it for real. It is a preseason, and nobody thinks the preseason is cheating.

Each round adds a little pressure while help is still to hand. Imagining it stirs the fear enough to show whether your plan holds up. Acting it out…

Nobody puts a child who cannot swim into the shallow end and calls it teaching. Before anyone goes near the thing they dread, they need something to do with their body and their head when the fear arrives.

It takes only one overwhelming attempt to teach the opposite of what was intended: that it really was too much, and that the adults will push anyway.…

One of the earliest signs that you are drifting out of the present is that your hands and feet go vague. Not numb exactly, just less there.

It tends to happen before you notice you have gone anywhere. If you learn your own version of it, you get an early warning: a chance to press your…

Before inviting anyone to turn attention to their body, ask first. How do you feel about trying this now, and would you like to?

The asking is part of the practice, not the preamble to it. Someone whose body was once not theirs to control needs the choice handed back in small…

When someone is distressed, moving too fast to settle them can land as a message that their distress is not welcome here. Let them set the speed.

Offering a breath, a blanket, a change of subject: all of it can help, and all of it can arrive as a shutting down if it comes before the person has…

A wave across the road, a joke with the man in the shop, asking someone how they are and meaning it. These unplanned seconds count for more than they look like they should.

They are also the easiest place to start when arranging a proper meet up feels like too much. Almost nothing is at stake in a greeting, so a fear of…

A small child does not have a feeling, they are the feeling, entirely, until it passes. Growing up is largely a gap opening between feeling something and doing something about it.

If that gap is narrower for you than for other people your age, it is a lag on a road everyone is on rather than a defect. The framing is worth…

If rating a feeling out of ten means nothing to you, use something that does. Colour in bubbles, point at a picture, hold your hands apart to show how big it is today.

This began as an adaptation for children, swapping the numbered anxiety ladder for bubbles to colour in, and it is just as useful for anyone who goes…

After years of feeling slightly outside every room, pulling back stops being a decision and becomes the setting you live at. Worth knowing about yourself before you conclude that you are simply not a people person.

If you are supporting or treating someone with ADHD, assume the connection has to be built rather than already there, and do not read the flatness…

Being far apart is not the same as being out of touch. What usually stops contact is the question of who starts it, not the miles.

Distance turns into disconnection when both people wait for the other one. It helps to fix a when rather than promising to speak soon. The same…

Moods travel. Laughter spreads through a group of friends, and so does contempt, gloom and low grinding cynicism. It is fair to think about which rooms you sit in.

This is not about cutting people off. It is closer to noticing that you leave certain conversations heavier than you arrived, and choosing to make…

Worry done on your own goes round in circles. Said out loud to one other person, it usually turns into a problem with edges, and sometimes into a next step.

The rule is short enough to remember at midnight: never worry alone. It does not have to be someone who can fix anything. A friend, a colleague, your…

Pulling back from things is easier. That is not the same as safer. The cost of a smaller life arrives later and quietly, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed.

It helps to be honest about the trade. Saying no to the party buys you a calm evening and charges you a slightly smaller world. Once or twice that is…

Nobody tolerates something unpleasant for no reason. Before starting anything difficult, get clear about what you want on the other side of it, in your own words.

Something like: I want to sit an exam without being sick, so I am willing to practise feeling uncomfortable. The sentence has to be yours. A goal…