Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

But parents can help their children come to grips with these difficult feelings, learn to tolerate a sense of loss and disappointment, and move on.”

We don’t do our children any favors when we try to protect them from experiencing sadness or failure.

“Many parents have an especially hard time when their children are feeling sad and disappointed,”

Adults with ADD face the most difficult task of all: learning how to be loving toward themselves.

For people like me with ADD, and for everyone else, emotional pain is a reality. It does not have to exclude joy and a capacity to experience the beauty of life.

In biochemical terms, any addictive substance or behavior is self-medication, self-administered emotional pain relief. But the ADD person is also treating herself for a condition she is not even aware of having.

As we have already seen, no one can instill motivation in anyone else. No one can forcibly induce motivation in oneself either. The best attitude to adopt is one of compassionate patience, which has to include a tolerance for failure.

Enormously beneficial to everyone, spiritual work is essential in the self-treatment of ADD.

There is no path toward oneself that leads away from the pain.