Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
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.
It helps to be honest about the trade. Saying no to the party buys you a calm evening and charges you a slightly smaller world. Once or twice that is fine. As a policy it gets expensive. When you turn something down, try naming both halves, what you gain tonight and what it costs by the month, so at least the decision is made with the full price in view.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'If Satan should prompt you to do something, seek refuge with God' (Quran 7:200). Not every prompt that arrives inside you is on your side, including the one that says stay home.
وَإِمَّا يَنزَغَنَّكَ مِنَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ نَزۡغࣱ فَٱسۡتَعِذۡ بِٱللَّهِۚ إِنَّهُۥ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ
If Satan should prompt you to do something, seek refuge with God- He is all hearing, all knowing
Qur’an 7:200read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A three level meta-analysis of 75 studies found that sensitivity to rejection sits alongside depression, anxiety and loneliness, at moderate strength. Moderate is worth holding on to. It means a real pattern rather than a life sentence, and these are things travelling together rather than one shown to cause the other.
Gao S, Assink M, Cipriani A, Lin K. (2017). Associations between rejection sensitivity and mental health outcomes: A meta-analytic review.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Relief comes immediately and the cost comes slowly, so avoidance always looks like the better deal in the moment.
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
If rating a feeling out of ten means nothing to you, use something that does. Colour in bubbles, point at a picture, hold your hands apart to show how big it is today.
Connection does not have to be human. A dog will not judge how your week went, and it will get you out of the door twice a day whether you feel like it or not.
Fear tends to make its case as caution. Try not to let it quietly shrink what you are willing to attempt, because the shrinking rarely stops on its own.