Therapy Duo

Psychotherapy & Counselling for Individuals & Couples

Category: Neuroscience

Articles about Neuroscience

  • Support from the Inner Realm

    Support from the Inner Realm

    Our Inner Struggles & the Inner Realm

    These are difficult times for us all with the coronavirus. We all feel the need for support, at many levels, when so many certainties about our world have dropped away. Many rely on the internet for much of this support.

    And while there are practical suggestions and community groups that are doing a wonderful job, at another level people may also feel the lack of internal support – support that is available in moments of solitude, moments of family pressure, or during long sleepless nights.

    So here are some ideas for internal support, that occur to us, and that we ourselves use. They are ideas to support your inner, psychological, realm; to help find ways through dark times. We hope they’re useful.

    The Nekyia

    In Jungian thought and in the work of James Hillman the idea of a nekyia or katabasis is explored as a initiatory rite in which the individual is invited (or compelled) to undergo difficult passages or processes that are associated with the underworld, with darkness and with great difficulties.

    Examples from mythology abound: Jonah in the belly of the whale, Persephone’s time in the underworld, Psyche’s descent into the underworld to be re-united with Eros.

    Hillman says (in his book The Dream and the Underworld, p47):

    Being in the underworld means psychic being … where soul comes first.

    So there is perhaps a way to revision these dark, difficult times as invitations to travel into the dark places within ourselves, and to explore these places. To question, What is soul for us? What resides there?

    What can sustain us and what can we learn from this period in which we may not be able to get our outer world needs met – connection, control, money, desire? What can replace partying, travel, shopping or eating out in our favourite restaurant?

    Traditionally, the nekyia is an initiatory experience, a process that differs significantly from a heroic conquest. Although the person undertaking the underworld journey returns, they return as a different person (with perhaps more understanding of the idea of soul). One foot may forever after remain in the underworld. Their psychological world has deepened permanently.

    Ram Dass and the Witness

    The witness place inside you is simple awareness, the part of you that is aware of everything — just noticing, watching, not judging, just being present, being here now. – Ram Dass, Polishing the Mirror.

    The witness is another layer of consciousness, one untroubled by our incessant anxious thinking layer. It is an awareness of our own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. For some, staying as the witness can be a powerful practice, a way out of the maze of attachments to worldly concerns.

    Although there are many awareness and mindfulness practices on the web, Ram Dass’s own Cultivating the Witness can be one of the most powerful.

    G.K. Chesterton and Allowing Mystery

    An approach that may have power for some is to reflect upon the fact that we are all surrounded by mysteries – ones far greater than those of which we can be aware.

    There is no need for religious or spiritual beliefs here (though these are not excluded): our senses detect only a small proportion of the energy systems within which we are immersed. Although our scientific instruments vastly extend these ranges, they are merely devices for converting these extra-sensory ranges into what is amenable to the human.

    We use, for example, sonar, radar, and wifi for these purposes. Dogs hear way more than we do! And telepathic experiments leads us to believe we may be interconnected at very subtle levels.

    For some, to know that day and night we are surrounded by mystery, is a solace.

    dies noctesque mysteria circumdata
    dies noctesque mysteria circumdata (day and night surrounded by mysteries) **

    G.K. Chesterton wrote about this in his 1908 book Orthodoxy:

    As long as you have mystery you have health.

    The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.

    (You can read the full quote here.)

    As an analogy, Chesterton speaks of the sun:

    The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything.

    (All quotations are from G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.)

    Whatever difficulties we experience in the outer world, all of this rests on a far greater mystery than we can possibly envision.

    Easwaran and the Mantram

    The mantram (or mantra) is a tried-and-true device for drowning out the incessant chatter of a troubled mind. Traditionally, spiritual gurus gave specific mantras to their students. However, it can sometimes be a powerful practice to take our own short phrase or sentence that provides comfort, and to repeat this quietly in times of stress. Our anxious mind takes a break, as we rest into words that soothe.

    Eknath Easwaran wrote a beautiful book called The Mantram Handbook which discusses in detail how one can arrive at a mantram that is personal and powerful.

    In the introduction to this book, the neuroscientist Daniel H. Lowenstein says:

    From studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we know that concentrating on a short phrase will activate specific areas in the front and side of the brain. These areas, the frontal and parietal lobes, are involved in selective attention – the capacity to maintain a single focus despite the presence of distracting stimuli. In this way, the mental repetition of a simple phrase like a mantram can provide a guidewire to move your attention away from a troubling stream of thoughts. It is as though the mantram provides access to a peaceful, grounded center that puts our cravings, drives, and other immediate needs in perspective.

    We recommend Easwaran’s book as a practical guide for choosing a mantram. Easwaran also gives examples of mantra from Eastern and Western spiritual disciplines, and advice on how to make the mantram you choose go deep into your subconscious, replacing anxiety-creating thoughts and energies.

    Serenity Prayer

    Sometimes simple is best!

    God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
    courage to change the things I can,
    and wisdom to know the difference.

    See more on the serenity prayer on the Serenity Prayer wikipedia page.

    Gratitude Practice

    It is easy to miss what we can still be grateful for in troubled times. We are all an integral part of nature and respond deeply to other parts of nature – such as ever-changing clouds in a blue or a dark sky; to the beauty of rain falling, leaves on a tree (even when seen only from our window).

    We can be grateful for our loved ones, for the abilities of our bodies, for the food we can still eat, for the legions of essential service personnel who are putting themselves on the line every day at the moment, to help us be safer. We can be grateful for art and for music. We can be grateful for our breath.

    We can reflect on how grateful we are for these things, to not let them go unnoticed. And we can also choose to share our gratitude with others.

    * From Ron’s folio Notes to a Nekyia.
    ** From Ron’s folio postcards from cerebria.

  • The Large and the Small Cog Wheels

    The Large and the Small Cog Wheels

    Therapy Duo at the GANZ Conference

    We’re just back from the GANZ (Gestalt Australia and New Zealand) conference in Canberra where we gave a presentation on our eclectic approach to couples therapy.

    It was gratifying to receive such positive feedback on our way of working, and a great opportunity for us to reflect on how we work and what it is that makes our approach to therapy so effective.

    Not to be underestimated is the years of work we’ve done to achieve a quiet and grounded sense of happiness and security in our own relationship, and to see that something of that can “rub off” on the couples we work with.

    In intimate relationships, so much of the interactions are rooted in out-of-awareness states, and this can work for couples in a positive way, grounding them in a real sense of couple security; as well as in a negative way when these interactions trigger disruptive patterns and cause suffering.

    So here’s some background from the slide on “the cogwheels”, one that a member of the audience asked us to write more about.

    It’s a simplified model that we find helps couples to figure out what’s going on in tense moments.

    The “Two Brains”

    The large touching circles above represent the two partners in a couple interaction. Also shown is the cerebral cortex and the amygdala in each – the so-called two brains.

    The cerebral cortex is the mammalian, developed, “adult” brain, responsible for higher functions such as sensory perception. It’s where we want to be in a couple interaction! The amygdala, on the other hand, is the primitive, reptilian brain, responsible for “fight, flight, freeze” reactions: it’s not where we want to be when interacting with our partner. (It’s the source of the “trigger” response, also called the “pathway of fear”.)

    Lastly what’s shown in the diagram is the sensory thalamus: this processes incoming sensory data and decides whether there’s a threat involved.

    The Small Cog Wheel

    If one partner experiences some kind of threat or danger in the interaction, the sensory thalamus can be quick to reroute nerve impulses to the amygdala. We say this person is “triggered”, and their behaviour is then usually a fast and reactive combination that is primarily defensive.

    We say that one partner has taken the path of the “small cog wheel” (shown as the smaller dotted red line above). They’ve switched from large cog wheel to small.

    The person is “triggered”, and their behaviour is then usually defensive.

    The problem with this reaction (as well as the suffering it causes the person who’s switched) is that the reaction is quickly picked up by the other person, causing them to potentially also switch from large to small cog wheel. The situation quickly escalates and the intimate system becomes threatened (fighting).

    The Large Cog Wheel

    When all’s going well, the “happy path” is shown by the larger dotted red line: the large cog wheel. A couple in this dynamic is doing well and both partners are enjoying their contact and interaction. The thalamus detects no threats on either side.

    What to Do?

    We can “catch” what’s happening in these couple interactions.

    An important part of what we do in couples therapy is to “catch” what’s happening in the couple interactions, to bring these patterns into awareness, and to support the couple to use pacing and self-support to slow these interactions; to give the neocortex time to operate and to prevent amygdala reactions from controlling the scene. The experiential approach of Gestalt is well suited for this work.

    (The cog-wheel diagram is adapted and simplified from Seidenfaden & Draiby, The Vibrant Relationship.)

  • How Long Will it Take?

    How Long Will it Take?

    Changing Habits is Hard

    How Long Will it Take? This is a question that many starting therapy, or any new endeavour, may ask themselves. The answer’s not straightforward, but having said that there are some guidelines.

    Let’s assume you’re coming to therapy to work on your relationship (or an addiction, depression, or other ongoing issue) and that you’ve tried what you can to fix the problem – and still feel stuck. You are probably coming as a last resort rather than as the first thing you’ve tried.

    And in a world of fast paced work and rapid transfer of information we all tend to expect quick results. We might otherwise feel we’re failing, or that the process isn’t working.

    But the reality is: changing bad or entrenched habits is hard.

    You may’ve been doing these things for a long time and the research suggests that habits form brain patterns that are hard to break. It takes time and concerted, conscious, consistent effort to change.

    New Neural Pathways

    The good news is that we can change. Neuroscience talks of creating new neural pathways. New pathways allow you to change and create new behaviours, over time, that serve you better than the old ones did. It takes work and time to create these changes. No matter how well you do at first, if you don’t keep up the good efforts you can easily slip back into old behaviours.

    You have to really want the change. Changing because someone else wants you to change, or because it seems like a good idea, will not create the desired result. You have to want it enough to do whatever it takes to get there.

    The latest research suggests that it takes 6-9 months to create the new neural pathways that support a long term change in behaviour. That sounds scary but it’s really not so bad.

    The Benefits Start Now

    Just because it will take time to cement change, doesn’t mean you’ll not experience benefits immediately. If you are able to stop the vicious arguments with your partner, are able to stop smoking or to eat more healthily you will usually notice great benefits quickly. What we want is for you to sustain those changes over the long term.

    When you notice benefits it makes it easier to stay with the work required. But there are other hidden factors too.

    Unpacking Why You Do What Do

    Your current behaviour is there for a reason, or you wouldn’t be doing it. This can be hard to swallow, but it’s true. Whether you’re a workaholic, 10 kilos overweight, or have anger management issues — your current situation is serving you somehow.

    So take some time to think about this. Whether the need is relaxation but the behaviour is binge drinking, or the need is recognition but the behaviour is overwork, you first need to identify what need is being served by your current behaviour.

    Once you have the answer, you can work out how to meet this need in another way, smoothing the path to change.

    Support and Commitment

    Therapy can create a supportive environment to explore what you really want, what you need to change, and ways to do exactly that.

    It is also important to recognise change and progress as it happens. There will be many steps along the path to your goal and it is important to integrate the changes and build on your successes. It will keep you more focused on the target.

    It’s known from positive psychology and neuroscience, that you’ll have more success when you move towards something positive than away from something negative.

    Let Us Help Along the Way

    Since we are only human too we know what it’s like to struggle with an issue and have to put in hard work to change. We know this both from personal experience and from the clients we have worked with.

    If you are willing to put the effort in we are happy to help support you in your change process.

    (Image: The Mahatmas Present Standing Point, Series II, No. 2a, 1920, by Hilma af Klint)

  • Reflections on the Couple Bubble

    Reflections on the Couple Bubble

    Couple Bubble

    The term couple bubble is gaining currency in couples work. Stan Tatkin, in his book Wired for Love (which we recommend to couples) defines it as:

    …the mutually constructed membrane, cocoon, or womb that holds a couple together and protects each partner from outside elements.

    The couple bubble is built on a set of implicit (unspoken) or explicit (spoken) agreements. What makes these agreements powerful is that they are consciously held, by both parties to the relationship. (In this way, they are different from unconsciously held agreements, in which the couple members choose to prop each other up in a way that limits both of them – the couple becomes co-dependent.)

    The couple bubble implies such agreements as:

    • Our relationship is more important than any other competing value(s)
    • I will never leave you
    • I will never upset or frighten you on purpose
    • I will attempt to relieve any distress you are feeling (even if I have caused it)
    • You are my first priority – over work, children, pets, sport
    • I tell you first about anything significant that happens (before other people).

    It can be a powerful exercise for couples to discuss such agreements together, and to come up with guarantees they could give, and guarantees they would like to receive. The very act of having such discussions can strengthen the couple bubble.

    The Young Ones

    In our individualistic careers and in public life, we are expected to be grown-up; to fend for ourselves and to not be dependent. This is the face we usually need to offer the world.

    Within an intimate relationship however, this is not the situation. Usually it’s our younger and more vulnerable selves that are in evidence, and that are seeking for connection, validation and love. Early mother/infant dynamics are alive, and basic concerns such as self-worth and self-esteem are at stake. These concerns we can bring to the couple bubble, and here is where we can experience mutuality rather than autonomy.

    It’s becoming conscious of the couple bubble that allows us to find a place for these younger ones within us; ones who may struggle even to articulate their needs using words. This is where couples therapy can be powerful, in allowing gentle conversations in a safe environment; conversations about what these younger parts need.

    To find a place for these younger ones within us; ones who may struggle even to articulate their needs using words.

    Ruptures in the couple bubble can also be usefully examined, either together at home or in couples therapy. What happens at these times of rupture? What are the feelings invoked in each of the couple members? Where do they each “go” emotionally, when the bubble ruptures.

    And what techniques and with how much speed can a rupture be repaired? It’s not a matter of never having ruptures; it’s the speed at which ruptures are repaired that is significant, and is an indicator of the health of the bubble. (Ruptures themselves are inevitable when two people agree to be emotionally exposed.)

    A Lesson from Alchemy

    These ideas have been around for some time; they appear, for example, in the 16th century alchemical Rosarium Philosophorum woodcuts. Here’s woodcut number 2, in which a couple is depicted as undergoing an alchemical process. (Nathan Schwartz-Salant draws out this situation in his book The Mystery of Human Relationships.)

    Rosarium Philosophorum No. 2

    The couple in this image are making the so-called “left-hand contact”, implying that they are connecting in a way that’s not conscious. They are probably co-dependent to some extent, being driven by situations from their families of origin in ways that could be unhealthy and/or incestuous. However, it’s the descending dove that is truly the saviour, another (higher) level of consciousness, which enables them to understand where they have been unconsciously – and so to transform their relationship (a process that is drawn out in subsequent woodcuts).

    Not Reacting

    Couples can explore areas where they are co-dependent in this way by deciding to look at their “triggers”, those moments where they react negatively to their partner’s “tone” or “negativity”. This is an ongoing practice; to decide to not react, to not do what they “intuitively” “want to do”; to hold themselves and to investigate what is going on for them. If someone can stay in emotional contact with their partner, when triggered; if they can explore the emotions that rage within them, they may come up with something new about what is happening for them, and may get an understanding of things that have been held in the shadow.

    (See more about not reacting in our post Go the Other Way.)

    The Healthy Bubble

    To make unconscious contents conscious is a way to strengthen the couple bubble. From this standpoint, it’s possible for couples to have more clear discussions about the agreements that make up their bubble. And for couples who can do this, the resulting healthy bubble may be the very thing they have yearned for since childhood.

    (Top image: Swans, 1920, Hilma af Klint)

  • Deepak Chopra’s Three “A”s

    Deepak Chopra’s Three “A”s

    Art of Love

    We’ve started listening to the online series Art of Love 2011 and highly recommend our email readers follow along while it’s still happening.

    A segment that really caught our attention was in the Kick-off Webinar, where the presenters speak with Deepak Chopra on his three important “A”s of relationships. We share these here as they’re all ones that arise as issues in our practice.

    Attention

    Attention means deep listening, being totally present, having empathy, trying to see from our partner’s perspective. It means we’re not in a hurry to give advice and react; not in a hurry to interrupt. Our body language actually shows we are deeply listening.

    Chopra reports that, according to neuroscientists, when we practice deep listening the amygdala of the person speaking and the hippocampus of the listener start to “cool down” (show less activity).

    The amygdala is the place in the brain where we process fear and anxiety. So we’re actually cooling down those primitive parts of the speaker’s brain just by listening attentively to them. We’re changing not only their brain activity but the actual structure of the brain, which depends on proteins being laid down and that requires gene modulation. We’re influencing the on-off switches of another person’s genes in their neurons by deep listening.

    Appreciation

    Appreciating our partner has a direct effect on their health and well-being. Recent interesting data from Gallop shows the following statistics:

    • If a manager criticises his or her subordinates then disengagement grows to 25% and people who work for that manager get sick
    • If the manager ignores them, disengagement grows to 45%
    • But if a manager notices a single strength and appreciates that strength, disengagement falls to less than 1% and people stay healthy.

    (Aside from the disastrous effects on the couple relationship, which is our focus here, economically this is said to cost $280 billion to the U.S. economy.)

    Affection

    Affection is deep caring and knowing that we are there for the other person.

    In the language of neuroplasticity, we can say this kind of engagement in relationship rewires the brain in a direction where love actually becomes a healing force. It influences hormones, cell repair, homeostasis (biological self-regulation and self-repair).

    Love Is a Powerful Healing

    So it turns out that love is the most powerful healing that can happen. And this is so through a phenomenon called limbic resonance. When people are in love their brains are resonating, their hormones are resonating and they are healing each other and monitoring each other’s biology and moving each other in the direction of healing.

  • Understanding the Emotional Brain

    The Brain’s Response to Fear

    Last year we attended an ANZAP seminar Understanding the Emotional Brain. This started with a stimulating talk by Lea Williams and Russell Meares followed by a lively discussion on the subject.

    Lea Williams presented some recent work by her and her group on, amongst other things, the brain’s response to fear and its bias towards negativity. Our brains, from current research, evidently need five positive experiences to counter each single negative experience, in order to maintain a healthy equilibrium.

    And the fear response in the brain is complex and exhibits a dual pathway – the so-called “low road” and “high road”. In the primitive low road, the thalamus quickly prompts the amygdala into a fight-or-flight response (say, in reaction to seeing a snake on the path before me). However the slower high road, via the visual cortex, enables potentially a more considered response. (I realise the snake is just a stick.) Brain High Road / Low Road

    Brain Plasticity

    It’s not all bad news on negativity – research suggests that the plasticity of the brain is much higher than previously thought, and there’s potential for retraining negative brains in positive ways. And such positive ways tend to use the high road, rather than the immediate triggering of the low road. This research supports the efficacy of psychotherapeutic practices in creating new ways for the individual to react to old stimuli.