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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Self-compassion
Peace offered before any real effort is giving up with better vocabulary, and it never quite convinces the person saying it. Effort with no end point becomes a life spent optimising yourself, which is its own kind of misery. So push where pushing helps, give it a fair run over months rather than days, and then let the remainder be. Most people find there is less remainder than they feared and that it is more liveable than they expected.
Strive hard for God as is His due: He has chosen you and placed no hardship in your religion (Quran 22:78). Real effort and a limit on how hard it is meant to be arrive in the same sentence.
الحج
وَجَٰهِدُواْ فِي ٱللَّهِ حَقَّ جِهَادِهِۦۚ هُوَ ٱجۡتَبَىٰكُمۡ وَمَا جَعَلَ عَلَيۡكُمۡ فِي ٱلدِّينِ مِنۡ حَرَجࣲۚ مِّلَّةَ أَبِيكُمۡ إِبۡرَٰهِيمَۚ هُوَ سَمَّىٰكُمُ ٱلۡمُسۡلِمِينَ مِن قَبۡلُ وَفِي هَٰذَا لِيَكُونَ ٱلرَّسُولُ شَهِيدًا عَلَيۡكُمۡ وَتَكُونُواْ شُهَدَآءَ عَلَى ٱلنَّاسِۚ فَأَقِيمُواْ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَءَاتُواْ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ وَٱعۡتَصِمُواْ بِٱللَّهِ هُوَ مَوۡلَىٰكُمۡۖ فَنِعۡمَ ٱلۡمَوۡلَىٰ وَنِعۡمَ ٱلنَّصِيرُ
Strive hard for God as is His due: He has chosen you and placed no hardship in your religion, the faith of your forefather Abraham. God has called you Muslims––both in the past and in this [message]––so that the Messenger can bear witness about you and so that you can bear witness about other people. So keep up the prayer, give the prescribed alms, and seek refuge in God: He is your protector––an excellent protector and an excellent helper
Qur’an 22:78read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta analysis of 21 randomised controlled trials with 1,285 participants found compassion based interventions produced improvements across a range of outcomes compared with control conditions. That supports the acceptance half being something you can train rather than a matter of temperament. The trials are small in total and differ in what they measured, so expect modest gains rather than transformation.
Kirby JN, Tellegen CL, Steindl SR. (2017). A Meta-Analysis of Compassion-Based Interventions: Current State of Knowledge and Future Directions.. Behavior therapy doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Acceptance settles once you know you have genuinely tried, and effort stays bearable once it has a limit.
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.
Everyone has something about themselves they wish were different, and something they cannot do reliably however much they mean to. Yours has a name and a good deal of research behind it, which is not the same as being uniquely broken.
Nothing here does the job on its own. Medication if it suits you, a few practical systems, something for the low mood and shame that has built up, and the people you live with brought into it.