Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Shame and stigma
When you are choosing where to start, take the easy one rather than the important one. Direction matters more than size at the beginning, because these things gather speed whichever way they are pointing.
The loops that drag you down run in reverse as well. A week where two small things went right makes a third worth attempting, and the person you are in your own head shifts a little too. Keep the big difficult target for once the direction has turned. It will still be there, and you will have more behind you when you get to it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Race to do good deeds and wherever you are, God will bring you together (Quran 2:148). The instruction is about moving in a direction, not about arriving in one step.
وَلِكُلࣲّ وِجۡهَةٌ هُوَ مُوَلِّيهَاۖ فَٱسۡتَبِقُواْ ٱلۡخَيۡرَٰتِۚ أَيۡنَ مَا تَكُونُواْ يَأۡتِ بِكُمُ ٱللَّهُ جَمِيعًاۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيۡءࣲ قَدِيرࣱ
Each community has its own direction to which it turns: race to do good deeds and wherever you are, God will bring you together. God has power to do everything
Qur’an 2:148read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a randomised trial where 130 inpatients received either compassion focused or cognitive behavioural therapy, self compassion was examined as a within person mechanism of change, particularly for those with childhood trauma. Looking at change within a person over time is the right question for anything that builds on itself. The setting was eating disorders rather than ADHD and mechanism analyses are exploratory, so hold it lightly.
Kopland MCG, Vrabel K, Melsom L, Hoffart A, Johnson SU. (2023). Self-compassion in eating disorders and childhood trauma: A study of within-person effects in a randomized controlled trial.. Psychotherapy research : journal of the Society for Psychotherapy Research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Small wins make the next attempt more likely, so early gains are worth more than they look.
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
Sensing that you got something wrong socially, without knowing what, tends to turn into watching yourself constantly. That watching is usually what makes the next conversation go badly, not the original mistake.
Listen to how you explain your own good news. If every success gets put down to luck, timing or somebody not looking closely enough, while every failure gets put down to you, the books are not balanced.
Manuals rename things. Paediatric bipolar became disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, whole categories were reshuffled to line up with the international classification, and none of it changed who anybody was.