Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
There is a difference between being calm because your partner manages you and being able to steady yourself. The first works right up until the person is not there.
Plenty of adults with ADHD have got by on outside regulation without ever noticing it: a spouse who makes the difficult phone calls, a deadline that finally supplies the adrenaline, a crisis that organises the week. It functions, it costs the people around you, and it collapses when they are unavailable. Building even a small amount of the internal version is worth the awkwardness of the changeover.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'your steadfastness comes only from God' (Quran 16:127). Steadiness is sourced from beyond your circumstances, which is a different thing from depending on whoever is nearest.
وَٱصۡبِرۡ وَمَا صَبۡرُكَ إِلَّا بِٱللَّهِۚ وَلَا تَحۡزَنۡ عَلَيۡهِمۡ وَلَا تَكُ فِي ضَيۡقࣲ مِّمَّا يَمۡكُرُونَ
So [Prophet] be steadfast: your steadfastness comes only from God. Do not grieve over them; do not be distressed by their scheming
Qur’an 16:127read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A research review argued that ADHD is better understood by treating emotion and its regulation as two interacting components, instead of reading everything off executive difficulties. That makes the regulating part worth naming as a target in its own right. It is a proposal about how to understand the condition rather than a trial of any way of training it.
Martel MM. (2009). Research review: a new perspective on attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: emotion dysregulation and trait models.. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Steadiness that depends on somebody else being present is only ever as reliable as their presence.
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
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.
Worry done on your own goes round in circles. Said out loud to one other person, it usually turns into a problem with edges, and sometimes into a next step.
Try turning 'I will not mess this up today' into 'today I am going to do this well'. You do not have to believe it yet. Said the other way round, it keeps the disaster in front of you all morning.