Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

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.

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.

Adults with ADD face the most difficult task of all: learning how to be loving toward themselves.

But parents can help their children come to grips with these difficult feelings, learn to tolerate a sense of loss and disappointment, and move on.”

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.

Desperate to be out of our mind and unaware, we surrender to the addiction, to be lulled into a walking sleep.

There is no path toward oneself that leads away from the pain.

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

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