It is so fascinating to me that the paradox that I am experiencing is that by rejecting your “humanity” as an alterhuman, I am infinitely more human by doing so.

[“We do not find out about the boundaries of acceptable behavior by reading a manual or even by being told. The setting of limits has to begin long before we understand why those limits must be respected. We find out by the reactions of our parents, the most important of which are nonverbal. The word no by itself would mean nothing to the toddler unless it was said in a stern voice and with a disapproving look, along with other evidence of disapproval, such as shaking the head. Throughout life, the nonverbal messages we read between the lines of verbal communication—far more than the words themselves—define our relationships with others, either inviting us in or keeping us out.

“Even the most benign parenting,” writes Allan Schore, the seminal psychological researcher and therapist, “involves some use of mild shaming procedures to influence behavior.” At the beginning of the stage of mobile, restless exploration, 90 percent of maternal behavior consists of affection, play and caregiving, with only 5 percent involved in prohibiting the junior toddler from ongoing activity, according to one study. In the following months, there is a radical shift. The aroused toddler’s curiosity and impulsiveness lead him into many situations where the parent must express disapproval. Between the ages of eleven and seventeen months, the average toddler experiences a prohibition every nine minutes. In response to the words, vocal tone and body language of disapproval, the toddler goes into the physiological shame state: from activity to inactivity, from expending energy to conserving energy, from a high-arousal state to a low-arousal state. This achieves exactly what nature would intend—stopping a possibly dangerous activity, at a signal from the parent.

During the phase of decreased arousal, new circuits will develop so that the cortex can inhibit the other part of the autonomic nervous system, its parasympathetic division. As before, the environment has to be right for the pathways of inhibition to mature.

Shame becomes excessive if the parent’s signaling of disapproval is overly strong, or if the parent does not move to reestablish warm emotional contact with the child immediately—what Gershen Kaufman calls “restoring the interpersonal bridge.” Chronic stress experienced by the parent has the effect of breaking that bridge. The small child does not have a large store of insight for interpreting the parent’s moods and facial expressions: they either invite contact or forbid it. When the parent is distracted or withdrawn, the older infant or toddler experiences shame. Shame postures are observed in infants in response to nothing more than the parent breaking eye contact. The demeanor of the infants of depressed mothers is one of inactivity and the averted gaze.

Past the toddler phase, there will be many times the child’s behavior may trigger an angry response from the parent, the ADD child more than the average. Some parents are able to express anger without making the child feel cut off emotionally. They convey disapproval without rejection. Other parents, especially those with self-regulation problems of their own, may react with open or choked rage, punishing coldness or dejected withdrawal that signals defeat and disappointment. These were the anger responses my children experienced from me. Each time this happens, shame is evoked in the child, especially as the parent usually believes—and makes the child believe—that whatever his (the parent’s) reaction is, the child is responsible for it.

The deep feelings of shame associated with attention deficit disorder are usually explained by the obvious fact that the ADD individual gets many things wrong. On the face of it, this makes sense. The adult or child with attention deficit disorder may frequently offend people or break a promise or be late somewhere. Given his inattentiveness and difficulties reading nonverbal social messages, he treads on toes—in both senses of that phrase. He carries memories of having failed at many tasks, of being deservedly criticized—so he thinks—for many shortcomings. Such events, however, can only reinforce shame or provoke it—they cannot cause it. Its origins have nothing to do with bad deeds, failures or hurting anyone. Like its opposite number, hyperactivity, shame began as a normal physiological state that escaped regulation by the cortex. It becomes wound tightly into the self-identity of the individual.”]

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