Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
Certain situations take you apart every single time. The reunion, that one relative, the friend who makes remarks. You are allowed to simply not go.
This is not cowardice, it is arranging your life around what you already know about yourself. Much the same logic as not keeping the biscuits in the house if you cannot walk past them. Decline early and kindly, in a way that does not need a row: another arrangement, a shorter visit some other time. Keep this list short and specific, because avoiding everything difficult is a different problem.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'turn away from them until they move on to another topic' (Quran 6:68). Stepping out is described as an ordinary move, and a temporary one rather than a permanent verdict on anybody.
وَإِذَا رَأَيۡتَ ٱلَّذِينَ يَخُوضُونَ فِيٓ ءَايَٰتِنَا فَأَعۡرِضۡ عَنۡهُمۡ حَتَّىٰ يَخُوضُواْ فِي حَدِيثٍ غَيۡرِهِۦۚ وَإِمَّا يُنسِيَنَّكَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنُ فَلَا تَقۡعُدۡ بَعۡدَ ٱلذِّكۡرَىٰ مَعَ ٱلۡقَوۡمِ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ
When you come across people who speak with scorn about Our revelations, turn away from them until they move on to another topic. If Satan should make you forget, then, when you have remembered, do not sit with those who are doing wrong
Qur’an 6:68read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A meta-analysis of 96 studies examined how emotion regulation strategies, avoidance and rumination among them, relate to how severe eating difficulties become. It is a different population, and the broad signal is that avoidance as a way of life travels with things getting worse. Which is why this one is for a handful of named situations rather than for anything that makes you uncomfortable.
Prefit AB, Cândea DM, Szentagotai-Tătar A. (2019). Emotion regulation across eating pathology: A meta-analysis.. Appetite doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Not being in the situation asks nothing at all of the self-control you would have needed inside it.
When not to
If the list of places you avoid keeps growing, that has become avoidance rather than planning, and it is worth help.
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
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.
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.
A small child does not have a feeling, they are the feeling, entirely, until it passes. Growing up is largely a gap opening between feeling something and doing something about it.