Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
You may not get to be a calmer person any time soon. What can change quickly is what you do in the twenty minutes after you lose your temper, and that is the part people remember.
Reactivity shifts slowly if at all, while repair is a skill you could be noticeably better at by next week. Go back sooner than feels comfortable. Say the plain sentence. Do not wait for the mood to lift by itself. Most people can live with a partner who flares. Far fewer can live with someone who flares and then goes cold for two days.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'who forgive when they are angry' (Quran 42:37). The anger is not treated as the failure. What follows it is where the description sits.
وَٱلَّذِينَ يَجۡتَنِبُونَ كَبَٰٓئِرَ ٱلۡإِثۡمِ وَٱلۡفَوَٰحِشَ وَإِذَا مَا غَضِبُواْ هُمۡ يَغۡفِرُونَ
who shun great sins and gross indecencies; who forgive when they are angry
Qur’an 42:37read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review using both numbers and interviews concluded that emotion dysregulation is present in ADHD across the lifespan and contributes a great deal to the impairment people experience. Across the lifespan is the phrase to notice. This is a durable feature rather than a phase you are failing to grow out of, which is an argument for putting your effort into the repair rather than waiting to become calm.
Shaw P, Stringaris A, Nigg J, Leibenluft E. (2014). Emotion dysregulation in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.. The American journal of psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A strong feeling is survivable for the people around you, and what you do next is what tells them where they stand.
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
Halfway up the argument, ask yourself one question. What do I want here, and who am I trying to be. Winning the sentence is rarely worth what it costs by bedtime.
Setting out to get rid of worry altogether sets you up to fail twice, first at the worry and then at the failing. A kinder aim is to change how you sit with it.
Self-restraint runs on a supply that stress uses up. In a week when everything is late and nothing has been slept on, you will react to things you would normally let go.