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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
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 early on as disinterest. If you are the one doing the withdrawing, you do not have to overhaul your social life this month. Choosing one person to answer properly this week is a real start.
'Do not grieve over them; do not be distressed by their scheming' (Quran 16:127). Being told this suggests the hurt from other people was real, and that it does not have to be the place you live.
النحل
وَٱصۡبِرۡ وَمَا صَبۡرُكَ إِلَّا بِٱللَّهِۚ وَلَا تَحۡزَنۡ عَلَيۡهِمۡ وَلَا تَكُ فِي ضَيۡقࣲ مِّمَّا يَمۡكُرُونَ
So [Prophet] be steadfast: your steadfastness comes only from God. Do not grieve over them; do not be distressed by their scheming
Qur’an 16:127read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of young people with ADHD found difficulties across several parts of emotional life, including recognising emotions, how strongly they react and how they regulate, not only the executive side. That helps explain why social life so often goes wrong early. It describes the pattern rather than proving what causes the withdrawal that follows.
Graziano PA, Garcia A. (2016). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and children's emotion dysregulation: A meta-analysis.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Withdrawal after enough rejections is protective rather than antisocial, and protection can be relaxed slowly.
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.
Halfway up the argument, ask yourself one question. What do I want here, and who am I trying to be. Winning the sentence is rarely worth what it costs by bedtime.
Certain situations take you apart every single time. The reunion, that one relative, the friend who makes remarks. You are allowed to simply not go.