First things first. Your friend will of course be jittery, unable to sit still, pay attention for long, or listen much to anyone else while he keeps topping up his caffeine. Months of psychotherapy won’t help. Coffee, more than a couple of mugs in the morning, is a drug. So is sugar. Give a child sugar, it will almost immediately turn into a monster, unable to respond to requests or to control its emotions. And it’s a terrible paradox that people give children sweets to pacify them. Aaargh.
Wonderful essay. I loved this paragraph: "Being in nature may not only restore our attention but attune it to certain nuances of perception. We see not only a tree, but rough furrowed bark and low horizontal branches and variably-lobed leaves shiny on top and pale underneath—a bur oak, perhaps. Or we don’t see these details in separation, but the tree as a whole at sunset, standing alone in a farm field, presiding over the hunched silhouettes of wild turkeys."
Perhaps, it is easier to give people drugs than actually give them the proper attention they need. There is an attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder in society and it’s systemically focused on keeping our attention and hyperactivity on desire and consumerism rather than on what makes human beings flourish.
Often I have things to do in my permaculture garden and I find myself losing focus and forgetting why I was there. That is, I notice new growth, new (and larger) insects and animals, etc. I realise now that's actually a good thing. There is an unwinding that precedes focus.
[note - I haven't read all of the article at this stage - printed it and will read on the train home]
That’s a great insight—that unwinding precedes growth. There may be a transitional stage between “scattered” or “fatigued” attention, and strengthening our attention in a restorative way.
And a further wrinkle: In the research on mindfulness (which I didn’t get into in the essay) it’s been speculated that mindfulness practices start by strengthening attention, and only after they have done that is there a positive effect on regulating emotions. Probably the same is true for prayer practices.
So perhaps the overall trend is: scattered/fatigued attention, then restored/strengthened attention, then increased emotional stability.
Interesting parallels between what you call soft fascination and Iain McGilchrist’s description of the way the right hemisphere of the brain sees the world - holistically, as a flow, direct experience unmediated by left brain labelling and analytic linear thinking. Without the right hemisphere the left hemisphere becomes paranoid and delusional, sees everything in bits, as something to be instrumentalised or exploited or consumed. Taking a drug as opposed to going for walk in the woods.
Excellent observation, David. You are spot on. I had noticed the parallel as well but it seemed a bit too complex/abstract to get into for this essay. Perhaps another essay…
Psychiatric diagnoses are best described as syndromes, a collection of symptoms rather than discrete illnesses. There are no biological tests for nearly all (maybe even all) of the diagnoses in the DSM. They are determined primarily via subjective (self) reporting which is cross indexed with the diagnostic criteria of the DSM. The DSM is not a scientific document (not based on research findings), but rather a political one, the contents being determined by the opinion of a rather small (less than 200) group of mental health “experts” (mostly psychiatrists, mostly male, mostly from western countries). Unsurprisingly, Big Pharma plays a very big role in the politics of this group.
So, given that understanding of the DSM, ADHD symptoms and the symptoms of other syndromes can be seen as resulting from a wide range of etiologies. As a clinician, my own perspective is that most of the contents of the DSM are various descriptions of disregulation resulting from unmet needs for safety, connection, and meaning/purpose in life (Thank you, Maslow!). These unmet needs can be seen as disruptions in our relationships and our ways of responding to that disruption. The ADHD syndrome shares big overlaps with PTSD, Bipolar, and some Cluster B Personality disorders, in particular dissociative experiences.
“As a clinician, my own perspective is that most of the contents of the DSM are various descriptions of disregulation resulting from unmet needs for safety, connection, and meaning/purpose in life.”
That’s a good way to put it. The more fully we live as human beings, in all these various areas, the less likely we will experience dysregulation and disorder.
From the perspective of Machine ideology, “safety” has been replaced with safety-ism, connection with faux digital connection, and meaning/purpose has been shallowed out as we live increasingly through hedonism and entertainment.
I wonder if it might be more accurate to call this attention surplus syndrome rather than deficit. Rather than a lack of being able to pay attention, it may be just paying attention to more things at once than other people can or do. Diffused attention syndrome?
That’s an interesting twist on the usual way to think of it. Definitely there seems a strong element (even for non-ADHD people) of being often flooded with too much information, or feeling too hurried in how we live, and feeling consequently scattered, thinned, or “diffused”.
Whether we can adapt is the real question. The attention system is a bottleneck for the mind; only so much can get in at once. It may be possible to widen this bottle slightly, for instance by training our minds through various practices, or by minimizing distractions around us, etc., but there are significant limits to widening beyond this level. Also, even if it is widened, it means that downstream, other areas of the mind/brain, such as memory, must likewise adjust to process more information.
And there’s no indication, to date, that we are doing this. Our brains/minds seem to have adapted to the flood of daily information not by processing more, but by processing more in a shallower way.
Which is not an adaptation, but a compensation, and one that comes with a cost.
This is really well articulated, and gives words to some things I've been thinking about for a while, particularly the nature-as-tanning-salon mindset and the pathologisation of what are largely symptoms of a culture in which attention is commodified and instincts are suppressed. A pleasure to read.
Lovely overview of a difficult subject. The example of horses kept in unnatural conditions and developing behavioral abnormalities perfectly summarizes the problem. For millennia, our survival as a species depending on NOT sitting still for long periods of time. Modern school and work is not only antithetical to health and happiness, it is deeply unnatural. It's not surprising that ADHD, OCD, depression, and anxiety arise from this environment. Indeed, it would be more surprising if they did not.
Thanks for this Peco. I can testify to how a radical move from the city to a small farm with lots of animals, how that shaped and ultimately transformed my children. At the time we were seen as crazy, abandoning a lucrative corporate career, etc. All because intuitively I knew that my children and my wife deserve a better life. The rest is history, and it is for sure a positive outcome in so many ways. I will do it again, if I had to choose again, to give my kids a better life in the open, away from the smoggy slums of city life.
A great story. To pull back from a career like that, in search of a better life for your family—with no guarantees—is not something everybody would risk. It also reminds us that intentional change requires a willingness for risk. And to trust.
I was diagnosed with adhd as young as 3rd grade and it was because my teacher noticed me zoning out in the classroom. I love that you point out that normal behaviors of zoo animals in the case studies were being problematized, because that’s how I feel! I was a kid who didn’t want to be stuck sitting in a classroom. I don’t like my label of ADHD because it assumes I have a “disorder” and a “deficit” instead of just respecting that there are different neuro-types with strengths and weaknesses. I am a mover and a doer and I thrive with dynamic, movement oriented work. I wish ADHD could be called something different and society could understand that my neurotype probably THRIVED back in the day with more hunter gatherer based setups and even agricultural.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Jenn. Your observation that “there are different neuro-types with strengths and weaknesses” is incredibly important.
Anecdotally horses seem to sometimes learn to crib from other horses (especially their mother’s) as the behavior is sometimes noted in horses that have never been confined. I knew of one horse that would crib on wooden fence posts and trees because he was in a huge pasture and that was the only wood available. He was born in a large pasture and had lived his entire life up to that point in large pastures, only in a smaller corral for short times and with other horses. But his mom was a notorious cribber before she “switched careers”. So there can also a learned/social aspect to it which probably applies to ADHD somewhat as well.
First things first. Your friend will of course be jittery, unable to sit still, pay attention for long, or listen much to anyone else while he keeps topping up his caffeine. Months of psychotherapy won’t help. Coffee, more than a couple of mugs in the morning, is a drug. So is sugar. Give a child sugar, it will almost immediately turn into a monster, unable to respond to requests or to control its emotions. And it’s a terrible paradox that people give children sweets to pacify them. Aaargh.
A high sugar/caffeine diet is definitely an easily overlooked factor.
Wonderful essay. I loved this paragraph: "Being in nature may not only restore our attention but attune it to certain nuances of perception. We see not only a tree, but rough furrowed bark and low horizontal branches and variably-lobed leaves shiny on top and pale underneath—a bur oak, perhaps. Or we don’t see these details in separation, but the tree as a whole at sunset, standing alone in a farm field, presiding over the hunched silhouettes of wild turkeys."
Perhaps, it is easier to give people drugs than actually give them the proper attention they need. There is an attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder in society and it’s systemically focused on keeping our attention and hyperactivity on desire and consumerism rather than on what makes human beings flourish.
At the same time most people prefer the “fix” of a drug or technology over having to re-evaluate lifestyle and life choices.
Often I have things to do in my permaculture garden and I find myself losing focus and forgetting why I was there. That is, I notice new growth, new (and larger) insects and animals, etc. I realise now that's actually a good thing. There is an unwinding that precedes focus.
[note - I haven't read all of the article at this stage - printed it and will read on the train home]
That’s a great insight—that unwinding precedes growth. There may be a transitional stage between “scattered” or “fatigued” attention, and strengthening our attention in a restorative way.
And a further wrinkle: In the research on mindfulness (which I didn’t get into in the essay) it’s been speculated that mindfulness practices start by strengthening attention, and only after they have done that is there a positive effect on regulating emotions. Probably the same is true for prayer practices.
So perhaps the overall trend is: scattered/fatigued attention, then restored/strengthened attention, then increased emotional stability.
It’s more lucrative to prescribe drugs rather than to prescribe daily walks in the woods... follow the money... Thank you for a lovely essay!
Follow the money—a consistent truism in our world. Sadly, it explains a lot of things.
Interesting parallels between what you call soft fascination and Iain McGilchrist’s description of the way the right hemisphere of the brain sees the world - holistically, as a flow, direct experience unmediated by left brain labelling and analytic linear thinking. Without the right hemisphere the left hemisphere becomes paranoid and delusional, sees everything in bits, as something to be instrumentalised or exploited or consumed. Taking a drug as opposed to going for walk in the woods.
Excellent observation, David. You are spot on. I had noticed the parallel as well but it seemed a bit too complex/abstract to get into for this essay. Perhaps another essay…
Psychiatric diagnoses are best described as syndromes, a collection of symptoms rather than discrete illnesses. There are no biological tests for nearly all (maybe even all) of the diagnoses in the DSM. They are determined primarily via subjective (self) reporting which is cross indexed with the diagnostic criteria of the DSM. The DSM is not a scientific document (not based on research findings), but rather a political one, the contents being determined by the opinion of a rather small (less than 200) group of mental health “experts” (mostly psychiatrists, mostly male, mostly from western countries). Unsurprisingly, Big Pharma plays a very big role in the politics of this group.
So, given that understanding of the DSM, ADHD symptoms and the symptoms of other syndromes can be seen as resulting from a wide range of etiologies. As a clinician, my own perspective is that most of the contents of the DSM are various descriptions of disregulation resulting from unmet needs for safety, connection, and meaning/purpose in life (Thank you, Maslow!). These unmet needs can be seen as disruptions in our relationships and our ways of responding to that disruption. The ADHD syndrome shares big overlaps with PTSD, Bipolar, and some Cluster B Personality disorders, in particular dissociative experiences.
A fine essay. Thanks!
“As a clinician, my own perspective is that most of the contents of the DSM are various descriptions of disregulation resulting from unmet needs for safety, connection, and meaning/purpose in life.”
That’s a good way to put it. The more fully we live as human beings, in all these various areas, the less likely we will experience dysregulation and disorder.
From the perspective of Machine ideology, “safety” has been replaced with safety-ism, connection with faux digital connection, and meaning/purpose has been shallowed out as we live increasingly through hedonism and entertainment.
I wonder if it might be more accurate to call this attention surplus syndrome rather than deficit. Rather than a lack of being able to pay attention, it may be just paying attention to more things at once than other people can or do. Diffused attention syndrome?
That’s an interesting twist on the usual way to think of it. Definitely there seems a strong element (even for non-ADHD people) of being often flooded with too much information, or feeling too hurried in how we live, and feeling consequently scattered, thinned, or “diffused”.
So perhaps this is an evolutionary adaptation to such a flooded informational landscape that will eventually be seen as advantageous. One can hope so!
Whether we can adapt is the real question. The attention system is a bottleneck for the mind; only so much can get in at once. It may be possible to widen this bottle slightly, for instance by training our minds through various practices, or by minimizing distractions around us, etc., but there are significant limits to widening beyond this level. Also, even if it is widened, it means that downstream, other areas of the mind/brain, such as memory, must likewise adjust to process more information.
And there’s no indication, to date, that we are doing this. Our brains/minds seem to have adapted to the flood of daily information not by processing more, but by processing more in a shallower way.
Which is not an adaptation, but a compensation, and one that comes with a cost.
This is really well articulated, and gives words to some things I've been thinking about for a while, particularly the nature-as-tanning-salon mindset and the pathologisation of what are largely symptoms of a culture in which attention is commodified and instincts are suppressed. A pleasure to read.
Lovely overview of a difficult subject. The example of horses kept in unnatural conditions and developing behavioral abnormalities perfectly summarizes the problem. For millennia, our survival as a species depending on NOT sitting still for long periods of time. Modern school and work is not only antithetical to health and happiness, it is deeply unnatural. It's not surprising that ADHD, OCD, depression, and anxiety arise from this environment. Indeed, it would be more surprising if they did not.
Thanks for this Peco. I can testify to how a radical move from the city to a small farm with lots of animals, how that shaped and ultimately transformed my children. At the time we were seen as crazy, abandoning a lucrative corporate career, etc. All because intuitively I knew that my children and my wife deserve a better life. The rest is history, and it is for sure a positive outcome in so many ways. I will do it again, if I had to choose again, to give my kids a better life in the open, away from the smoggy slums of city life.
A great story. To pull back from a career like that, in search of a better life for your family—with no guarantees—is not something everybody would risk. It also reminds us that intentional change requires a willingness for risk. And to trust.
I love that! What do you do for money now??
We're in Agricultural ICT solutions, far away from the city lights, thank God!
I was diagnosed with adhd as young as 3rd grade and it was because my teacher noticed me zoning out in the classroom. I love that you point out that normal behaviors of zoo animals in the case studies were being problematized, because that’s how I feel! I was a kid who didn’t want to be stuck sitting in a classroom. I don’t like my label of ADHD because it assumes I have a “disorder” and a “deficit” instead of just respecting that there are different neuro-types with strengths and weaknesses. I am a mover and a doer and I thrive with dynamic, movement oriented work. I wish ADHD could be called something different and society could understand that my neurotype probably THRIVED back in the day with more hunter gatherer based setups and even agricultural.
(Also side note/caveat : technology is def making our attention spans worse, especially short video clips)
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Jenn. Your observation that “there are different neuro-types with strengths and weaknesses” is incredibly important.
Anecdotally horses seem to sometimes learn to crib from other horses (especially their mother’s) as the behavior is sometimes noted in horses that have never been confined. I knew of one horse that would crib on wooden fence posts and trees because he was in a huge pasture and that was the only wood available. He was born in a large pasture and had lived his entire life up to that point in large pastures, only in a smaller corral for short times and with other horses. But his mom was a notorious cribber before she “switched careers”. So there can also a learned/social aspect to it which probably applies to ADHD somewhat as well.