The fear of being alone with the mind is, I believe, an implicit memory of finding oneself, in infancy, cut off from contact with the parent.

I have learned through my own process that a goal in life cannot be the avoidance of painful feelings.

This feeling of duty toward the whole world is not limited to ADD but is typical of it. No one with ADD is without it.

It’s the self-rejection others react against, much more than the differentness.

we are not just the molecules that accidentally have come together to form our bodies, the thoughts that temporarily engage our minds, the feelings that agitate or soothe us from one moment to the next.

As we have already seen, no one can instill motivation in anyone else. No one can forcibly induce motivation in oneself either. The best attitude to adopt is one of compassionate patience, which has to include a tolerance for failure.

For people like me with ADD, and for everyone else, emotional pain is a reality. It does not have to exclude joy and a capacity to experience the beauty of life.

In biochemical terms, any addictive substance or behavior is self-medication, self-administered emotional pain relief. But the ADD person is also treating herself for a condition she is not even aware of having.

One way to understand ADD neurologically is as a lack of inhibition, a chronic underactivity of the prefrontal cortex. The cerebral cortex in the frontal lobe is not able to perform its job of prioritizing, selection and inhibition.