Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
ADHD clutter and hoarding look alike from the doorway and are not the same thing. Many people living among piles would be delighted if the lot vanished overnight.
Hoarding is about not being able to part with things. This is more often about sorting being unbearable, or about keeping something in case it turns out to be needed. The difference matters because it changes what helps. Work on attachment is the wrong tool when the real problem is that deciding where forty objects go is exhausting.
Qur’an and Sunnah
you can ask those who have knowledge if you do not know (Quran 16:43). Asking someone who can tell the two apart is the sensible first move.
وَمَآ أَرۡسَلۡنَا مِن قَبۡلِكَ إِلَّا رِجَالࣰ ا نُّوحِيٓ إِلَيۡهِمۡۖ فَسۡـَٔلُوٓاْ أَهۡلَ ٱلذِّكۡرِ إِن كُنتُمۡ لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ
[Prophet], all the messengers We sent before you were simply men to whom We had given the Revelation: you [people] can ask those who have knowledge if you do not know
Qur’an 16:43read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
The updated European consensus statement on adult ADHD was written because the condition is underdiagnosed and undertreated across much of Europe, which is to say that getting the identification right is where everything else starts. A consensus statement is expert agreement rather than new evidence, and it is no substitute for someone assessing your own situation.
Kooij JJS, Bijlenga D, Salerno L, Jaeschke R, Bitter I, Balázs J, Thome J, Dom G, Kasper S, Nunes Filipe C, Stes S, Mohr P, Leppämäki S, Casas M, Bobes J, Mccarthy JM, Richarte V, Kjems Philipsen A, Pehlivanidis A, Niemela A, Styr B, Semerci B, Bolea-Alamanac B, Edvinsson D, Baeyens D, Wynchank D, Sobanski E, Philipsen A, McNicholas F, Caci H, Mihailescu I, Manor I, Dobrescu I, Saito T, Krause J, Fayyad J, Ramos-Quiroga JA, Foeken K, Rad F, Adamou M, Ohlmeier M, Fitzgerald M, Gill M, Lensing M, Motavalli Mukaddes N, Brudkiewicz P, Gustafsson P, Tani P, Oswald P, Carpentier PJ, De Rossi P, Delorme R, Markovska Simoska S, Pallanti S, Young S, Bejerot S, Lehtonen T, Kustow J, Müller-Sedgwick U, Hirvikoski T, Pironti V, Ginsberg Y, Félegyházy Z, Garcia-Portilla MP, Asherson P. (2019). Updated European Consensus Statement on diagnosis and treatment of adult ADHD.. European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Two problems that look the same from outside need different help, so it is worth knowing which one you have.
When not to
If parting with possessions genuinely distresses you, or rooms have become unusable, that deserves an assessment for hoarding rather than a push to work faster.
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
Reading a room is a skill rather than a personality trait, and it can be broken into parts. Before you speak, take a second to look: who is here, what they are doing, how loud the place is.
Start at the moment you have to be there and work backwards, writing each step and how long it takes, until you reach the hour you have to get up.
A report card with nothing attached to it changes nothing. The ratings have to lead somewhere at home, to something earned or not earned that day.