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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Shame and stigma
A reframe offered too early does not sound hopeful, it sounds like you were not listening. Name the cost in specifics, the job that went, the friendships worn thin, the years of being told off, and let that sit for a while. The conversation about strengths goes far better afterwards, and it is often the person themselves who opens it.
Speak to him gently so that he may take heed (Quran 20:44). Gentleness comes first there and the message follows behind it.
طه
فَقُولَا لَهُۥ قَوۡلࣰ ا لَّيِّنࣰ ا لَّعَلَّهُۥ يَتَذَكَّرُ أَوۡ يَخۡشَىٰ
Speak to him gently so that he may take heed, or show respect.’
Qur’an 20:44read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of nineteen studies with 4,723 participants found that fear of compassion, including fear of receiving it from others, goes with depression, anxiety, distress and lower wellbeing. Warmth is not automatically easy to accept, especially for somebody used to being judged. These are associations between questionnaire measures rather than proof of cause, though they fit what happens when kindness arrives too early.
Kirby JN, Day J, Sagar V. (2019). The 'Flow' of compassion: A meta-analysis of the fears of compassion scales and psychological functioning.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
People can only take in a good account of themselves once they trust that you have seen the hard part.
When a young person with ADHD goes through a first breakup or loses a friendship group, stay closer than usual. Do not wait for the next arranged contact.
The rawness around rejection usually has a history. Ask an adult where it started and you tend to land on a childhood of being asked why they could not manage what everyone else managed.
The idea that attention problems are a moral failing is older than the diagnosis itself. An early medical name for this put it down to defective moral control, so if you grew up hearing that you simply were not trying, you were hearing an echo of that.