Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
Tell your partner, on a good day, that the things you say at full volume are not a fair record of what you think. Not as an excuse. As information about how you work.
It changes what lands. If they know in advance that the heat is real but the words are unreliable, they can wait for the version that arrives twenty minutes later rather than taking the first one to bed with them. Your half of the deal is coming back with the accurate version every time, so that the agreement stays true rather than becoming a permission slip.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'who restrain their anger and pardon people' (Quran 3:134). Both halves are wanted here, your restraint and their pardon, and neither one covers for the absence of the other.
ٱلَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِي ٱلسَّرَّآءِ وَٱلضَّرَّآءِ وَٱلۡكَٰظِمِينَ ٱلۡغَيۡظَ وَٱلۡعَافِينَ عَنِ ٱلنَّاسِۗ وَٱللَّهُ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
who give, both in prosperity and adversity, who restrain their anger and pardon people- God loves those who do good
Qur’an 3:134read 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 rather than reading everything off executive difficulties. That gives a fair basis for describing intensity as part of how you are put together. It is a proposal about the condition, and it says nothing about what you are responsible for, which is all of 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
Knowing in advance that hot words are unreliable takes some of the threat out of hearing them.
When not to
This is an explanation and not a licence, and it does not cover words that are contemptuous or frightening.
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
Turning the volume down on a feeling in front of the wrong audience is not being fake. Being annoyed with your manager and raising it mildly is a skill, and it keeps you employed.
Being good at apologising is a real skill, and it loses value each time the same apology comes round. After a while what repairs things is something visibly different, not a better sentence.
If rating a feeling out of ten means nothing to you, use something that does. Colour in bubbles, point at a picture, hold your hands apart to show how big it is today.