Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
Nobody tolerates something unpleasant for no reason. Before starting anything difficult, get clear about what you want on the other side of it, in your own words.
Something like: I want to sit an exam without being sick, so I am willing to practise feeling uncomfortable. The sentence has to be yours. A goal supplied by a parent or a clinician will not hold when the hard part arrives. If you cannot find the wanting anywhere, that is worth talking about before you start, rather than pushing on and calling it resistance later.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Seek help with steadfastness and prayer' (Quran 2:45). The verse admits in the same breath that this is hard, which is an honest place to start from.
وَٱسۡتَعِينُواْ بِٱلصَّبۡرِ وَٱلصَّلَوٰةِۚ وَإِنَّهَا لَكَبِيرَةٌ إِلَّا عَلَى ٱلۡخَٰشِعِينَ
Seek help with steadfastness and prayer- though this is hard indeed for anyone but the humble
Qur’an 2:45read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Effortful control, meaning the capacity to steer your own behaviour, emotion and attention, has been studied as a dimension running across internalising and externalising conditions including ADHD. If steering is the stretched capacity, giving it a clear destination is a sensible response. That is an argument from the shape of the difficulty rather than a trial of goal setting.
Santens E, Claes L, Dierckx E, Dom G. (2020). Effortful Control - A Transdiagnostic Dimension Underlying Internalizing and Externalizing Psychopathology.. Neuropsychobiology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Difficult work only makes sense when there is something you actually want waiting at the end of it.
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
The reason your partner follows you out of the room is usually not control. It is the fear that if you leave now, this will never be finished.
A wave across the road, a joke with the man in the shop, asking someone how they are and meaning it. These unplanned seconds count for more than they look like they should.
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.