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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Self-compassion
It is easy to end up managing your ADHD as a full time occupation and calling that recovery. A better test of a week is whether it held anything you actually wanted: seeing people, making something, a walk somewhere you like, a bit of the work that interests you. Protect that, and keep the systems only so far as they protect it too.
Grant us good things in this world and in the life to come (Quran 7:156). Good things here are asked for directly, so wanting an interesting life is not a distraction from anything.
الأعراف
۞وَٱكۡتُبۡ لَنَا فِي هَٰذِهِ ٱلدُّنۡيَا حَسَنَةࣰ وَفِي ٱلۡأٓخِرَةِ إِنَّا هُدۡنَآ إِلَيۡكَۚ قَالَ عَذَابِيٓ أُصِيبُ بِهِۦ مَنۡ أَشَآءُۖ وَرَحۡمَتِي وَسِعَتۡ كُلَّ شَيۡءࣲۚ فَسَأَكۡتُبُهَا لِلَّذِينَ يَتَّقُونَ وَيُؤۡتُونَ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ وَٱلَّذِينَ هُم بِـَٔايَٰتِنَا يُؤۡمِنُونَ
Grant us good things in this world and in the life to come. We turn to You.’ God said, ‘I bring My punishment on whoever I will, but My mercy encompasses all things. ‘I shall ordain My mercy for those who are conscious of God and pay the prescribed alms; who believe in Our Revelations
Qur’an 7:156read 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 found they improve wellbeing and reduce depressive symptoms, with effect sizes of around r = .29 to .31. Those are modest effects, from simple exercises aimed at what is going well rather than at repairing what is wrong. It is reasonable support for spending some of your effort on building the life instead of all of it on managing the difficulty.
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.
Effort holds up when it is aimed at something you want and drains away when it is only aimed at not failing.
The goal was never to enjoy the dull task. It is to arrive at something more like: I hate this and I can still do it well enough.
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.
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.