Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
The change mostly happens between the sessions rather than in them. Catching a thought where it actually turns up, at the kitchen table or in the car park, is what makes a new one stick.
Make it small enough to survive a bad week. One thought written down as it came, and one line underneath saying what else might be true. If you have not managed it by the next session, say so plainly rather than covering for yourself. For most people with ADHD the missing piece is a reminder or a person expecting it, not willingness.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'seek help through steadfastness and prayer, for God is with the steadfast' (Quran 2:153). The steadfastness here is the ordinary unwitnessed kind, the small thing done again on a Tuesday.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ ٱسۡتَعِينُواْ بِٱلصَّبۡرِ وَٱلصَّلَوٰةِۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ مَعَ ٱلصَّٰبِرِينَ
You who believe, seek help through steadfastness and prayer, for God is with the steadfast
Qur’an 2:153read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A health technology assessment of therapeutic writing found that unfacilitated writing, done by a person on their own, is the best researched form, with the guided versions much less studied. So writing things down between sessions has more behind it than most of the alternatives. That is not the same as saying it works for everyone.
Nyssen OP, Taylor SJ, Wong G, Wong G, Steed E, Bourke L, Lord J, Ross CA, Hayman S, Field V, Higgins A, Greenhalgh T, Meads C. (2016). Does therapeutic writing help people with long-term conditions? Systematic review, realist synthesis and economic considerations.. Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A new response has to be practised in the situation that sets off the old one, or it stays theory.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Self-restraint runs on a supply that stress uses up. In a week when everything is late and nothing has been slept on, you will react to things you would normally let go.
A small child does not have a feeling, they are the feeling, entirely, until it passes. Growing up is largely a gap opening between feeling something and doing something about it.
Do not walk into a hard event and improvise. Ten minutes beforehand, work out what is likely to happen, what you will do about it, and how you get out if you need to.