Emotional Contagion

So relating with our clients without at least some understanding and awareness of this emotional contagion really would be working with one arm tied behind our backs metaphorically.

'In any human group, people pay most attention to – and put most importance on – what the most powerful person in that group says or does....Such emotional contagion happens whenever people interact...This contagion can happen because of our social brain, through circuitry like the mirror neuron system. Person-to-person emotional contagion operates automatically, instantly, unconsciously and out of our intentional control.

But we are only human - what happens when we are feeling tired, stressed or overwhelmed by any variety of things? And now we know that we are transmitting something else altogether! What an unsettling thought.

 

This last week I did a course where we were asked to play the role of supervisor with a supervisee and to focus on ourselves and do and say whatever we were feeling in the moment...a sort of stream of consciousness. Well it had some interesting effects! Being so in the here-and-now fed into the relational space a new energy and immediacy that had the amazing result of causing the client-supervisee relationship to be clearly re-experienced by the supervisee.

 

Hmmmm....I'm thinking of emotional contagion in all sorts of ways - how about you?!

Powerful People

So I was reading one of Daniel Goleman's posts on The Social Brain and he said something really interesting. He said:

'We are constantly impacting the brain states in other people. In my EI model, “Managing Relationships” means, at this level, that we’re responsible for how we shape the feelings of those we interact with – for better or for worse. In this sense, relationship skills have to do with managing brain states in other people.

This raises a question. Who sends the emotions that pass between people, and who receives them? One answer, for groups of peers, is that the sender tends to be the most emotionally expressive person in the group. But in groups where there are power differences – in the classroom, at work, in organizations generally – it is the most powerful person who is the emotional sender, setting the emotional state for the rest of the group.'

This has profound implications for those of us who provide any sort of service to others inviting them into better mental, physical , emotional and spiritual health. If we are aware of how our own brain-body pitches up in relationships then we are best placed to have that positive impact that we want and the client longs for.

Change?

It seems to me that coaching has a place in our modern world... in fact it may well have been going on in various forms in the past century in the form of pastoral advice, medical insructions and spiritual sessions!

We as therapists do need to change to meet the needs of the here and now – and yet find a way to walk with integrity in it all. After all... there is room for all of us. The “sexy” branded coach and the different work of the longer therapy – we are all needed. And if therapists are finding their diaries have too many open spots, then the adventure is to look at how to do what we do in a way that fits our context now.... and that, dear friends is another exciting story!

Fast food therapy?

So is coaching a kind of ‘fast food therapy’? Does it pander to what clients think they want but unwittingly leave them with out the substantial nutrition of more in-depth work? Am I colluding in sustaining something that is an indulgence - something that feels good but isn’t good for you?

And yet...who am I to rate human interactions and the immense variety of them as either right or wrong...good or bad...