Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

by Gabor Maté MD

At social events, I tend to gravitate to the periphery, conscious of a feeling that somehow I cannot enter into the spirit of things. I observe people talking to each other, people I may know quite well, acutely aware that I have nothing to say to anyone. Social conversation has always been a mystery to me. I have at times looked at people engaged in animated discussion and wished that I was invisible so that I could overhear them—not to eavesdrop but to find out once and for all exactly what there is to talk about. My patients with ADD tell me much the same thing about their experience. “I don’t know how to make small talk, or I’m afraid of saying something stupid,” a twenty-six-year-old woman said. And the truth is, when the ADD adult does join conversations, she often finds herself bored by the minute attention others devote to subjects that to her seem to skim only the surface.

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