ADD

I have ADD—Attachment Detachment Disorder! Or perhaps a variant of RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder), as specialists would call it. I am diagnosing and labeling myself because I am trying to be culturally relevant! Every emotion I experience must have a label, so I can blame it on a disorder! What I am attached to, when I gave it up (detached from it), I became disordered! 

 

How did I come to this conclusion? While still struggling with grief—the loss of a dear friend—I thought I had learned how to manage my emotions. But then came a simple act of giving away books (Stage 9 in the picture here). I hadn’t realized how even generosity or giving up could stir unexpected emotions in my heart—or lead to a disordered heart! 

There was a sense of loss in losing the books I loved! 

 

As a physician, my first instinct is to explain this disturbance through science.  

 

Here’s an attempt:  

 

Feelings and emotions arise from the activation or suppression of ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ neurotransmitters. Relationships (with anything), therefore, are perceived as positive or negative based on the chemical signals in our brain. Neurons receive input from our five senses and interpret these signals based on long-term memory, past experiences, and the conditioning we undergo throughout our growth and development. When a stimulus is perceived as positive or negative, neurons receive, communicate, perceive, and respond. Depending on this process, there is either suppression or overproduction of positive or negative neurotransmitters. Grief and loss lead to a suppression of positive neurotransmitters and an overproduction of negative ones because we are conditioned to perceive separation as painful.”  

A purely physiological explanation.  

But when it comes to human loss, there is more. I believe it is the ‘Imago Dei—the Image of God in us—that fills us with pain and grief. Every separation challenges our hearts because we were created for connection with God and with each other. Our neurotransmitters are not merely shaped by evolution or experience; rather, the Imago Dei is imprinted within these physical structures. 

 

But what about books? Why does giving them away trigger RAD? Or why does witnessing a beautiful scene fade away leave me with a sense of loss? Can neurophysiology fully explain this? 

The more I reflect, the more I realize that no physiological explanation can indeed account for the ache of loss, not just with people but also with books, familiar places, beauty, or friends from whom we may eventually part.  

 

At our core, we are wired for beauty - a beauty that directs our hearts to the greater ‘reality of beauty’ we once had but lost in our human journey. Back in the Garden, we were not conditioned but created to experience beauty through relationships and our senses. And when we lose it, something at our very core is affected.  

 

Philosophy aside, how do I deal with what I feel? I am beginning to understand that my loss is someone else’s gain. I am not merely giving up what I love—I am entrusting what I cherish into the hands of someone I love even more than the books or things I held dear. I want them to enjoy what I once enjoyed.  

 

This means that everything I hold close—everything and everyone I cherish—is given to me so that I may, in turn, give to others. But I hope those who take my books will do justice to them by reading them and not remain in Stage 8—the hoarding stage!