Wired for Connection

“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.” Sir Isaac Newton

So I was watching the hour long video that Hedy Schleifer has released on her website, www.hedyyumi.com, and she was talking about a natural law that we all know about to do with magnets, called the law of attraction. She talks about how when a couple are in their survival dance with their neurochemistry set on ‘anxious’ setting they end up repelling each other - even when the intention is to get through the conflict and stay connected.
And she talks about how, by using the brain's wired-in need to connect relationally, we can invite two people to turn from repelling each other to being drawn and attracted to each other again. In a sense we as couples therapists - and I think, as individuals therapists, are in the trade of helping people to build bridges back to connection. Connection with themselves firstly and then increasingly, connection with others in their lives.

We as humans just don’t do well when we are feeling the perception of disconnection. We are wired for connection and get distressed when we feel out of it.

Trust, Participate and Be Grateful

Recently I participated in one of those lovely peer group gatherings that nourish and strengthen me. A simple gathering of 4 humble, wise women of ages ranging from 40-70 that comes together to create a slow, sacred space where we flow organically around whatever comes into the space. We are all increasingly trusting that whatever questions, clinical cases or reflections are presented, that a common thread evolves which draws us together wondrously resonating with four very different lives and women.

The thread yesterday emerged simply and powerfully from a book one of us had been reading, a book of Buddhist type reflections that invited the reader to follow three energies with awareness:
To Trust that life is happening just as it must; to Participate and turn towards what life is inviting you to; and to be Grateful for all that supports and enriches our lives moment by moment.

This came as a gift to us all in the complexity of all that living our lives with vision calls us to – a map that lights the way ahead….

Our Social Brain and the Web

So back to my ipad. 

We can’t stuff the genie back in the box that is the web. We can however stay curious and vigilant with our growing understanding of how our social brains function to grow practises that will allow us to have the multiple benefits of the web, and at the same time help us grow in a new mindfulness or meditational practise of slowing down and bringing our full presence to the moment.
Any ideas out there about all this?!?

Slowing Down for the Sake of Our Social Brain

Part of ‘flaming’ is the acceleration of time that e-interactions give us – and what a blessing that acceleration can be! Yet there is a different quality to that sort of interaction than to real-time interactions. So here is the vital question that occupies my mind as I consider all this:
How can we have the benefits but also give our social brains what they hunger for?What practises can I develop in myself that will help me do e-interactions with more social awareness?

All I can think of is training myself to slow down and imagine the other person and bring my full presence to them – before I begin to respond.

Wait…. this sounds familiar!! Don’t I teach this with couples - slowing down and consciously bringing your full presence to yourself and then the other in order to have a connection….?

E-communication and Our Social Brain

Well, the vision board was back in March and I forgot all about my ipad wish…funny that! Then my new son-in-law was selling his ipad and had heard that I might be interested and so suddenly I was face to face with my nemesis!To cut a long story short we got the ipad and with mixed feelings I am beginning to learn all about it. It’s been great to Facetime my daughter who moved to Switzerland and friends and family in South Africa but beyond that I am still slowly incorporating it into my life. 

And here is the underlying resistance: 
Brain research is telling us that our powerful social brain functions best when we are face to face where it can add powerful subtexts of voice cadence, micro expressions and emotional cues to the words. Yet much of social technology does not allow that, leaving our social brain starved of vital data and our bodies reacting to the lack of information, often in reactive ways. The social brain is not being allowed to do its' constant job just out of our awareness helping us move forwards smoothly.

When there is no channel for the social brain to attend to then the orbital frontal cortex, which hunts for that information and helps us inhibit reactivity, is flying blind.

Daniel Goleman wonders if this is not a big part of the problem of intense e-interactions called’ flaming’.

Technology and me

I am having an ongoing love-hate relationship with social technology. Recently I did another vision board at my talented friend and colleague, Shelley Whitehead’s Vision Board Day. We started with an exercise of moving through some questions about yourselves and capturing your responses in one-word descriptors. In response to one of those questions an  ipad popped onto my list. No one was more amazed than myself as I have been bringing myself into the 21^st Century with a startling lack of grace! My husband’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when I told him what had happened…

And so it went on my vision board, a lovely picture of a woman of around my age sitting looking very happy, relaxed and confident smiling at the camera.

And there in that picture lies my dilemma – because what creates huge resistance in me is watching people busy on their devices in social situations totally engrossed in the screen and life, connection and relationships are passing them by. It’s so sad… and alarming. And I was not sure that I could win the battle to keep the seductive screen in proportion to my life and my goals.

Could I keep metaphorically looking at people-could I bring my full presence if there was an ipad in my life?

The Growth Mindset - how does it look?

So now I’m more interested in the growth mindset! What does that look like?

Well, it turns out, a growth mindset will lead to;

• A desire to learn and therefore a tendency to
• Embrace challenges
• Persist in the face of setbacks
• See effort as the path to mastery
• Learn from criticism
• Find lessons and inspiration in the success of others
• As a result reach even higher levels of achievement

Some weeks ago I watched Andy Murray win Wimbledon and as I listened to him talk about his journey to that trophy I could clearly hear a growth mindset. I know which mindset I would like to inhabit!!