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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264 practices

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Roughly, the order runs like this. Stimulant medication does the most, the non stimulants help but come second, and after that exercise, omega oils, accommodations and therapy are the ones worth your time.

Decent sleep, ordinary good food and keeping screens within reason sit underneath all of it as support rather than treatment, and a sleep study is…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 16:69One line of research

A ramp does nothing for someone's legs, and it gets them into the building. Timers, visible clocks, a shorter task list and a calendar somebody else keeps do the same job here.

Accommodations are not treatment and they are not pretending to be. What they do is take the parts of the work that live inside a person's head,…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationADHD skillsQur’an 4:28One line of research

Mindfulness for adult ADHD is promising and thinly researched at the same time. If it helps you, that is worth having. It is simply not yet in the same bracket as medication or practical therapy.

There are only a handful of studies, mostly small, and few of them set mindfulness against another active treatment rather than against not much.…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationCBTQur’an 17:36One line of research

A great many people are diagnosed and then left with a starting dose nobody ever revisited, no reading, no group, nothing else at all. If things have stalled, the first thing to check is whether the treatment was ever actually finished.

Optimising is unglamorous and often the quickest thing available. Was the dose ever adjusted upwards, and on what basis. Does the cover reach the…

Twenty minutes

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

Exercise, food and other supports

Shame

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Remembering to do it

When everything feels flat

Practising under provocation

Emotions as signals

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Equanimity and perspective

Shame and stigma

Being seen and judged

Use your strengths

Breathing

Choosing your response

Anger, alcohol and the body

Obsessions and compulsions

Structure and routine

Breaking the worry loop

When anger turns to harm

Making it stick

Feeling from the inside

Facing it a step at a time

Letting it out safely

What you are actually defending

Rest and pacing

Safety and grounding

Shared spiritual life

Posture and how you carry yourself

Treatment and medication

Question the thought

Listen to the body

Care for yourself in loss

Living with uncertainty

Treatment and medication

Medical and treatment

Qur’an 65:2

One line of research

If the prescriber, coach or therapist is not delivering much, say so and ask for someone else. Working around poor care quietly is the thing that convinces a couple this is simply as good as it gets.

A dose never revisited, or a therapist who has never worked with ADHD, sets a low ceiling. The trouble is that the ceiling gets read as the person:…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 12:87One line of research

Sleep, food and movement will not cure anything, but they lengthen the fuse. Bad moments still arrive, and you handle them differently when your body is not already running on empty.

This matters more here than it sounds, because ADHD tends to wreck exactly these three and then the wreckage feeds back into the flare ups. Late…

Twenty minutesTreatment and medicationMedical and treatmentQur’an 4:28One line of research

When something feels unbearable to risk, follow it downwards. If that did happen, what would it mean, and what would happen after that?

Keep asking gently, and stop when you reach something that is a statement about the person rather than about the situation, such as it would prove I…

Twenty minutesLiving with uncertaintyCBTQur’an 18:78One line of research

One psychiatrist took up a dance class in lockdown, three times a week, at something he was frankly not good at. Being bad at it was the reason it kept working.

A repetitive session on a machine asks very little of you once your body knows it. Something with steps to follow, in time with other people, keeps…

Twenty minutesUse your strengthsADHD skillsQur’an 29:69One line of research

Some of the low, grey stretches are not depression. They are what happens when there has been nothing on the go for a while, and the colour comes back when a project starts.

It is a quieter thing than depression and it does not look like much from outside. Sleep is fine, you are still working, but the zest has gone out of…

Twenty minutesUse your strengthsADHD skillsQur’an 62:10One line of research

Build your work around what your mind does well, novelty, hyperfocus, big-picture, not only around your gaps.

You will go further leaning on your strengths than endlessly sanding down your weaknesses.

Twenty minutesUse your strengthsADHD skillsQur’an 6:135One line of research

If you have not been assessed because of money, waiting lists or simply getting to appointments, that is a barrier and not a lack of seriousness on your part.

The loop is unkind: the difficulties themselves make earning and organising harder, and that makes assessment and treatment harder to reach. Before…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 6:152One line of research

Plenty of adults with ADHD grew up being called lazy, difficult or naughty, and some were punished in ways nobody would allow now. That history usually needs saying out loud, because it left a belief behind.

The belief tends to sound like: there is something wrong with me and people will find out. It shows up as bracing for criticism, or hearing an…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 17:70One line of research

ADHD is not only about focus. Physical health tends to drift down the list, and appointments, sleep, food and movement are exactly the sort of thing this condition makes hard to keep up with.

Pick one health task you have been putting off and make it small and dated: book the check-up, refill the prescription, put a walk in the diary with…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 95:4One line of research

Work is one of the places ADHD does the most damage, and it is usually a question of fit rather than ability. Choose the job that suits how you actually run, not the one that would suit an improved version of you.

Variety, movement, visible deadlines and quick feedback tend to work. Long stretches of quiet paperwork with a deadline months away tend not to. If…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 92:4One line of research

Write out your real work history, every job, with why each one ended. In conversation people skip the short ones and the sackings, and that is precisely where the pattern lives.

Set it down as a list with dates rather than as a story. Then look for what repeats: bored after eight months, fell out with a manager, missed too…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 51:21One line of research

Plenty of people with ADHD do far better in hands-on work than in another four years of sitting in a classroom. Wanting a trade is a reasonable read of your own mind, not giving up.

Work with something finished at the end of the day and feedback as you go tends to fit better than long abstract study whose payoff arrives years…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 30:22One line of research

Ask yourself two questions: how did I actually do, and what do I think I could have done. The gap between those two answers is real, and it is usually where the grief sits.

Most people can name that gap within seconds, which tells you they have been carrying it a long time without saying it. Writing both answers down…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 6:165One line of research

Retirement takes away the timetable, the colleagues and often the person who kept the diary, and for someone with ADHD that can be the point where everything unravels.

It often gets read as depression or as an early sign of memory trouble, when what has actually happened is that a lifetime of borrowed structure…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 70:19One line of research

The first year away at university takes away nearly every bit of structure at once and asks a young person to build their own. It is one of the commonest points at which ADHD finally shows itself.

Nobody wakes you, nobody notices you missed a lecture, and the work has no shape until the week it is due. The things that help are dull and…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 4:28One line of research

Anger and grief often arrive with a late diagnosis, especially once treatment starts working and you see what you could have been doing all along. That reaction is not ingratitude. It needs room.

The grief is for a life that did not happen: the course you left, the marriage that wore out, the years of being told you were not trying. Left…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 70:20One line of research