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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Use your strengths
It is a quieter thing than depression and it does not look like much from outside. Sleep is fine, you are still working, but the zest has gone out of everything and nothing tastes of anything. Before assuming a mood problem, it is worth asking a simple question: what were you making the last time you felt like yourself, and when did it stop. Starting something small is a cheap experiment, and it answers the question fairly quickly.
Disperse in the land and seek out God's bounty (Quran 62:10). Going out and doing something is presented as the ordinary next move, which is often the right prescription for a flat spell.
الجمعة
فَإِذَا قُضِيَتِ ٱلصَّلَوٰةُ فَٱنتَشِرُواْ فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَٱبۡتَغُواْ مِن فَضۡلِ ٱللَّهِ وَٱذۡكُرُواْ ٱللَّهَ كَثِيرࣰ ا لَّعَلَّكُمۡ تُفۡلِحُونَ
then when the prayer has ended, disperse in the land and seek out God’s bounty. Remember God often so that you may prosper
Qur’an 62:10read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of 51 positive psychology interventions with 4,266 people found they enhanced wellbeing and reduced depressive symptoms, with effects that were reliable and moderate rather than dramatic. That supports the general shape of this idea, that deliberately adding good things to a life shifts mood and not only the absence of bad ones. Those were structured exercises rather than creative projects, and none of this was tested in ADHD, so the specific hypothesis here remains a hypothesis.
Sin NL, Lyubomirsky S. (2009). Enhancing well-being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: a practice-friendly meta-analysis.. Journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Engagement itself lifts mood, so its absence can look a lot like low mood.
If the flatness comes with hopelessness, or has held for weeks whatever you do, that belongs with a doctor rather than with a new project.
A calm, undemanding life is supposed to be the goal, and for a lot of people with ADHD it is quietly unbearable. Comfort does not hold you. Something with a bit of pull to it does.
For a lot of people with ADHD, making things is not a hobby but closer to an appetite. The itch to start something is always there, and when nothing is being made it does not go quietly.
One psychiatrist took up a dance class in lockdown, three times a week, at something he was frankly not good at. Being bad at it was the reason it kept working.