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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
The gain shows up in the margin more than in the symptoms. Rested, you have a bit of room before you snap. Short of sleep, you arrive at the evening already spent and everything at home costs more than it should. Perfectionism is the trap. Seven hours most nights and a walk most days beats a strict regime you keep abandoning by Wednesday.
'He gave you sleep as a reassurance from Him' (Quran 8:11). Sleep is described as a mercy rather than as time lost from getting things done.
الأنفال
إِذۡ يُغَشِّيكُمُ ٱلنُّعَاسَ أَمَنَةࣰ مِّنۡهُ وَيُنَزِّلُ عَلَيۡكُم مِّنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءࣰ لِّيُطَهِّرَكُم بِهِۦ وَيُذۡهِبَ عَنكُمۡ رِجۡزَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ وَلِيَرۡبِطَ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِكُمۡ وَيُثَبِّتَ بِهِ ٱلۡأَقۡدَامَ
Remember when He gave you sleep as a reassurance from Him, and sent down water from the sky to cleanse you, to remove Satan’s pollution from you, to make your hearts strong and your feet firm
Qur’an 8:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Young adults, with and without ADHD, read emotional facial expressions less accurately after five days of restricted sleep. That is a short line from tiredness to misreading the person in front of you, which is one way a bad night becomes an argument. It is a small experimental study rather than proof about your marriage, though the mechanism is easy enough to notice in yourself.
Cohen A, Asraf K, Saveliev I, Dan O, Haimov I. (2021). The effects of sleep deprivation on the processing of emotional facial expressions in young adults with and without ADHD.. Scientific reports doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A tired body gives you less room before you react, whatever skills you have learned.
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.
The unkind thoughts tend to arrive in a handful of familiar shapes. One friend is busy so nobody wants you. One bad mark so you are going to fail everything. Someone did not say hello so they must dislike you.
When you genuinely cannot know what someone thought of you, the harsh guess is no more accurate than the kind one. Since you are inventing either way, invent the version that lets you carry on with your day.