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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Self-compassion
Both halves are doing work. Moving towards the thing you dislike, rather than away from it, is what loosens the avoidance. And well enough is what keeps perfectionism from starting the cycle over, because a job that has to be done beautifully is a job you will put off. Set the bar at finished and adequate, then leave it there. You are building the tolerance, not the masterpiece.
So truly where there is hardship there is also ease, truly where there is hardship there is also ease (Quran 94:5 and 94:6). The relief is placed inside the hard thing rather than only after it, and it is said twice for someone who needs to hear it again.
الشرح
فَإِنَّ مَعَ ٱلۡعُسۡرِ يُسۡرًا
So truly where there is hardship there is also ease
Qur’an 94:5read it in the library
الشرح
إِنَّ مَعَ ٱلۡعُسۡرِ يُسۡرࣰ ا
truly where there is hardship there is also ease
Qur’an 94:6read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A randomised trial with 52 female college students compared a brief three week self compassion group against an active time management control, looking at resilience and wellbeing. It is a small trial in a narrow group, so the finding should not be carried far. What it does suggest is that a kinder stance towards yourself can be practised deliberately and holds up against a sensible comparison.
Smeets E, Neff K, Alberts H, Peters M. (2014). Meeting suffering with kindness: effects of a brief self-compassion intervention for female college students.. Journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Doing something you dislike and finding that you survive it teaches you more than any effort to feel differently about it.
One man with ADHD described the goal as no longer suffering from it, only having it. The diagnosis had not changed. What it cost him had.
Every list, timer and rule exists to buy you a life worth having. If the systems have quietly become the point, something has turned the wrong way round.
Most children with ADHD grow into adults with ADHD. Some of it settles as the brain finishes developing into your late twenties, and adult life gives you more say over how your days are arranged, but the underlying difficulty tends to stay.