Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

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What we mean here is an automatic “tuning out.” The mind is absent when its attention is required to complete tasks or process instructions. Inattentiveness takes many forms. A person with ADD might ask someone a question and zone out as they begin answering it. They might look up from a book and suddenly realize they can’t recall a single word they’ve read. Or they might enter a room and discover that they have no idea what they wanted to do in it.

On the westernmost shores of Canada, on Vancouver Island, one sees scruffy and twisted little conifers, stunted relatives of the magnificent fir trees that dominate the landscape just a short distance inland. We would be wrong to see these hearty little survivors as having some sort of plant disease; they have developed to the maximum that the relatively harsh conditions of climate and soil allow. If we wish to understand why they differ so dramatically from their inland relatives, we need to know under what conditions majestically tall, stout and ramrod-straight fir trees are able to thrive. It is the same with human beings. We do not have to look for diseases to explain why some people are not able to experience the full flowering of their potential. We have only to inquire what conditions sustain unfettered human development and what conditions hinder it. Maté ran a private family practice in East Vancouver for over twenty years. He was also the medical co-ordinator of the Palliative Care Unit at Vancouver Hospital for seven years. Currently he is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and resource centre for the people of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. Many of his patients suffer from mental illness, drug addiction and HIV, or all three.The book also covers the specific behaviours we would see in children, the markers of low self-esteem that arise (and how to handle those), the issue of ‘counterwill’ and how to support teens who are showing that, the impact of implicit memory (and why the attachment issue is so important), how to self-parent yourself if you have ADHD and addictions (which have been found to be higher in those with ADHD). ADD adults don’t have low self-esteem because they are poor achievers, but it is due to their low self-esteem that they judge themselves and their achievements harshly. It is also, in part, due to low self-esteem that people do not reach their full potential, do not strive to locate within themselves fonts of creativity and self-expression, do not venture to embark on activities and projects where success is in doubt. They feel safer not trying, because their poor self-regard is terrified at the risk of failure. Much of my initial counseling with people is to help them recognize that in many ways the problem is not in what they have done in life but in how they view themselves. There live human beings afflicted with far more debilitating impairments who do not necessarily hold the low opinion of the self prevalent among ADD adults. PDF / EPUB File Name: Scattered_Minds__The_Origins_and_Healing_o_-_Gabor_Mate.pdf, Scattered_Minds__The_Origins_and_Healing_o_-_Gabor_Mate.epub Scattered is GREAT. It's one of the best books on ADD I've read yet, and I'm so glad I'm reading it. What I'm appreciating is that he doesn't pander, and he doesn't wrap it up as simply a brain function issue, which is what I've felt to be true. I'm personally convinced that my experience isn't just biology. I don't think I'd be the way I am if I didn't live in a culture that is saturated with information, that removes us far from our natural rhythms, that requires me to be vigilant all the time, that values achievement to a degree that's ridiculous, that insists on fast and "good enough" over the spacious reflection and full consideration that engenders much better than good enough... I could go on. Those things are challenges for everyone, but they are excruciating for someone who has the misfortune of a certain set of developmental sensitivities and brain function challenges. Maté has evidence that supports this instinct of mine, so it's been fascinating to see the facts behind it.

Because a baby’s brain is not fully developed at birth, the first few years are critical as the child attaches to their parents and copes with whatever home environment they were born into. Most recently, he has written about his experiences working with addicts in In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. None of this is achieved by an act of will, and it is possible one will not succeed completely. That is not important. What is important is to engage in the process, difficult as that is. Healing is not an event, not a single act. It occurs by a process; it is in the process itself. (320) In America, our multi-decade project of making life harder for poor, working class, and middle class people appears to be correlated with increasing ADD diagnoses. While we are not sure if this increase results from more children having ADD or simply more diagnoses, what we do know is that the overall impact of this condition on our society is waxing. Maté’s book made me think that perhaps this trend is at least partially fueled by parents needing to work more days and hours just to get by, which pits their economic survival in a zero-sum game with the time and energy required to establish secure attachments with children thereby decreasing the likelihood that ADD will manifest. And since upper class and wealthy Americans also tend to work too much, this may explain why ADD also shows up in plenty of kids from well-off, supportive families.At the end of June, my therapist asked if I had ever been diagnosed with ADD as a child. I said no, and found the idea amusing. Hi Emma! Thanks for taking the time to read my review and share your input. Given that I’m neither a doctor nor an expert on ADHD, I’ll take your word for it. For my part, I found Maté’s point of view instructive, but I certainly don’t think it’s the only (or necessarily the best) perspective with which we can productively approach the problem of ADHD.