Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
Setting out to get rid of worry altogether sets you up to fail twice, first at the worry and then at the failing. A kinder aim is to change how you sit with it.
Anxiety and ADHD keep close company, and for most people some background hum does not go away. What can change is what happens next: whether you check the door eleven times, whether you cancel, whether you spend the evening furious with yourself for being anxious at all. That second layer, the anxiety about being anxious, is often the more removable one.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace' (Quran 13:28). Peace is offered as something a heart can find while everything else is still going on.
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review with meta-analysis and meta-regression of mindfulness based programmes in ADHD found promising effects beyond the core symptoms, including on associated conditions and on functioning. Approaches of that kind work by changing your relationship to what is happening rather than by removing it. Promising is a fair word for that evidence, and not a strong one.
Oliva F, Malandrone F, di Girolamo G, Mirabella S, Colombi N, Carletto S, Ostacoli L. (2021). The efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder beyond core symptoms: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression.. Journal of affective disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Aiming at zero turns every ordinary flicker of worry into evidence that you are failing.
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.
Some people are done with an argument in ten minutes. If the person you live with needs three hours, your quick recovery can look to them like proof that you never cared.
Being far apart is not the same as being out of touch. What usually stops contact is the question of who starts it, not the miles.