Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Self-compassion
It rarely stays a matter of attention. The difficulties shape what you come to believe about yourself, that colours how you are with the people closest to you, and their responses feed straight back into the original trouble.
Discouraging to read, and genuinely useful, because it means there are three places to work and they are not equally stuck. The wiring is the hardest to shift. What you believe about yourself moves with effort. How things go with your partner or your family can sometimes change within a fortnight, and that change reaches back into the rest of it. Starting where there is some give is not dodging the real problem.
Qur’an and Sunnah
If My servants ask you about Me, I am near. I respond to those who call Me (Quran 2:186). Nearness is stated plainly, against the belief that you are not worth anyone's attention.
وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌۖ أُجِيبُ دَعۡوَةَ ٱلدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِۖ فَلۡيَسۡتَجِيبُواْ لِي وَلۡيُؤۡمِنُواْ بِي لَعَلَّهُمۡ يَرۡشُدُونَ
[Prophet], if My servants ask you about Me, I am near. I respond to those who call Me, so let them respond to Me, and believe in Me, so that they may be guided
Qur’an 2:186read 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 set out the psychosocial and psychiatric consequences of internalised stigma for people living with mental illness. What a person comes to believe about themselves carries real social and clinical costs, which is the middle link in this chain. It is observational work, so it describes the association rather than proving the sequence runs in that direction.
Livingston JD, Boyd JE. (2010). Correlates and consequences of internalized stigma for people living with mental illness: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. Social science & medicine (1982) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Each layer feeds the next, so easing any one of them takes pressure off the others.
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 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.
The goal was never to enjoy the dull task. It is to arrive at something more like: I hate this and I can still do it well enough.
It tends to run the same way each time. You struggle with something, you feel awful about it, so you keep away from it, and anyone who raises it gets a sharp answer, which makes you keep away harder.