“You’ll always be disappointed when you expect people to act like you would.” – Unknown
Few things are as satisfying as that feeling that we “get” another person, and that they in turn “get” us. It is that desired experience of attunement. There is obvious comfort in this – not only does it reduce the effort necessary to understand and be understood, but it also enables an improved ability to predict behavior and respond appropriately. This lends itself to a social reprieve and we can drop our guard without the pressing need for hyper-vigilance in order to ward off problematic miscommunication. It offers both ease and a sense of safety. However, this type of connection occurs organically more rarely than we’d like.
Individuals frequently seek psychotherapy as a way to explore and manage experiences with disconnect. This sense of disconnect often underlies distress - particularly if the struggle to comprehend the thoughts and actions of others is significant. This speaks directly to the seventh item on Cozolino’s list of problematic aspects of functioning causing an individual to consider counselling:
1) The suppression of language and predictive capacity under stress
2) Divergent hemispheric processing
3) The bias towards early learning
4) The tenacity of fear
5) The damaging effects of stress hormones
6) The speed and amount of unconscious processing
7) The primacy of projection
8) Unconscious self-deception
This attribution bias has the potential to interfere with our ability to connect with others. Mirror neurons enable us to live in complex social networks by allowing us to learn by watching others, anticipate/predict the actions of others, and relate to others with emotional resonance and empathy. However, possessing the neural circuits to generate theory of mind can also complicate brain functioning with the primacy of projection. We are quick to think that we know the motivations and intentions of others.
Our neural circuitry does not seem to favor self-awareness - rather, projection has adapted to become automatic. This makes sense when you consider how the competency to automatically project functions as an efficient way to lesson anxiety while self-awareness alternatively requires effort and generates anxiety. Our very identity can then get confusing as it emerges from this interweaving of “automatic theories of others” with “understanding of ourselves”.
Our own self-inquiry is skewed by, and interwoven with, our individualized implicit assumptions – making it a questionable ally in sense making. Psychotherapeutic processes promote questioning of judgments and assumptions made in personal histories and invites inquiry into thoughts of others that may in fact be autobiographical. Attunement is at the heart of connection, and talking with a counsellor is not only useful in exploring our beliefs and projections, but also as a way to invite empathy.
“In our development, as we grow throughout our lives, the structure of our beliefs becomes very complicated, and we make it even more complicated because we make the assumption that what we believe is the absolute truth.” - Don Miguel Ruiz
References
Cozolino, L. (2010). The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain. W.W.Norton & Company: New York, NY