Brain science to improve your relationships

On the surface, your own brain may be your furthest consideration when you are trying to improve your relationships. Yet it is the very place that processes where you perceive, understand, remember, evaluate, desire, and respond to people. The somewhat bizarre fact of life is that the people who are in our lives are not simply who they actually are. They are some interesting mix of who they are and what we make of them in our brains. If we understand the ways in which relationships impact our brains, we can likely change our brains to alter the ways in which we interact with others too. Transference Transference is a psychological phenomenon in which conversational or relational partners activate earlier memories. As a result, we may unconsciously repeat conflicts from the past that have nothing to do with the current relationship. For instance, you may be having an off day and may be a little short with a colleague. The colleague may snap at you in a way that is out of proportion to your actual interaction, since your manner may remind them of a conflictual and bossy relationship earlier in their lives. These kinds of knee-jerk responses occur in the brain due to the brain’s propensity to make non-conscious predictions based on early life experiences. They may be unwarranted, but we are usually not aware of them. What you can do: To prevent this kind of situation, introduce new self-reflections, and possibly even points of discussion when you find yourself engaged in a con...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Mental Health Stress Workplace health Source Type: blogs