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If we had healthy relationships with our parents, we're good to go, with brain connections that were nurtured in ways that support healthy relationships. For the rest of us? Very good news: We're not stuck with a brain that doesn't change. We can give ourselves a second chance for successful relationship brain wiring, using mindfulness meditation (no religion required). Read More
What kind of relationship
What kind of relationship wiring do you think a women will have in her 20's that grew up without a father who left her when she was a baby?
Loss of attachment and brain integration
As far as we can tell, it does seem to make it harder for our brains to have optimal integration when a parent has left us, in different ways at different ages. There are all kinds of other factors, though -- for example, the emotional reaction and availability of the parent who stayed (your mother's response). Or, if there was another caregiver who might have supplemented your experience of safe attachment.
In any case, it would understandable if the brain of the person you described responded to emotional attachment by hitting the "warning" button. That can come out in different ways -- for example, working too hard to "secure" a relationship, or, the other side of the same coin, avoiding close connection.
Learning to soothe your amygdala (basically, the warning button) can be done in a variety of ways, including mindfulness meditation. It can help integrate your brain in ways which, in the situation you described, might have been less than optimal.
Thanks for your question. I wish you well.
Neuroscience and Relationships
Great article! Am currently taking a six week course called "The Neuroscience of Attachment." It's very exciting stuff and I look forward to continuing to study this. Great time to be a therapist in this field - it's nice to know we can empower our clients with the knowledge that yes, they really can change!
Lisa Brookes Kift, MFT
The Toolbox at http://LisaKiftTherapy.com
Reading this has made
Reading this has made meditation so much easier for me. I've been struggling with it for almost a year now, thinking I've been doing it "wrong." So thank you. Keep up the good work.
Practicing guided meditation using online resources
Free guided meditation can be tried at:
http://www.clicktomeditate.com
This site needs no registration, no advertisements are shown.
All the meditations have high quality music and are totally free.
You can also read about all the articles on Meditation at this site.
Mindfulness and Business
Great article!
Simply amazing what our brains are capable of if we only acquire the slightest sense of what "mindsight" means and act accordingly. Dan Siegel's book is indeed a very important stepping stone in this direction (I recently wrote more on the issue on www.zen-venture.com).
More interestingly, these scientific findings have the potential to bring transformation not only into our private relationships but, as you rightly mentioned in regard to your Washington-clients, also our professional lives and those within corporate structures...amazing opportunities and vast potential for transforming the world to a more compassionate one.
I know my comment comes rather late, but in any case I hope it still reaches you.
On the same note: there's a brilliant conference coming up in Zurich, the Mind & Life XX on "Compassion in Economics"
good luck and the best of wishes,
Vincent
Different take on neuroscience of mindfulness
The Different Neuroscience of Mindfulness
In its essence, mindfulness changes how we ‘want’, but in spite of the explosion of research on the neuroscience of mindfulness, a neurological definition of wanting has never been incorporated in any of this research literature. A major reason may be the predominant use of brain imaging (fmri) to observe the minds of mindfulness practitioners. Since the fmri only measures brain activity through the proxy of changes in blood flow within the brain, it cannot measure the biochemical correlates to wanting that are independent of neural blood flow. Indeed, because ‘wanting’ processes in the brain involve small arrays of cells within the midbrain, the fmri is as useful in observing wanting as the Mount Palomar telescope is in observing sub-atomic particles. In other words, it doesn’t work.
Below is a link to the first definition of mindfulness that is derived from the neuroscience of wanting. Derived from the work of the behavioral neuroscientist Kent Berridge who vetted the explanation for accuracy, it provides a very short, simple and new explanation of mindfulness that justifies it a most unusual way. I hope you find it of interest.
http://mezmer.blogspot.com/2011/11/mindfulness-and-wanting.html
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