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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
Try separating the record from the verdict. The record might be missed deadlines, jobs that ended badly, friendships that faded. The verdict is 'so I am useless'. Only the second one is up for revision, and revising it does not ask you to pretend the first did not happen. Guilt in ADHD usually has a long paper trail, which is why a brisk challenge to your unrealistic thinking can land as an insult.
'do not despair of God's mercy. God forgives all sins' (Quran 39:53). The verse speaks to people with a real record behind them, not to the innocent.
الزمر
۞قُلۡ يَٰعِبَادِيَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَسۡرَفُواْ عَلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِهِمۡ لَا تَقۡنَطُواْ مِن رَّحۡمَةِ ٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَغۡفِرُ ٱلذُّنُوبَ جَمِيعًاۚ إِنَّهُۥ هُوَ ٱلۡغَفُورُ ٱلرَّحِيمُ
Say, ‘[God says], My servants who have harmed yourselves by your own excess, do not despair of God’s mercy. God forgives all sins: He is truly the Most Forgiving, the Most Merciful
Qur’an 39:53read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a trial with 124 adults with ADHD, twelve weeks of cognitive behavioural therapy, with or without medication, was measured on emotional symptoms and self-esteem as well as on the core symptoms. That in itself is a recognition that self worth is part of what needs treating here. It is one trial of one programme, so read it as encouraging rather than settled.
Pan MR, Huang F, Zhao MJ, Wang YF, Wang YF, Qian QJ. (2019). A comparison of efficacy between cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and CBT combined with medication in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).. Psychiatry research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A conclusion you drew as a child from real events can be updated by an adult without denying the events.
If the shame has hardened into not wanting to be here, that needs a person alongside you, not a technique.
Instead of sending a child out to sit and stew, send them to a side table for three very easy worksheets, then straight back to whatever everyone else is doing.
If cognitive behavioural therapy is the approach you keep being offered for ADHD, part of the reason is that it is easy to measure. It has good evidence behind it, and being the most studied is not the same as being the only thing that helps.
Do not walk into a hard event and improvise. Ten minutes beforehand, work out what is likely to happen, what you will do about it, and how you get out if you need to.