Three Loving Connections

That's a really great blog post, Ellen, thanks for sharing it. I liked how Shannon linked to so many relevant research articles. I wouldn't have time to read most of them myself, but there is so much good research out there and it's good to see that she isn't missing out. For anyone else who wants to a quick primer, Buddha's Brain is an easy introduction with many simple and practical applications. (My old friend, @plum, from this forum, introduced me to that book.)

I'm also tempted to get Love 2.0, the book that Shannon was inspired by in writing the article:
http://smile.amazon.com/Love-2-0-Creating-Happiness-Connection/dp/0142180475
Perhaps I'll download the audible book and give it a listen while I take my walk.

How has the experiment going so far?

If anyone else is curious, I encourage you to give it a read. I posted a very brief reply at the bottom of the article:
https://www.theconnection.tv/the-power-of-love-how-3-micro-moments-change-everything/

 

Great post, Andy. Thanks for sharing.

By the way, I did download Love 2.0, the book that the original post was based on and am enjoying it a lot. I like that the author is a very successful researcher in psychology. It makes me really trust what she has to say:
http://fredrickson.socialpsychology.org/

 

I'm still really enjoying the book that the post came from (Love 2.0). I think that it's terrific that there is finally a book on the science of love, including practical applications.

Basically, I listen to the Audible Audiobook when I'm in the car. I find it a great way to keep up with things.

@Ellen, how did your experiment go?

And have you found any other connections with Somatic Experiencing, Andy?

 

That's terrific! I want to try the experiment, too, but will probably finish the book before I make an effort to do the experiment. I'm going through the book quite slowly (less than half way through so far) as I'm pretty busy and stressed right now, too.

I have done one thing, though. I get up before my g1rlfriend (perhaps soon my f1ancee!) in the morning and often bring her coffee. I make an effort to make a little eye contact and maybe smile when I hand her the mug. It isn't much and I try not to overdo it, but the activity reminds me to think about the experiment.

 

That's terrific, Colly. I've been wanting to start that habit for a while. In general, through reading Love 2.0, I'm becoming more sensitive to the importance of positive emotions like grattitude. The author, Barbara Fredrickson, PhD, had already written a book about positive emotions in general (as well as literally doing decades of research on the subject), so she works that theme into her new book quite skillfully. I trace it back to, as I seem to trace everything back to these days, the "two wolves/brain plasticity" story. Our brains are very good at adapting to new activities, so if we want to feel a positive emotion more, we should just practice! And while I know that how I wrote it is a bit of an oversimplification, the idea that "the wolf that you feed is the one that grows" really resonates with me. I think it helps explain, for example, the incredible benefits of meditation. At least I hope it does. I've always been a complete pessimist, and I'm hoping that by cultivating more positive emotions, I'll experience some real growth.

I just started the section in the book on lovingkindness meditation. As a mathematician/programmer type, I've been wanting to cultivate my emotional intelligence for a while, and I suspect that the foundation for that is empathy and simply having a moment to moment concern for the emotions of others. Lovingkindness meditation seems to be a research-supported way of cultivating this, so I've been wanting to try it for a while. It'll probably be a while before I get to it with everything I've got going on, but one step at a time, right?

In terms of my GF, yep, we've got really good communication about that, so I think she has a pretty clear picture of where I'm at. When and if I do it, I definitely plan do do it right. (So much pressure!) She doesn't actually ever read the site, though, as I give her a constant feed of information about the nonprofit and the overall TMS movement that probably exceeds limits set in the Geneva convention. But again, the way things have worked out, she has a pretty clear idea.

 

Thinking a bit more about this, I suspect that part of what I find so interesting about the book is that love and relationship are so important for being able to live a happy and healthy life. As such, they are relevant to TMS. Steve Ozanich states this well at the very beginning of his book. At the very beginning, before even the table of contents he devotes an entire page to the following quote:

I remember when I first read the book, I thought a lot about why he put that message in such a prominent location. I guess that it is because we mammals are wired for relationship. When Dr. Sommer Anderson, who worked with Dr. Sarno for 33 years, was a special guest at a teleconference I ran for therapists, she asked the participants to watch the following video. I think it does a terrific job of showing how much we are wired for what Steve calls relationship, what Love 2.0 calls love, and what therapists for the last century have called attachment:

​

When the mother interrupts what the book would refer to as the moment of love between the mother and the child, the child simply can't tolerate it.

The standard joke about seeing a therapist is that the therapist says, "So, tell me about your mother," right? When the mother deprives the child of her loving engagement in the video, above, you can see why. You can see why we spend so much time journaling about our parents - that early attachment has large effects on our youthful plastic minds (couldn't resist!) and therefore has important consequences down the line. Break out the journal!

Psychologists refer to the feelings that one person develops for another as "attachment," and have made it a major topic of study in psychotherapeutic research over the last 120 years. So when Dr. Sommer-Anderson gave the keynote at the 22nd Bowlby conference, she entitled it "Unlocking Pain - Disrupted Attachment and Chronic Physical Pain" I.e., "tell me about your mother, or whoever you had disrupted attachment with." (Dr. Sommer Anderson is a psychoanalyst, which is the type of therapist most known for "tell me about your mother.")

... and here is where things get more personal ... I hope that what I'm about to discuss isn't Too Much Information, but I figure that this is a TMS forum, and if we don't take some risks, the discussions will get stale and we will stop learning from one another. (Thank goodness for newbies, though, to keep it fresh.) In terms of taking that risk, I hope I'm leading by example.

I know that my early attachment was disrupted when my mother died at age 9. I knew that she was going to die before that, and that probably affected the way I bonded with her as well. That's in the past, of course, and I can't do much about it now, but my TMS journaling has taught me that it probably had some strong effects throughout my life. I'm not thrilled about that fact, but it's something I have to live with.

I used to be fairly alexithymic (not in touch with my feelings), and through concerted effort, I've gotten better at that (primarily through mindfulness - just deliberately paying attention to them). I don't want to get too TMI, but perhaps that had something to do with my mother as well. In a similar vein I tend to be optimistic, and if her death affected my "attachment style," perhaps some lovingkindness meditation or some of Dr. Fredrickson's other exercises could help. We've all seen study after study about how meditation changes the brain via brain plasticity. Why not give it a try?

In general, I'm just loving this book because it's a good book and because it makes a fascinating subject very accessible. But this history does make it particularly interesting as well.

Thanks for reading!

Finally, one last video from Dr. Sommer Anderson that really shows how us mammals are wired for love

​