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1. There is no one right way to "meditate". 2. You probably have a long history of trying and "failing" to e.g. clear your mind, release your thoughts, etc. 3. The purpose of meditation is NOT to clear your mind. You aren't "failing" by being unable to do that. Wait what?
You know how, with your ADHD brain, every time you start to try to meditate all of these thoughts just *appear*? And start clamoring for your attention? And you constantly get pulled into this one or that one and then realize you're in it and let it go? And then it happens again?
This tweet could change your life: The purpose of meditation is to *practice* that. It's to experience, over and over again, what it feels like to be pulled into a thought *and to choose to disengage*. IT'S NOT ABOUT MAINTAINING AN EMPTY MIND! IT NEVER WAS!
All of that constant failure, that constant "god damn it I'm in a thought again, ok, back to breathing..." that makes you feel sort of shitty every time you try? That's... that's not constant failure. That's literally constant success. Why?
Because every time you do it you are building the internal tools to make it easier to do next time. You are building yourself a personal, reliable and reusable *escape hatch* from any thought. And once you can reliably escape thoughts, your entire existence changes.
Now, instead of existing inside of whatever thought has risen to the surface, you exist *in the space between thoughts*. Now, you will constantly be pulled into random thoughts! That doesn't change! But if you develop this skill you can choose to stay or go at will.
And THIS allows you to finally start to *compare* thoughts from an external perspective. You can start to pay attention to *which* thoughts arise, and why. And THIS brings us to OP's point, above. You can realize: "Oh, this keeps coming up because a part of me *wants to do X*."
And once you can do that -- once you can get outside of the thought and see it as a part of a larger system -- you can exert *agency* over that thought's role in your life, behavior and choices. You don't *have* to act on impulse.
I'm sorry I left this out, and this came up in our Autistic community call tonight as well. Listen: mindfulness is powerful. But if you are in crisis? If what is in your head is not something you can handle? *mindfulness is not what you need right now*. https://t.co/mqCWLw0tsN