Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder QUOTES

61 " Of all mammals, the human animal has the least mature brain at birth. Early "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

62 " The word matrix is derived from the Latin for “womb,” itself derived from the word for “mother.” The womb is mother, and in many respects the mother remains the womb, even following birth. In the womb environment, no action or reaction on the developing infant’s part is required for the provision of any of his needs. Life in the womb is surely the prototype of life in the Garden of Eden where nothing can possibly be lacking, nothing has to be worked for. If there is no consciousness—we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Knowledge—there is also no deprivation or anxiety. Except in conditions of extreme poverty unusual in the industrialized world, although not unknown, the nutritional needs and shelter requirements of infants are more or less satisfied. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

63 " The human infant lacks the capacity to follow or cling to the parent soon after being born, and is neurologically and biochemically underdeveloped in many other ways. 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.5 During this period, the security of the womb must be provided by the parenting environment. To allow for the maturation of the brain and nervous system that in other species occurs in the uterus, the attachment that was until birth directly physical now needs to be continued on both physical and emotional levels. Physically and psychologically, the parenting environment must contain and hold the infant as securely as she was held in the womb. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

64 " Human infants are born with no capability whatsoever to hide or suppress any feeling, be it hunger, fear, discomfort or pain. Healthy newborns are skilled at communicating anger and have a superbly articulate talent for saying no, as anyone can attest who has witnessed the rage of a frustrated infant or who has ever tried to feed some unwanted substance to a baby. She shouts out her responses to the world, loud and clear. Given the survival value of emotional expression, nature would not have us give up that capacity unless the suppression of emotion was demanded by the environment. When we forget how to say no, we surrender self-esteem. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

65 " It may be said that no two children have exactly the same parents, in that the parenting they each receive may vary in highly significant ways. Whatever the hopes, wishes or intentions of the parent, the child does not experience the parent directly: the child experiences the parenting. I have known two siblings to disagree vehemently about their father’s personality during their childhood. Neither has to be wrong if we understand that they did not receive the same fathering, which is what formed their experience of the father. I have even seen subtly but significantly different mothering given to a pair of identical twins. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

66 " When mother and infant are rapturously gazing into each other’s eyes, the infant at some point will look away, to avoid being overstimulated. He has no anxiety over doing so. Should the mother be the one to break eye contact, however, the infant is mortified and is immediately swept into the physiological state of shame. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

67 " Attempting to motivate from the outside betrays a lack of faith in the child and in nature. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

68 " Attempting to motivate from the outside betrays a lack of faith in the child and in nature. It reflects the anxiety of the parent, not the limitations of the child. It’s unfortunate but true that while we may not be able to transplant genuine motivation into our children, we are altogether too successful when it comes to sowing in them the seeds of our own anxiety. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

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

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

70 " Sick and weak are not useful entries in the dictionary of self-understanding. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

71 " 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 "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

72 " The fact is, we in this society are often quite removed from our own emotional reality. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

73 " Some development of the capacity to be alone is necessary if the brain is to function at its best, and if the individual is to fulfil his highest potential. Human beings easily become alienated from their own deepest needs and feelings. Learning, thinking, innovation and maintaining contact with one’s own inner world are all "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

74 " The three conditions without which healthy growth does not take place can be taken for granted in the matrix of the womb: nutrition, a physically secure environment and the unbroken relationship with a safe, ever-present maternal organism. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

75 " If in the photograph the love may be seen in my mother’s face, her fear and worry are reflected in mine. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

76 " The effects of disrupted family life on mental functioning are magnified by cultural influences. “American society,” Drs. Hallowell and Ratey observe, “tends to create ADD-like symptoms in all of us. We live in an ADD-ogenic culture.” They identify what they call “pseudo ADD,” people living lives in conformity with the frenzied society and culture around them but not impaired in their functioning by the neurophysiological attributes of ADD. It can look like ADD from the outside, but it is not ADD from within. What are some of the hallmarks of American culture that are also typical of ADD? The fast pace. The sound bite. The bottom line. Short takes, quick cuts. The TV remote-control clicker. High stimulation. Restlessness... Speed. Present-centered, no future, no past. Disorganization... Going for the gusto. Making it on the run. The fast track. Whatever works. Hollywood. The stock exchange. Fads...3 "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

77 " Each time we scream at someone in traffic, we are telling a story from the earliest part of our life. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

78 " in 1935 the average working man had forty hours a week free, including Saturday. By 1990, it was down to seventeen hours. The twenty-three lost hours of free time a week since 1935 are the very hours in which the father could be a nurturing father, and find some center in himself, and the very hours in which the mother could feel she actually has a husband. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

79 " A physiological inability to breast-feed does not disqualify one from changing diapers or emotionally nurturing an infant. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

80 " The world is much more ready to accept someone who is different and comfortable with it than someone desperately seeking to conform by denying himself. "

― Gabor Maté , Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder