How We Create ADD and The 7 Keys to Reverse it

The diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) has skyrocketed 800% in the past three decades. Currently over sixty million Americans are said to suffer from attention disorders and there are now forty five million prescriptions written for these toxic medications to improve their performance on a daily basis. However, there is no biological test to show this “illness” exists despite a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry that thrives on its existence. Moreover these medications are dangerous in themselves. Forty percent of users experience negative side effects, which include anxiety, depression, insomnia, stunting of growth and suicidal thoughts! I wonder, if 40% of the time you drove you got into an accident or didn’t reach your desired destination, would you continue to drive?

For the past forty-two years I have studied the symptoms and causes of what is labeled ADD/ADHD and approaching this with a different perspective asking different questions.

How is it possible that someone can act ADD/ADHD in certain classes or parts of their life and yet be completely focused and on task in others? If someone has diabetes or heart disease, they have it in their home, at the office, in every classroom and every location they go.

How is it that kids and adults who “have ADD/ADHD” while in school or at work can spend hours completely focused playing a video game or texting with friends? Doesn’t this show that they can have focused attention?

These are variants of the questions guiding my initial research project forty years ago. I spent the next 25 years researching and experimenting with clients in my private therapeutic practice to discover what was the difference in a situation or person that made the difference between being focused or scattered, self regulated or out of control? A major part of this approach was studying those individuals who were extremely focused and organized to learn what how they did it.

This is essentially what I now do. I model for people how to use strategies and tools in a uniform manner to produce consistently exceptional results on a predictable basis. I also model individuals who consistently produce undesirable results so clients learn how they act differently than those who are successful. This is the scientific phenomenological approach I used when developing the science of Quantum Embodiment®. Quantum Embodiment is how consciousness extends itself into form, how the invisible in the mind, becomes the manifested in the world. It was through this practice I created the 7 Keys for Attention Development.

What I learned was that attention deficits and disorders are created by a combination of three factors:

1. Distressing influences, internally and externally
2. Dysfunction due to insufficient training in how to function in a relaxed, focused and empowering way and
3. Disinterest of being involved with work or study that had little or no personal value or enjoyment

Distressing influences are often in the form of difficult family relationships, especially divorce, as well as financial instability and ongoing health challenges. The difficulties of these issues can be current or many years in the past but left unresolved. Regardless of the source of the stress, the biological effects produced contribute to internal imbalances and distraction. People that conceive of themselves in a flight or fight situation have their levels of blood sugar and adrenaline increased, which creates ischemia. Ischemia reduces the circulation of oxygen and vital neuro-transmitters that keep the system calm and centered. This creates Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) and can cause many physical and emotional hardships.

Insufficient training in how to cope with what we perceive as life’s problems arise from some combination of poor familial models, educational deficiencies in how to relax, focus, communicate effectively and/or use emotional intelligence. Every thought creates a biological reaction and negative thinking, and taking things personally combined with the inability to feel grounded and safely contained in your environment throw the mind/body out of balance.

Failing to relate to the benefits of the activity involved, so that it is not categorized as fun, useful or pleasurable, means that we find no value in it. Being forced to do anything goes against the core nature of living, which is based on freedom and choice. Even being tested regularly at school or at work sends a threating message that your future is uncertain and will be judged by another as to whether or not you pass! When your interests are not engaged, boredom is a likely outcome. After all, who doesn’t get fidgety and distracted when bored?!

The degree to which a person exhibits the symptoms labeled, as ADD/ADHD is directly proportionate to their degree of being able to effectively cope with and use workable strategies that relieves stress, maintains balance and stays focused on the benefits of what they are involved in. It is a combination of these factors that work together to produce the symptoms of inattentiveness, disorganization and hyper activity. Perhaps what is most interesting is how a persons coping abilities can work in some areas and not in others; they can be very focused on one subject or project and completely scattered on another!

The full science of this process is detailed in my latest book The 7 Keys for Attention Development: The Guaranteed Program. What follows is a brief outline of the steps a person experiences as distress builds and their ADD/ADHD symptoms develop. Consider these steps for your own life and see if when involved in any of these situations you experienced to a greater or lesser degree the symptoms often labeled as ADD/ADHD.

1. Breath Restriction: When you are anxious or stressed, the breath becomes shallow. Breathing fully and openly sends a message to the brain that there is no threat of danger, allowing the body and mind to be calm and present. When the breath becomes shallow and anxious, the fight or flight response is triggered creating inattentiveness as the minds jumps from one subject to the next in search of an outlet. The sympathetic system becomes dominant as the calming and healing parasympathetic system goes offline. This happens in conjunction with stage two, perception of threat.

2. The startle reflex becomes engaged as there is a loss of feeling safe and connected.
At this stage, your inner dialogue is being flooded with negative and fearful thoughts. You are feeling endangered, inadequate, and fragile. During this stage your mind creates “what-if” scenarios, further weakening your attentiveness as every thought creates a biological reaction.

3. Many deny the stress and fear they are experiencing.
You attempt hide your distressed state, shifting your focus to meaningless things, drifting away from your true nature. When you begin to live a life not in alignment with your true nature, your energy becomes restricted and you become emotionally numb.

4. You create strategies to combat your disturbed state.
You eat high carbohydrate, high sugar, and greasy “comfort” foods to channel your body’s energy toward processing them and will divert you from developing attentiveness. You’ll watch hours of TV and engage in other meaningless activities that are forms of mental or corporeal fidgeting. You are now having a nearly impossible time trying to pay attention to a task for a period of time.

In each case the solutions used to address this discomforting feeling of distress within only contributes to creating more. As you are not trained in how to function in a relaxed, focused and empowering way you do the best you can and seek out quick fixes to overcome your unwanted condition.

The 7 Keys were designed to systematically address each element causing these disturbances. The protocols contained in the program help you re-assemble yourself to become calm, focused and re-connected in an empowered way. The 7 Keys for Attention Development app is designed so that I personally direct you in using the tools most appropriate for you at the time to become calm, focused, centered and connected in an empowering way to handle whatever you are facing. The online program is a complete step-by-step guide to assist you in retraining your brain for greater self-mastery and attention development. Here are a few examples of the program’s daily protocols and phenomenological insights.

Key 1: Create a Calm Presence
Take a moment, sit up straight, close your eyes and feel your body as you take eight to ten slow inhalations through your nose counting to six with even slower exhalations counting to eight. Hold the breath in between for two to four seconds. This will help you activate the parasympathetic nervous system to quickly lower blood sugar and adrenaline levels. Within a few minutes you will begin to feel calm.

Key 2: Foster a Positive Attitude
Recognize the thoughts currently entering your mind, and allow them to slip away without judgment. Fill your mind instead with positive affirmations. Get in touch with the feeling of gratitude and compassion. You can do this kind of mental scanning and reprogramming at any point when you may feel distress.

Key 3: Feel Centered and Grounded
Feeling grounded in the body helps you feel centered and empowered. As the body is the unconscious mind, it is essential whatever positive affirmation you repeat mentally you embody physically. Any contradiction between thought and embodiment creates confusions and weakens you instead of strengthening you.

Key 4: Feel Alert and Energized
A sedentary lifestyle can be toxic to your body and mind. Getting active enhances circulation, deepens breathing and activates the lymphatic system that expels dangerous toxins from the body. This is especially important today due to the enormous number of pollutants in the air and additives in our food. This key will improve the circulation vital to access the energy needed to successfully focus and stay on task. This takes your positive thoughts and embodiments and puts them into action. This is to be done with a strong emotional content to launch your thoughts into form. Move, be active and put yourself into action.

Key 5: Become Attentive and Focused
This key is about harnessing the ability to direct your attention to whatever you choose, allowing you to communicate effectively and feel more in control of your life You learn to find an inner stillness and have the ability to make connecting choices; this helps break old distracting habit patterns.

Key 6: Be Open and Connected
Feeling open and connected will restore an inner sense of balance, peace and connection. This Key revitalizes many areas of life by releasing pent up grievances through forgiveness at all four levels. You learn healthy ways to express and release yourself of frustration, rage, and anger to put yourself back in control of your emotions. This cleansing reignites your flames of passion and the joy of joining together with others towards mutual goals. You quickly become more comfortable seeing yourself in the bigger picture in the adventure of living.

Key 7: Feel Strong, Purposeful, and Well Nourished
This key helps you be purposeful in what you are doing and how to take excellent care of yourself to feel you are contributing to a meaningful existence while being energized, rested, and fit. This takes you beyond just getting a good night’s sleep and eating healthy food. The body, mind and spirit’s needs are cared for with the fortitude to handle the different tides, currents and waves in the ocean of life while having fun and meaning in all you do.
Research studies have shown that with 40 days of consistent behavior old habits can be broken and new ones established. This can work for being more focused and aware, establishing new exercise routines, eating a healthier diet, or taking time each day for self-care. Research has also shown that when there is accountability with a on going coaching relationship it can improve the results normally achieved by up to 300%. The program gives you the choice to have a coach or not.
It was on this basis I created The 7KeysForAttentionDevelopment.com It is a 12-week online interactive personal growth and development experience. The 7 Keys for Attention Development provides weekly five daily training regimes that explains and directs your practice of the essential elements that work to enhance attentiveness, clarity and self-management. It is designed to share evidence based knowledge and tools so that you will become more attentive, relaxed, connected, and in control of your mental and emotional state. Application of the tools of the 7 Keys will enhance your ability to function successfully in your work life, academic pursuits or relationships. Additionally there is one day a week of an online training session that participants attend and can chat directly with Brian or his trainers.
Participant’s activities are tracked to ensure they are making good progress and maintaining momentum to keep moving forward. One day a week is an integration day for participants to allow the weekly training to “simmer”. Participants receive three daily reminders through their smart phone or email to help integrate what is being learned in all aspects of their life.
In the first 42 days participants learn the foundational elements and tools for attention development, self-management and stress release. This is followed by an additional 42 days of integration as these tools and strategies are turned into new habits. In just 12 weeks, participants can establish a fulfilling practice of the tools of the 7 Keys that will give you a lifetime of rewards to help meet the goals you have established to improve your abilities to focus, relate and feel good!