Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

by Gabor Maté

Conflict can have an addictive quality: It is both a familiar scene and a poignant reminder of how involved two people are with one another. People do not want conflict, but they have not found an alternative way of interacting.

As an article in Scientific American expressed it, “Embryologically and anatomically the eye is an extension of the brain; it is almost as if a portion of the brain were in plain sight.”

Where there is unremitting emotional or physical abuse, the divorce itself is even a positive step, both for the abused partner and for the children.

The brain’s level of arousal is a major factor in determining our capacity to give attention, as the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux explains: Arousal is important in all mental functions. It contributes significantly to attention, perception, memory, emotion, and problem solving. Without arousal, we fail to notice what’s going on—we don’t attend to the details. But too much arousal is not good either. If you are over-aroused you become tense and anxious and unproductive. You need to have just the right level of activation to perform optimally.

Criticism from the parent is devastating to a sensitive child with low self-esteem. As parents, we sometimes do not hear the critical tone in our words. The child, on the other hand, hears only the tone, not the words. The emotion-processing centers on the right side of the brain interpret the tone as rejection and invalidation. If the parent wants to help the child improve a skill or an attitude, it’s best to do it warmly, respecting the child’s vulnerability.

Too much praise can be almost as harmful as too much criticism. They seem opposite, but the underlying message is the same: the parent puts a high value not on who the child is, but on what he does.

How the child feels about what he does is far more important than what the parent thinks about it.

To maintain compassion toward their children, parents have to be compassionate toward themselves as well and spare themselves their own harsh self-judgments.

True self-esteem is who one is; contingent self-esteem is only what one does.

self-acceptance does not mean self-admiration or even self-liking at every moment of our lives, but tolerance for all our emotions, including those that make us feel uncomfortable.

The behavior addict knows, or ought to know, that what separates him from the drug addict’s fate is little more than good fortune.

There is a fine but clearly discernible line between addiction and passion. Any passion can become an addiction. It’s simply a question of who is in charge: the individual or the behavior. The addiction is the repeated behavior engaged in despite the certainty that it harms oneself or others. Passion loves the goal or process that is its object (the painting one buys or the painting one does), but the real object of addiction is the thrill of plunging into the behavior, not the love of it. (The objective of the gambler is not winning, but the thrill of gambling.)