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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61 practices

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ADHD tends to surface at the points where life asks for more organising: a new school year with seven teachers, the first term at university, a first job, a promotion into managing other people.

The pattern is always the same. Something that was holding things together is removed, or the amount you have to run yourself goes up, and what was…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 2:286One line of research

Girls get diagnosed later, and a good deal of the reason is social. A boy who plays the fool gets laughed with, while a girl who does the same is corrected by her friends within a week, so she goes quiet and disappears from view.

Referral usually follows disruption rather than difficulty, so anything that keeps a child quiet also keeps her unassessed. The point it finally…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 50:16One line of research

They are too clever to have ADHD is one of the more expensive mistakes in this field. Being able to understand something and being able to start it, order it and finish it are different abilities.

A very capable person can sit with a task they fully understand and be unable to begin, and then be judged for it far more harshly precisely because…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 16:78One line of research

Things often seem to get worse in the weeks after a diagnosis. Usually nothing has got worse. You are simply seeing what was always there, and now you have a name to hang it on.

You will start joining things up: the lost keys, the half finished projects, the reason that job ended. It can feel like the diagnosis broke…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually is

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

Breaking the worry loop

Remembering to do it

What you are actually defending

Facing it a step at a time

Making it stick

When you use something to cope

Tolerate distress

Choosing your response

Growing empathy

When everything feels flat

When anger turns to harm

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Self-compassion

Shame

Anger, alcohol and the body

Emotions as signals

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Use your strengths

Practising under provocation

Obsessions and compulsions

Being seen and judged

Touch and bodywork

Letting it out safely

Feeling from the inside

Help someone grieving

Question the thought

Rest and pacing

Living with uncertainty

ADHD skills

Qur’an 51:21

One 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

Making a child repeat a year rarely fixes what went wrong. The same lessons without different support tend to produce the same result, plus the sting of being the oldest in the room.

If a year has gone badly, the useful questions are what support was missing and whether something else, such as an unrecognised learning difficulty,…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 5:48One 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

If work keeps going wrong in the same way, ask for the expectations in writing before the next thing goes wrong. What is obvious to a manager is often not obvious to you, and a written version can be checked.

It might be a list of what counts as done, agreed deadlines, or the safety rules that are not negotiable. Adjustments are worth asking for too:…

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

A forgotten item in a bag is not a plan. Rules that treat the presence of something as proof of intent fall hardest on people who cannot reliably remember what is in their pockets.

If you are arguing a case like this at a school or a workplace, say plainly that remembering to do something later is one of the areas ADHD affects…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 20:115One line of research

Relationships take a lot of the strain here, and the usual shape is one person quietly carrying all the planning while the other feels constantly told off. Both halves are worth naming out loud before resentment sets hard.

The practical work is splitting the load by what each of you is actually good at rather than down the middle, and putting the shared admin somewhere…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 11:118One 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

If sport or a club is the reason a struggling student still turns up, do not let it be the first thing taken away when grades slip. Removing it usually removes what was holding the rest together.

Eligibility rules that cut a young person from the team below a certain average tend to take out the structure, the daily exercise, the one place…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 5:48One line of research

When homework takes three hours instead of one, the missing two hours come out of friends, rest and family. That loss is part of the problem, not a side issue.

Ask the school for a time limit rather than a task limit: work for the length of time the work should reasonably take, then stop and have a parent…

Twenty minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 2:286One 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

Far more people have ADHD than are ever assessed for it. If you have wondered about yourself for years, the odds that an assessment would be worth your time are better than you think.

The usual fear is being told you are making it up, or wasting a professional's morning. In practice adults are missed far more often than they are…

LongerWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 16:43One line of research