Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
The big promise is usually made in a rush of love rather than after a calculation. It is meant sincerely, which is exactly why it keeps happening, and why the disappointment keeps landing.
The gap here is between feeling something and announcing it. Try a rule: nothing involving money, dates or other people gets said out loud on the day you think of it. Sleep on it, check whether it can actually happen, then say it. You will make fewer promises, and the ones you make will be worth something, which over a few years is the difference between being exciting and being believed.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'inspired it to know its own rebellion and piety' (Quran 91:8). The soul is credited with being able to notice its own tilt, which is what catching a promise before it leaves your mouth asks of you.
فَأَلۡهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقۡوَىٰهَا
and inspired it [to know] its own rebellion and piety
Qur’an 91:8read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a small randomised pilot, 64 people with borderline personality disorder received either mindfulness training or interpersonal effectiveness skills, and separate facets of impulsivity were compared. Treating impulsivity as several different things rather than one is the useful part here, since acting fast on a warm feeling is a different matter from being generally disorganised. Small pilot, different population, so hold it loosely.
Soler J, Elices M, Pascual JC, Martín-Blanco A, Feliu-Soler A, Carmona C, Portella MJ. (2016). Effects of mindfulness training on different components of impulsivity in borderline personality disorder: results from a pilot randomized study.. Borderline personality disorder and emotion dysregulation doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The promise is the feeling getting out through your mouth before anybody has checked whether it is possible.
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
Saying I need a break only works if you have agreed beforehand what a break means. How long it lasts, what the other person does meanwhile, and when the two of you come back to it.
Fast, strong emotion is part of ADHD rather than a separate fault of character. It was in the original description, dropped for decades, and is being written back in.
The unkind thoughts tend to arrive in a handful of familiar shapes. One friend is busy so nobody wants you. One bad mark so you are going to fail everything. Someone did not say hello so they must dislike you.