Wisdom from Dr. Gabor Maté, bestselling author of “Scattered Minds“, “When the Body Says No”, “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”, and co-author of “Hold on to Your Kids”.

1. It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behaviour.

2. The DSM … defines attention deficit disorder by its external features, not by its emotional meaning in the lives of individual human beings.

3. I believe that ADD can be better understood if we examine people’s lives, not only bits of DNA.

4. Children are a great incentive and impetus for parents to learn about themselves, about each other and about life itself. Unfortunately, much of the learning may occur at their expense.

5. Love felt by the parent does not automatically translate into love experienced by the child.

6. Knowing oneself comes from attending with compassionate 

7. Whether these features become talents or problems depends, in short, on how the child’s nature is nurtured.

8. Whatever the hopes, wishes or intentions of the parent, the child does not experience the parent directly: the child experiences the parenting.

9. When we flee our vulnerability, we lose our full capacity for feeling emotion.

10. We readily feel for the suffering child, but cannot see the child in the adult who, his soul fragmented and isolated, hustles for survival a few blocks away from where we shop or work.