Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
Often the feeling fits the situation perfectly and the size of it does not. You were right to be annoyed. The ten out of ten is the part that caused the trouble.
This is a useful thing to say to yourself afterwards, because it stops you throwing out your own read of what happened. Your sense that it was unfair may be entirely sound. What needs looking at is the volume and what it did to the people in the room. Separating the two makes the conversation afterwards much less defensive, whether it is with a partner or only in your own head.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'when harm touches him, he falls into despair' (Quran 17:83). The verse notices how far a reaction can travel past the thing that caused it.
وَإِذَآ أَنۡعَمۡنَا عَلَى ٱلۡإِنسَٰنِ أَعۡرَضَ وَنَـَٔا بِجَانِبِهِۦ وَإِذَا مَسَّهُ ٱلشَّرُّ كَانَ يَـُٔوسࣰ ا
When We favour man he turns arrogantly to one side, but when harm touches him, he falls into despair
Qur’an 17:83read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis found that young people with ADHD have difficulties across several parts of emotional life, including recognising emotions, how strongly they react and how they regulate, rather than in the executive areas alone. Intensity of reaction turns up there as a domain of its own. It describes where the difficulty sits and offers no rule for judging any particular argument.
Graziano PA, Garcia A. (2016). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and children's emotion dysregulation: A meta-analysis.. Clinical psychology review doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
You can accept a correction about the size of a reaction without having to agree that you were wrong about the situation.
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
Picture spilling coffee down your shirt on the way in. One version: the day is ruined and everyone will see. Another: this is going to be a good story by eleven. Same coffee, two different days.
One sign that the heat has come off a little: you can hold I am furious with you and you probably did not mean it in the same moment, without dropping either one.
A reward that is far off has almost no weight in ADHD. Tying the task to something you actually care about gives you a reason that does not depend on the payoff arriving soon.