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.

Every practice

2847 practices

Narrow these down

Strong feeling about injustice can look a lot like being argumentative. Do not file conviction as defiance without checking.

For many young people these commitments are not a phase but a large part of who they understand themselves to be. Treat them as beliefs to be…

Five minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 8:2One line of research

Treat the whole of social media as poison and you will never hear anything true about it again. Some of what happens there is genuinely good for people.

Drawing, making things, finding others who share an unusual interest, keeping up with people who live far away: none of that needs fixing. What…

Five minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 6:17One line of research

Some young people are behind their age emotionally and socially, and the growing up genuinely has not finished. It is a question of timing rather than of character.

This lands very differently in a family than the words immature or lazy do. If you expect the emotional handling of a twenty year old from someone…

Five minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 65:7One line of research

Parents see an adult sized person and assume adult sized judgement. It helps to say out loud that the wiring is still being finished well past eighteen.

The look of the young person is doing the arguing, and it is very persuasive, so only a plain statement will counter it. Say that the parts used for…

Five minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 2:286One line of research

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Breathing

Reading, numbers and learning differences

What worry does

Making it stick

Treatment and medication

Emotions as signals

Being seen and judged

Tolerate distress

Remembering to do it

Feeling from the inside

Knowing your partner

What you are actually defending

Breaking the worry loop

Facing it a step at a time

Answering bids

When you use something to cope

Repair after rupture

Shame

Obsessions and compulsions

Shared spiritual life

Rebuilding trust

Righteous anger and perfectionism

When anger turns to harm

Fondness and admiration

Affection and touch

Rituals of connection

Listening and understanding

Posture and how you carry yourself

Anger, alcohol and the body

When you go numb

Rest and pacing

Panic and the body

Living with uncertainty

Safety and grounding

Meaning after harm

Letting it out safely

Let the wave come

Working with anger

Act on your values

Notice the pattern and flex

Name what you feel

Your worth is not conditional

Calm the body

Hold a boundary

Help someone grieving

Listen to the body

Get it out of your head

Care for yourself in loss

Work with your brain

Ask and say no well

Validate yourself and others

Your window of tolerance

Keep the bond

Once the surge is up it takes something like a quarter of an hour to drop, and nothing sensible said inside that window will land. Give it the time first.

This is the point where a parent, a partner or a friend reaches for reasons, and the reasons make it worse. Keep your words few, stay nearby, offer…

Twenty minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 13:28One line of research

The mind that runs ahead into everything that could go wrong is the same mind that plans well, sees round corners and has things ready in time. One trait, pointed in two directions.

If you have been told all your life that you overthink, it is worth saying plainly that this trait has served you. The aim is not to flatten it. It…

Twenty minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 6:59One line of research

Pulling away from people sits upstream of a good deal: low mood, social fear, and the slow shrinking of where someone is willing to go. Whatever the eventual label, getting a person back into contact is rarely wasted work.

You do not need the diagnosis settled before you start. One regular arrangement with one person, at a fixed time, somewhere easy to reach, does work…

Twenty minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 2:186One line of research

When you assess a young person, take a reading of the adults as well: what they understand about the world their child lives in, and how comfortable they are in it.

A good deal of what arrives as the presenting problem is really a mismatch. A parent reads something ordinary as alarming, or something serious as…

Twenty minutesWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 12:86One line of research

If attention and planning are already hard work for you, then the very tools for handling anxiety are the things you find difficult. That is not a failure to try. It means the plan needs more scaffolding and more repetition.

Expect to need things that sit outside your head: written steps, alarms, someone who checks in, a shorter ladder with smaller rungs. Go slower than a…

LongerWhat worry doesCBTQur’an 65:7One line of research

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 31:18One line of research

Disrespect is a paper tiger. It comes at you looking like something, and it has never once actually done you any damage.

Worth noticing what your body does anyway. The heart goes, the jaw sets, and you get ready as though something physical were about to happen. The…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 25:63One line of research

When your thinking comes back online mid-argument, say so and offer a restart. I could feel myself getting defensive and this is not helping either of us, shall we try that again?

Most people escalate sometimes. The skill worth having is not never starting but knowing how to get out once you have. Naming it yourself gives the…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 12:92One line of research

Anger and doubt cannot really occupy the same moment. Anger sharpens everything to a point, and a genuine maybe blunts it.

This is why an honest question does more than an argument. Not a challenge, which hardens things, but a real one: what if I have got part of this…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 2:206One line of research

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 16:23One line of research

Not understanding what is happening frightens a person before it angers them. If you flare up when a situation is unclear, you are meeting something very old in yourself rather than a fault you invented.

Watch the order of it next time. First the blank, the not knowing what this means or where it is going, then a tightening in the chest or jaw, then…

A minuteWhat you are actually defendingMindfulnessQur’an 17:36One line of research

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 91:9One line of research

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 7:48One line of research

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 49:13One line of research

Some situations genuinely run on how you are seen. A job interview, a court hearing, a first meeting with in-laws: the image matters there, and it is honest to say so.

The claim is only that most of life is not one of those, and that the fear of disrespect is far larger than its actual cost. Keeping the exceptions…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 4:135One line of research

Demanding respect quietly puts you below the person you are demanding it from. You are asking for something only they can hand over, which makes you the one in need.

That is an odd position for a stance meant to prove you will not be pushed around. To anyone watching it usually reads as need rather than strength.…

Five minutesWhat you are actually defendingCoreQur’an 28:83One line of research