Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
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 as a telling off, and it is much harder to quietly let slide. If a group is not available near you, one other person with ADHD who checks in on you carries a fair bit of the same weight.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Do not worry, God is with us' (Quran 9:40). It was said by one person to another while the two of them were hiding together, which is the shape company takes in a hard time.
إِلَّا تَنصُرُوهُ فَقَدۡ نَصَرَهُ ٱللَّهُ إِذۡ أَخۡرَجَهُ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ ثَانِيَ ٱثۡنَيۡنِ إِذۡ هُمَا فِي ٱلۡغَارِ إِذۡ يَقُولُ لِصَٰحِبِهِۦ لَا تَحۡزَنۡ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ مَعَنَاۖ فَأَنزَلَ ٱللَّهُ سَكِينَتَهُۥ عَلَيۡهِ وَأَيَّدَهُۥ بِجُنُودࣲ لَّمۡ تَرَوۡهَا وَجَعَلَ كَلِمَةَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ ٱلسُّفۡلَىٰۗ وَكَلِمَةُ ٱللَّهِ هِيَ ٱلۡعُلۡيَاۗ وَٱللَّهُ عَزِيزٌ حَكِيمٌ
Even if you do not help the Prophet, God helped him when the disbelievers drove him out: when the two of them were in the cave, he [Muhammad] said to his companion, ‘Do not worry, God is with us,’ and God sent His calm down to him, aided him with forces invisible to you, and brought down the disbelievers’ plan. God’s plan is higher: God is almighty and wise
Qur’an 9:40read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review using both numbers and interviews concluded that trouble regulating emotion is common in ADHD right across the lifespan, and is a major part of the impairment people live with. That is the evidence sitting under the relief of the shared room. The thing you took personally is a documented feature of the condition.
Shaw P, Stringaris A, Nigg J, Leibenluft E. (2014). Emotion dysregulation in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.. The American journal of psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Difficulties you took as private moral failings stop looking that way as soon as you meet them in someone else.
When not to
A group can be the wrong room if hearing other people's struggles currently pulls you under, and starting one to one is a reasonable choice.
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
Put something small at stake and you turn up more. Groups that charge a token amount get better attendance than free ones, and the same trick works on yourself.
Pulling back from things is easier. That is not the same as safer. The cost of a smaller life arrives later and quietly, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed.
Fast, strong emotion is part of ADHD rather than a separate fault of character. It was in the original description, dropped for decades, and is being written back in.