Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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148 practices

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One sign that the heat has come off a little: you can hold I am furious with you and you probably did not mean it in the same moment, without dropping either one.

In the middle of an argument that second thought is simply not available, and its absence is not a failure of character. It comes back as the arousal…

Twenty minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 42:37One line of research

Some people are done with an argument in ten minutes. If the person you live with needs three hours, your quick recovery can look to them like proof that you never cared.

Say the mismatch out loud when things are calm, so that it is understood before the next row rather than argued about during it. If you are the fast…

Twenty minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 7:199One line of research

Saying I need a break only works if you have agreed beforehand what a break means. How long it lasts, what the other person does meanwhile, and when the two of you come back to it.

Settle it on a calm evening. Twenty minutes, no following, no messages in between, and we sit back down at nine. Then keep the return time exactly,…

Twenty minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 8:46One line of research

Sitting in a room with other people who lose their keys, cry at nothing and hate themselves for both does something no explanation can. You find out you were never the only one.

Groups also do encouragement better than a therapist can. When someone with the same trouble asks whether you managed the homework, it does not land…

LongerFeelings and focusCBTQur’an 9:40One line of research

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

When everything feels flat

Use your strengths

Shame

The fear underneath anger

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Obsessions and compulsions

Your nervous system

Choosing your response

If someone close to you has become the person who chases you, that arrangement is wearing you both down, even on the days it works. It is worth naming out loud and changing on purpose.

Once a partner or a manager supplies all the pressure, nothing inside you ever needs to. They end up tired and resentful, you end up handled like a…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 13:11One line of research

Before treating something as your failure to get going, check whether you ever agreed it was yours. A job that bothers one person and genuinely does not bother the other has not been agreed by anybody.

That turns a stuck task back into a conversation, which is where it belongs. Say plainly that the unpainted wall does not trouble you, ask what it…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 5:48One line of research

When someone says they feel restless inside, ask what the restlessness wants. Restless to move, or restless to do one particular thing until it feels right?

The two feel similar from the inside and point in different directions. With ADHD it is usually undirected: the legs go, the chair is wrong, you need…

A minuteGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 91:8One line of research

If someone was adopted, or simply does not know their family history, say early and plainly that this is not a problem. It helps to have and it is not needed.

Otherwise the question lands as one more reminder of what is missing, and some people will spend the rest of the appointment feeling they brought the…

A minuteGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 4:28One line of research

When someone says their heart races on their medication, ask whether it ever did before they started. It is the cheapest question you have and it usually sorts the answer out.

Go looking for the old settings: waiting to be called on in class, standing outside a room before a difficult conversation, three in the morning with…

A minuteGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 2:32One line of research

Hypervigilance after trauma and ADHD scanning look much alike from outside. Often the honest answer is that both are present, and the real question is how much of each.

Watching that comes from threat is aimed at something and tends to switch on in particular situations. ADHD distraction is not fussy about where it…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 49:6One line of research

Not every bout of eating too much belongs to an eating disorder. Ask whether how the body looks is part of it, because that is where the two paths separate.

When bingeing comes out of ADHD it is often boredom, or the food simply being there with nothing stepping in to stop it, and the person is not…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 95:4One line of research

When you need a date, hand people events rather than months. Was that before or after the holiday? Same year as the move?

Asking whether something happened between October and January invites a guess. Asking whether it was before or after a wedding, a house move or a…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 2:286One line of research

Ask for a number first, then go hunting for exceptions. How is today on a scale of one to ten, and when was it last higher than that?

An assessment can turn into an hour of everything that is wrong, which leaves a person flatter than when they arrived. Exception questions do the…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 94:5One line of research

Find out what they have tried before that did not work. It saves everybody from a plan that failed this person two years ago.

Most people arriving for an assessment have been trying things for years: apps, alarms, lists, an early night, a course somebody recommended.…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 42:38One line of research

The relative who was shut in a cupboard, tied to a chair or expelled was being managed for the same thing you are assessing now. There was simply no name for it then and no help attached to it.

Told carefully, this changes the story a family tells about itself. Not a line of difficult people, but a trait that has been present for generations…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 24:61One line of research

Before you decide a strategy has failed, check whether the medication underneath it is doing its job. If someone is sitting in front of you still struggling, the honest first answer is usually that it is not, quite.

Ask about the shape of the day rather than the dose alone. When does it come on, when does it wear off, which hours are the hard ones, is there any…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 20:26One line of research

Before handing anyone a new system, make sure they can say back why it should work better than what they are doing now. A strategy with no reason attached gets dropped the first time it is inconvenient.

Ask them to explain it to you in their own words and listen for whose reason it is. If the logic is only yours, it will hold for about a week. It is…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 18:66One line of research

Strategies for ADHD are visible. A timer on the table, a list on the wall, an alarm going off in a meeting. If someone has not yet made peace with having ADHD, each of those is an announcement, and it will quietly get dropped.

So ask, before handing over another tool: how do you feel about the diagnosis itself? Sometimes the honest answer is that they still half hope it was…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 12:53One line of research

Ask what they think this will cost them in effort, then say what you think. People rarely give up because a strategy failed. They give up because it turned out to be harder than anyone had told them.

Be specific about the first fortnight, since that is when it is worst and the payoff has not arrived yet. Someone who expected a small effort and met…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 18:69One line of research

When something did not get done, find out which half broke. Did they not know what to do or when? Or was the plan fine, and the moment for doing it came and went?

Ask for the last time it happened, hour by hour, up to the point where it did not happen. A planning failure needs somewhere reliable to catch tasks…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 91:8One line of research