Quotes from Edward M. Hallowell

Creativity, after all, does not happen on schedule or on demand. It

Ideas coming in spontaneous, erratic bursts.

we are often unable to stop the idea generation at night;

Connection, positive connection, which at its most distilled is called love, has incredible healing power.

One large study (127 sets of identical twins and 111 sets of fraternal twins) recently found that in 51 percent of the identical sets both twins had ADD, while only 33 percent of those in the fraternal group shared the ADD diagnosis.

All people have their own special skills. Instead of just identifying deficiencies, schools should try to identify and promote those special skills as early on as possible. For

Some people call this being a nonconformist, but that term misses the point. We don't choose not to conform. We don't even notice what the standard we're not conforming to is!

People with ADHD are lovers in the sense that they tend to have unbridled optimism.

worry results from a heightened sense of vulnerability in the presence of a diminished sense of power.

people with ADHD feel an abiding need—an omnipresent itch—to create something.

Although environmental factors do influence the course of ADD over a lifetime, most practitioners in the field now agree that the characteristic problems of people with ADD stem from neurobiological malfunctioning

With every step forward we become more sure what the disorder is not: it is not willful misbehaving, it is not a moral failing, it is not a lack of trying nor an inability to take an interest in the world. Neurobiological data now show that the syndrome is rooted in the central nervous system.

Even awake we're dreaming, always creating, always searching for some mud pie to turn into pumpkin apple chiffon.

People who have a good supply of GABA or have brains that are naturally very responsive to GABA may be the people who are naturally cool and calm, possessed of an innate equanimity.

As is known by clinicians who work with the ADD population, and by parents of ADD children, and by adults who have ADD, one of the most frustrating aspects of ADD is the inability to profit from one's experience, the inability to focus on consequences, the inability to navigate through tasks or social situations or the world at large by using what has been learned previously.

Needs danger in order to feel engaged with life and truly alive

Worry becomes what attention turns into when it isn't focused on some task.

If you think of ADD as a basic problem with inhibition, it helps explain how ADD people get angry quicker. They don't inhibit their impulses as well as other people. They lack the little pause between impulse and action that allows most people to be able to stop and think. Treatment helps with that but it doesn't cure it completely.

You can superfocus sometimes, but also space out when you least mean to. You can radiate confidence and also feel as insecure as a cat in a kennel. You can perform at the highest level, feeling incompetent as you do so. You can be loved by many, but feel as if no one really likes you. You can absolutely, totally, intend to do something, then forget to do it. You can have the greatest ideas in the world, but feel as if you can't accomplish a thing.

In a neurotypical brain, when the TPN is turned on and you're on task, the DMN is turned off. But in the ADHD brain, the fMRI shows that when the TPN is turned on, the DMN is turned on as well, trying to muscle its way in and pull you into its grasp, thereby distracting you. In ADHD, therefore, the DMN competes with the TPN, which in most people it does not do.

If there is one takeaway in distilling down the complexity of the DMN and the TPN, it boils down to the fact that the toggle switches between them are off in those with ADHD.

ADD people love bottom lines," I answered, laughing. "It's always, 'Get to the point'; 'What's the next show?'; 'Where's the beef?' Ã¢â'¬Â "Yeah, you're right," he said. "I'm not big on scenery. I want to get there. Is that bad?

This is truly a malfunction of the imagination, and it explains the confluence of the creative and depressive we so often see within the same person, even within the same hour.

These situations allow the ADD person not only to get into forward motion, but also to forget, to disregard that they need brakes in the first place. In an emergency, it's full speed ahead. What a relief.