Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Feelings and focus
You cannot ask anyone to work harder on your difficulty than you are working on it yourself. That is the condition attached to every adjustment you ask for.
It is what keeps help from curdling into supervision. If your partner is holding the calendar, softening the tone and steering round your worst hours, then your part has to be visible: the appointments, the medication, the boring practice. Not to earn their kindness. To keep the two of you as two adults rather than as a parent and a child.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'your steadfastness comes only from God' (Quran 16:127). The steadfastness asked for is yours to bring, not something to be supplied by whoever lives with you.
وَٱصۡبِرۡ وَمَا صَبۡرُكَ إِلَّا بِٱللَّهِۚ وَلَا تَحۡزَنۡ عَلَيۡهِمۡ وَلَا تَكُ فِي ضَيۡقࣲ مِّمَّا يَمۡكُرُونَ
So [Prophet] be steadfast: your steadfastness comes only from God. Do not grieve over them; do not be distressed by their scheming
Qur’an 16:127read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a study of 124 adults with ADHD, twelve weeks of cognitive behavioural therapy, with or without medication, was evaluated on emotional symptoms and self-esteem as well as on the core symptoms. Structured work done by the person themselves is what was tested there. It is one comparative study, and it is not proof of the fairness argument, which is about relationships rather than outcomes.
Pan MR, Huang F, Zhao MJ, Wang YF, Wang YF, Qian QJ. (2019). A comparison of efficacy between cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and CBT combined with medication in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).. Psychiatry research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Support given for effort you are not making turns quietly into resentment.
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
The change mostly happens between the sessions rather than in them. Catching a thought where it actually turns up, at the kitchen table or in the car park, is what makes a new one stick.
A real apology has no because in it. I would not have shouted if you had not looked at me like that is the argument again, wearing an apology's clothes.
Explain the calming corner on a quiet Tuesday, not in the middle of a meltdown. New instructions do not go in once a child is already rising.