Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Self-compassion
There is a difference between having ADHD and being ADHD. It sounds like word games until you notice which one you are living in.
Being it means the condition runs everything and explains everything, and there is a quiet relief in that which is hard to give up. Having it means it is one true thing about you, it accounts for a great deal, and the choices are still yours. The second version leaves you more to do, and it also leaves you somewhere to go. You can be completely gentle with yourself about the difficulty and still be the person answerable for what happens next.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not assert your own goodness: He knows best who is mindful of Him (Quran 53:32). Neither declaring yourself fine nor writing yourself off, which is about what it takes to carry a diagnosis without becoming it.
ٱلَّذِينَ يَجۡتَنِبُونَ كَبَٰٓئِرَ ٱلۡإِثۡمِ وَٱلۡفَوَٰحِشَ إِلَّا ٱللَّمَمَۚ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ وَٰسِعُ ٱلۡمَغۡفِرَةِۚ هُوَ أَعۡلَمُ بِكُمۡ إِذۡ أَنشَأَكُم مِّنَ ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَإِذۡ أَنتُمۡ أَجِنَّةࣱ فِي بُطُونِ أُمَّهَٰتِكُمۡۖ فَلَا تُزَكُّوٓاْ أَنفُسَكُمۡۖ هُوَ أَعۡلَمُ بِمَنِ ٱتَّقَىٰٓ
As for those who avoid grave sins and foul acts, though they may commit small sins, your Lord is ample in forgiveness. He has been aware of you from the time He produced you from the earth and from your hiding places in your mothers’ wombs, so do not assert your own goodness:He knows best who is mindful of Him
Qur’an 53:32read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A protocol has been published for a randomised study of compassion focused therapy aimed at the self stigma of mental disorders, on the reasoning that shame is what makes self stigma corrosive. A protocol describes a plan and reports no results, so this is a direction of research and not yet a finding. What it tells you is that the target of that work is the shame attached to a label, which is what the having frame is trying to loosen.
Riebel M, Rohmer O, Charles E, Lefebvre F, Weibel S, Weiner L. (2023). Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) for the reduction of the self-stigma of mental disorders: the COMpassion for Psychiatric disorders, Autism and Self-Stigma (COMPASS) study protocol for a randomized controlled study.. Trials doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
When a diagnosis becomes the whole of your identity, there is nothing left over to make decisions with.
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
Everyone has something about themselves they wish were different, and something they cannot do reliably however much they mean to. Yours has a name and a good deal of research behind it, which is not the same as being uniquely broken.
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.
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.