Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

it is in the context of the family that children will have transforming experiences that nourish growth

New ways of processing emotions need new neural circuits, and the wiring of new circuits requires new experiences in a favorable emotional milieu.

In human brains, the circuitry of reason and emotion are closely connected, which is why troubled relationships lead directly to difficulties in brain processing. They are not the only cause of disorganized thinking, but they are by far the commonest cause.

hyperactivity, lethargy and shame are closely connected with the neurological memories of the distant, stressed or distracted caregiver. There will be a sense of discomfort as soon as the mind becomes aware of itself, because such awareness immediately triggers responses encoded with the infant’s distress at feeling emotionally alone. The mind then lapses into helpless lethargy, or races away, looking for something to attach to: some idea, some fantasy, some memory, conversation, music, reading—anything

Physiologically and emotionally, the child or adult with ADD swings back and forth between over-the-top, purposeless excitement and a nonrestful vegetative state in which the predominant emotion is shame. Some tend to get stuck at one or the other of these opposite poles. The two states may also be present at the same time, resulting in agitated, unfocused inactivity.

The child who does not learn boundaries is in danger. There are limits not to be crossed, and the mode of learning this is the attachment relationship.

We do not find out about the boundaries of acceptable behavior by reading a manual or even by being told. The setting of limits has to begin long before we understand why those limits must be respected. We find out by the reactions of our parents, the most important of which are nonverbal. The word no by itself would mean nothing to the toddler unless it was said in a stern voice and with a disapproving look, along with other evidence of disapproval, such as shaking the head. Throughout life, the nonverbal messages we read between the lines of verbal communication—far more than the words themselves—define our relationships with others, either inviting us in or keeping us out

If hyperactivity expresses anxiety, lethargy and underarousal express shame. Shame, like anxiety, is an attachment emotion. “Whenever someone becomes significant to us, whenever another’s caring, respect or valuing matters, the possibility for generating shame emerges,” writes the psychologist Gershen Kaufman.2 The origin of shame is the feeling of having been cut off from the parent, of having lost the connection, if only momentarily. It cannot be helped, it occurs unavoidably as part of maturing

My eyes, like the eyes of almost everyone with attention deficit disorder, sweep across faces I meet as if of their own volition, seeking everyone’s eyes, looking for signs of contact.1 Strangers will suddenly catch me staring at them intently.

The family as an institution has been put under enormous strain by vastly powerful forces in our society and culture. If we want to find the sources of ADD, that is where we need to look—a task we will take up in the next chapter. But the family is the most immediate environment to act on us. We are all part of a multigenerational family system that does not begin or end with our parents. When we consider our childhoods, we are in many ways considering the effect that our grandparents’ attitudes, unconscious processes and behaviors had on our parents during the latter’s formative years. To understand ourselves, we need to understand the concentric “stories within stories,” in Lance Morrow’s phrase, which place us at the central point—and the resting point, until we have children ourselves

The generations are boxes within boxes: Inside my mother’s violence you find another box, which contains my grandfather’s violence, and inside that box (I suspect but do not know) you would find another box with some such black secret energy—stories within stories, receding in time.”