Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It

Gabor Maté, M.D.

PART ONE: THE NATURE OF ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER

4. Never at rest, the mind of the ADD adult flits about like some deranged bird that can light here or there for a while but is perched nowhere long enough to make a home.

4. [ADD] also explained my propensity to bump into doorways, hit my head on shelves, drop objects and brush close to people before I notice they are there.

5. Something has to give, but the ADD personality has trouble letting go of anything. Unlike the juggler, he cannot stop the performance.

5. A sense of urgency typifies attention deficit disorder

6. Such striking imbalance between intellectual awareness on the one hand and emotional and behavioral self-control on the other is characteristic of people with attention deficit disorder.

7. I do not see it as a fixed, inherited brain disorder but as a physiological consequence of life in a particular environment, in a particular culture.

8. ADD has much to do with pain

8. The deep emotional hurt they carry is telegraphed by the downcast, averted eyes, the rapid, discontinuous flow of speech, the tense body postures, the tapping feet and fidgety hands and by the nervous, self-deprecating humor.

8. The creative talents they have been blessed with have not been pursued. They are intensely frustrated at what they perceive as their failures.

9. Images of distress, loneliness and confusion, presented with a tinge of humor. The strangely dissonant imagery tells also of a troubled soul who found reality harsh—so harsh that the mind had to be fragmented in order to fragment the pain.

1. MANY ROADS NOT TRAVELLED

11. The hallmark of ADD is an automatic, unwilled “tuning-out,” a frustrating nonpresense of mind.

11. He misses information and directions, misplaces things and struggles to stay abreast of conversations.

12. except around activities of high interest and motivation. There is an almost active not noticing, as if a person purposefully went out of her way to be oblivious to what is around her.

12. The distractibility fosters chaos. (cleaning room analogy—SO RELEVANT)

12. Completely lacking in the ADD mind is a template for order, a mental model of how order comes about. You may be able to visualize what a tidy and organized room would look like, but the mind-set to do the job is missing. To begin with, there is a profound reluctance to discard anything

13. There is little space for anything.

13. Should you nevertheless succeed now and then, you know full well that the order is temporary.

13. The law of entropy rules: order is fleeting, chaos is absolute.

13. Things are dropped, feet are stepped on, balls fly in the wrong direction. Objects piled on top of each other during cleanup are fated to come crashing down.