Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Self-compassion
The aim was never to stop needing the aids. It is to find ways round the parts that do not work well, and then to keep using them.
People tend to treat the alarms, the lists, the whiteboard by the door as scaffolding they ought to take down eventually. That is usually why it all gets abandoned around six weeks in, just as it had started to help. Someone still using their system after two years is not behind. They are the one who worked out what they need and kept it in place.
Qur’an and Sunnah
God wishes to lighten your burden; man was created weak (Quran 4:28). Weakness is given as the reason for easier terms rather than as something to be ashamed of.
يُرِيدُ ٱللَّهُ أَن يُخَفِّفَ عَنكُمۡۚ وَخُلِقَ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنُ ضَعِيفࣰ ا
God wishes to lighten your burden; man was created weak
Qur’an 4:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review and meta analysis of mindfulness based interventions in ADHD found effects on outcomes beyond the core symptoms, including everyday functioning and quality of life. That is the shape of what is worth expecting here: what improves is how life goes, more than the underlying condition. The trials vary in quality, so the size of any single benefit is uncertain.
Oliva F, Malandrone F, di Girolamo G, Mirabella S, Colombi N, Carletto S, Ostacoli L. (2021). The efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder beyond core symptoms: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression.. Journal of affective disorders doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A support you keep using is doing its job, and needing it says nothing about how capable you are.
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
Work properly at the parts that can be managed, then be at peace with what is left over. The order matters more than it sounds.
Nothing here does the job on its own. Medication if it suits you, a few practical systems, something for the low mood and shame that has built up, and the people you live with brought into it.
Most children with ADHD grow into adults with ADHD. Some of it settles as the brain finishes developing into your late twenties, and adult life gives you more say over how your days are arranged, but the underlying difficulty tends to stay.