Book Freak 130: Understanding Attention Deficit Disorder
Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood
Book Freak is a newsletter with mental tools you can use to improve the quality of your life and the lives of others. In this issue: four pieces of advice from Driven to Distraction, by Edward M. Hallowell M.D. and John J. Ratey M.D.
The importance of external structure
“While we all need external structure in our lives—some degree of predictability, routine, organization—those with ADD need it much more than most people. They need external structure so much because they so lack internal structure.”
The challenge of staying focused
“Russell Barkley similarly describes the primary problem in ADD as a deficit in the motivation system, which makes it impossible to stay on task for any length of time unless there is constant feedback, constant reward.”
Understanding the injured filter system
“In Silver’s model this injured filter system, which is regulated by the catecholamines, doesn’t screen out irrelevant information and sensory stimuli as efficiently as it should, thereby letting everything that registers at the desk of the reticular activating system arrive in the rooms of the frontal regions of the brain. The individual is bombarded, taking care of ten thousand guests in a hotel built for one thousand, on overload all the time, receiving messages about every minute aspect of his or her experience. It is no wonder, then, that the individual would be distractible or, as Silver would argue, inclined to withdraw from it all and shut the damned hotel down.”
Piles of distraction
“These examples reflect the stuff adult ADD is made of. Peter’s piles are particularly emblematic. So many adults with ADD have piles, little mess-piles, big mess-piles, piles everywhere. They are like a by-product of the brain’s work. What other people somehow put away, people with ADD put into piles.”
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