Dr John DeMartini talks quite a lot about learning and behavioural problems stemming from what we are interested in and finding the drivers that influence us to study or change our behaviour and receive the reward. John tells a story of a business man asking him to work with his son. The boy was not doing well at school and very unmotivated. After chatting with the boy John found his interest was scoring with chicks. In his own creative way John then went about connecting improved school results with increasing this success rate with the girls. It worked. He found what motivated the boy and used it to get him to work harder at school.
Richard A. Friedman wrote an interesting article http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/02/opinion/sunday/a-natural-fix-for-adhd.html?referrer&_r=1 an extract is presented below.
Recent neuroscience research shows that people with A.D.H.D. are actually hard-wired for novelty-seeking — a trait that had, until relatively recently, a distinct evolutionary advantage. Compared with the rest of us, they have sluggish and underfed brain reward circuits, so much of everyday life feels routine and under-stimulating.
To compensate, they are drawn to new and exciting experiences and get famously impatient and restless with the regimented structure that characterizes our modern world. In short, people with A.D.H.D. may not have a disease, so much as a set of behavioral traits that don’t match the expectations of our contemporary culture.
From the standpoint of teachers, parents and the world at large, the problem with people with A.D.H.D. looks like a lack of focus and attention and impulsive behavior. But if you have the “illness,” the real problem is that, to your brain, the world that you live in essentially feels not very interesting.
One of my patients, a young woman in her early 20s, is prototypical. “I’ve been on Adderall for years to help me focus,” she told me at our first meeting. Before taking Adderall, she found sitting in lectures unendurable and would lose her concentration within minutes. Like many people with A.D.H.D., she hankered for exciting and varied experiences and also resorted to alcohol to relieve boredom. But when something was new and stimulating, she had laserlike focus. I knew that she loved painting and asked her how long she could maintain her interest in her art. “No problem. I can paint for hours at a stretch.”
Rewards like sex, money, drugs and novel situations all cause the release of dopamine in the reward circuit of the brain, a region buried deep beneath the cortex. Aside from generating a sense of pleasure, this dopamine signal tells your brain something like, “Pay attention, this is an important experience that is worth remembering.”
In Motivational Kinesiology Self Sabotage correction this is covered in the Self Sabotage environment Negative Ego Fantasy. It is where living on the edge is a way of feeling, for those afraid to feel.
The more novel and unpredictable the experience, the greater the activity in your reward center. But what is stimulating to one person may be dull — or even unbearably exciting — to another. There is great variability in the sensitivity of this reward circuit. Think of the adrenaline junkies who bungee jump without breaking a sweat and contrast them with the anxious spectators for whom the act evokes nothing but terror and dread.
Dr. Nora D. Volkow, a scientist who directs the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has studied the dopamine reward pathway in people with A.D.H.D. The adults with A.D.H.D. had significantly fewer D2 and D3 receptors (two specific subtypes of dopamine receptors) in their reward circuits than did healthy controls. Furthermore, the lower the level of dopamine receptors was, the greater the subjects’ symptoms of inattention.
Having a sluggish reward circuit makes normally interesting activities seem dull and would explain, in part, why people with A.D.H.D. find repetitive and routine tasks unrewarding and even painfully boring.
Psychostimulants like Adderall and Ritalin help by blocking the transport of dopamine back into neurons, thus increasing its level in the brain.
Adding to this we know that unnatural food, poor diet, emotional stress can all contribute. I fully appreciate the symptoms are real, we may simply be looking at the problem the wrong way. It is not uncommon for children to be drugged so the parents and reduce their stress levels. I have heard mothers say how happy they were that their kid sat quietly and watched TV.
Lets come up with creative solutions to the problem. Also visit Pyramids of Potential – Kathy Johnson’s site http://www.pyramidofpotential.com
The Motivational Kinesiology Integrated Movement exercise can assist as may reading Kissing the Black Dog
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