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thread of notes on scattered minds by gabor mate https://t.co/2Jl1W5KXSG https://t.co/LcOEoOiyTY
> ADD has much to do with pain, present in every one of the adults and children who have come to me for assessment > "Every aspect of my life hurts," a thirty-seven-year-old man told me during his second visit to my office https://t.co/MzRQ94KtNz
> These men and women... have never been able to maintain any sort of a long-term job or profession. They cannot easily enter meaningful, committed relationships, let alone stay in one. Their moods fly back and forth from lethargy and dejection to agitation. https://t.co/EDEvQtc8Ye
> The ADD mind is afflicted by a sort of time illiteracy, or what Dr. Russell Barkley has called “time blindness.” One is either hopelessly short of time, dashing about like a deaf bat, or else acts as if blessed with the gift of eternity. https://t.co/UauJ7yK2Cp
> To the very young child, any block of time seems infinite.... Only two units of time exist for the small child: the now and the not-now. The not-now is infinity. https://t.co/ryBNPkeF9C
> It may seem paradoxical to consider that hyperactivity of mind or body can be caused by an underactivity of the cortex. It would also seem odd to think of hyperactivity being stopped by a stimulant medication. The paradox is best understood by means of an analogy... https://t.co/Q9IUSb1zes
> The prefrontal cortex may be seen as that policeman. One of its major tasks is inhibition.... One way to understand ADD neurologically is as a lack of inhibition, a chronic underactivity of the prefrontal cortex. https://t.co/3tawVukFU5
> If we choose not to see ADD as medical disorder or illness, the question of causation is turned around.... Instead of asking why a disorder or illness develops, we ask why a fully self-motivated and self-regulated human personality does not. https://t.co/UXK6EtbOQ1
> Of all environments, the one that most profoundly shapes the human personality is the invisible one: the emotional atmosphere in which the child lives during the critical early years of brain development. https://t.co/wRhggXcivx
> The invisible environment has little to do with parenting philosophies or parenting style. It is a matter of intangibles, foremost among them being the parents’ relationship with each other and their emotional balance as individuals.
> Each [meaning of "sensitive"] is exquisitely apt as a description of the ADD child: 1. Very open to or acutely affected by external stimuli or mental impressions. 2. Easily offended, or emotionally hurt. 3. (As of an instrument) responsive to or recording small changes. https://t.co/GJPHGCEuAY
> People with ADD are hypersensitive. That is not a fault or a weakness of theirs, it is how they were born. It is their inborn temperament. That, primarily, is what is hereditary about ADD. https://t.co/VGEFm3vQsr
> Sensitivity is the reason why allergies are more common among ADD children than in the rest of the population.... [W]e may say truthfully that people with ADD have emotional allergies. https://t.co/wbA9fuKO8O
> ...[S]ensitive children register and record even minute changes in their emotional environment.... It is as if they had invisible antennae projecting in every direction, picking up and conducting into their bodies and their minds the psychic emanations around them. https://t.co/u0MHGEVroG
> The existence of sensitive people is an advantage for humankind because it is this group that best expresses humanity’s creative urges and needs.... Under normal circumstances, they are artists or artisans, seekers, inventors, shamans, poets, prophets. https://t.co/ElNwaCIqia
> The first nine months or so of extrauterine life seem to have been intended by nature as the second part of gestation. The anthropologist Ashley Montagu has called this phase exterogestation, gestation outside the maternal body. https://t.co/BlcqG6lU9f
> From early infancy, it appears that our ability to regulate emotional states depends upon the experience of feeling that a significant person in our life is simultaneously experiencing a similar state of mind. https://t.co/xND58pbK52
