Behavioural activation

Schedule the things you have quietly stopped doing. Withdrawal feeds rumination.

How it works

Anxiety shrinks your week without announcing it: the plans not made, the hobby dropped, the friend not replied to. The empty space fills with rumination. Put two or three specific, scheduled activities back in the week — by time and place, not by intention — regardless of whether you feel like it on the day.

How good is the evidence

Strong evidence

Behavioural activation is a well-established, independently effective component of CBT, and counters the withdrawal that maintains rumination.

Related techniques

• Worry triage — Sort each worry into one you can act on today and one you cannot. They need opposite treatment.
• Worry postponement — Capture worries as they arrive, and deal with them only in a fixed daily slot.
• Detached mindfulness — Notice a thought arrive, and take no action on it whatsoever — including not arguing with it.
• Decatastrophising — Realistic worst case, most likely case, and — the part people skip — how you would actually cope.