Category: Love

Love has remained a mystery throughout the history of humankind and is one of the most powerful reasons that keeps us up at night.

The latest neuroscience research confirms that we are hardwired for connection. A study by Harvard University that looked at what factors contribute to human happiness found that “Happiness is love.”

Yet, for the majority of us, cultivating loving, healthy relationships is still an outcome we have not been able to arrive at effectively.

What are the factors that contribute to our failure, and what can we do within our control to improve our relationships?

What is emotional intelligence?

What on earth is emotional intelligence?

Daniel Goldman, psychologist and best-selling author of the masterpiece Emotional Intelligence, defines emotional intelligence as the ability to read our own and others’ emotions and use this to our advantage. 

The statistics on the importance of cultivating emotional intelligence are compelling: studies show that emotional intelligence far surpasses the importance of IQ and experience and has been proven to be 85% responsible for financial success.

But do we know, in a practical sense, how to harness its power?

I know I did not!

The environment I grew up in (albeit my norm) was often fueled with contradictions, alternating highs and lows, and frequent “emotional hi-jacks.” Sometimes it was others that would lose their ability to act in an emotionally-intelligent way and, often, it was me. In the old country Greek household that I grew up in, little was known about consciousness, or healthy expression of emotions and needs. My beautiful, charismatic, “salt of the earth” parents grew up in the aftermath of the Second World War, and concepts like self-awareness and emotional intelligence were foreign concepts not aligned with their survival needs.

Hence, I too, adopted their approach. Whenever negative feelings would surface, I would handle them with a dose of confrontation, an ounce of criticism, two pounds of defensiveness, and several door slams and silent treatments.

Emotional intelligence, although part of popular culture today, remains a foreign concept to many of us. However, I finally recognized the impact of not being able to make intelligent use of my own emotions. When I became a mother, I invested quite a bit of time in understanding emotional intelligence and how I could cultivate it, in order to improve my relationships and, hence, my life.

Here are the biggest ideas I dissected from the experts on the topic and from my humble personal experience.

  1. What drives our emotions is often hidden deep in the unconscious part of ourselves, until we choose to bring to the surface experiences we have swept under the rug into the light. Until then, we will act on impulse, without quite knowing why we sometimes “put our foot in our mouth!”
  2. When an experience in the present moment touches a “raw spot” from a past experience (although often outside of the realm of our awareness) it will trigger a cascade of events, wherein our nervous system will work with several other body systems to protect us from the perceived threat. This is our fight or flight response at work, known as “an emotional hi-jack.”
  3. When our fight or flight response gets triggered, the executive-functioning part of our brain switches off, and we operate from a temporary cognitive and perceptual impairment.
  4. Our behavior is driven by our emotions. It does not matter how high our IQ is, how many degrees we have, how well we have done in life, or how successful we are. Our behavior will not be effective unless we figure out what we feel, why we feel the way we do, and then actively use our resources to intercept the cataclysmic impact of negative feelings. The great thing is that we have the power to do this!

The next time you find yourself in a situation when you feel that your emotions are getting the best of you, you can ask yourself my favorite step-by-step list of questions to ensure you are making intelligent use of your emotions:

  1. Ask yourself, “What am I feeling?”

The key here is to make sure you use feelings only. When we are emotionally charged because a situation has triggered a negative experience from our implicit memory, we tend to attach the words “I feel” to what is really a story. For example, “I feel that my spouse is lying,” or “I feel that I do not deserve this.” Stories keep us and our nervous system hostage and use our valuable resources for defense and not for healthy growth and restoration. There are four basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Understanding which descriptive feelings are triggered in us is extremely valuable in our ability to choose our own state and, therefore, our chosen behavior, like our ability to make a connection with another in spite of our differences.

  1. Then ask yourself, “What about this situation makes me feel this way?”

I find that in order to answer this question, I need data that only the executive part of my brain, (the pre-frontal cortex,) has access to.

When we get emotionally hi-jacked, our metabolic energy gets redirected from our thinking brain to the large muscle groups which shut down essential functions. Therefore, by asking this question, we are able to turn our executive brain back on, redirecting our metabolic energy to where we really need it to be.

Whatever negative data our brain has dug up relating to the experience we are having in the present moment, this negative experience is not in the here and now.

But it is important to honor and bring to light whatever past experiences are still showing up for us in our present as a positive step towards letting them go.

  1. The next question is: “How much of this is the truth and how much of it is a story?”

Most of the time, our pain and suffering come from the narrative we lend to life situations and not the situations themselves. Has a friend or significant other ever stood you up? In such instances, most of the time there is a legitimate reason why someone was not able to keep their commitment to us. What gets us upset and unable to process the event in a way that keeps us in the state we need to be in to make good decisions is when we translate an event such as this into the idea that “we are obviously not important to that person.” Deciphering truths from stories is a powerful technique to regain control of our emotions so we can make an intelligent decision on how we want to handle the situation.

  1. The next question is: “What is within my control to do about this situation?”

Instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop when someone does something that rubs us the wrong way, we have the option of focusing on where our power can be found, which is in what is within our control.

Knowing what we feel, why, and what we need from the other person and explaining that in a calm and factual manner allows us to move in a positive trajectory in any important relationship in our life.

  1. Finally, we need to ask ourselves, “What have I learned about myself because of this situation and what will I do differently in the future?”

For energy conservation, most of our responses to life situations are automatic. Negative emotions are just part of life. Pausing, assessing the reason why we got triggered in the first place, and choosing the pearls of wisdom any challenging experience gave us, actually helps us cut out weeds from experiences of the past and cultivate new flowers in the garden we call our life experience.

A fellow Greek by the name of Plato said it best: “The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself.”

We have no control over how and where we were raised, what tools we garnered from our early years, or how our brain was sculpted by our experiences up until this moment.

The greatest part about emotional intelligence is that cultivating it is 100% within our control.

All it takes is a commitment to the diligent practice of seeing our emotions for what they are and taking the powerful stance of befriending them as a potent antidote to the toxic impact of fear and pain that is the biggest obstacle to the complete well-being of our species.

How to effectively respond to a “jerk”!

Once upon a time, I met a very special person. He was so intelligent, loving and kind. He would show up time after time, expressed his fondness and admiration often and much, went out of his way to be supportive in good times and bad, was accountable for his own actions and made promises he would be here for me in this life and the next.

Except, when he experienced negative emotions: The story would suddenly change, as did his behavior!

One of the most destructive relational patterns of behavior involves behaving in an incongruent manner, changing our stance towards another from one moment to the next.

The psychology dictionary, defines incongruence as an inconsistent state of behavior, described as inconsistency between the goals, values, and attitudes projected and the actual behavior observed.

We tend to define someone who behaves in an inconsistent manner as a “jerk”!

Have you considered that anyone who employs unhealthy relational patterns just does not know how to regulate their emotions and simply has been accustomed to blaming (or punishing) others for their very own negative feelings?

A person who contradicts themselves, by their words and actions probably has significant attachment injuries. They most likely have a hard time letting go of the past and do not have experiences that involve the beauty of healthy relational patterns, or know how to soothe themselves in a healthy way when fears show up internally.

If you too have someone in your life that tells you one moment that you are the most important person in their life and then (when they are upset about something) they exclaim that your relationship has no value to them, do not despair!

Although the obvious stance against unhealthy behaviors is to walk away, there are circumstances where you may not have a choice.

Here are the most effective ways I have been able to effectively address another’s inability to relate to me in a healthy way, when they are incongruent with me:

  1. Ask powerful questions

Point out the inconsistency head on. If someone tells you how much they value you and then you find out you were excluded from an important event in their life, simply point out the contradiction and ask them to tell you more about it. Don’t allow your self to get emotionally involved or take the contradiction personally. New insights from neuroscience, reveal that people that were raised by parents that were not attuned to them, (or even worst, were raised by parents with mental illness or substance abuse), have significant issues with nervous system regulation and deficits in parts of their brain that are associated with relational abilities.

Therefore when our fellow human beings bearing attachment injuries feel the sweetness of connection and intimacy, often times without cognitive awareness they will employ “deactivating strategies” to rupture connection.

Asking questions, without being emotionally charged, breaks the spell of a deactivating strategy and may be the only way to awaken someone from a state, that quite frankly although has become automated, causes them a lot of trouble.

  1. Seek first to understand and then to be understood

Power is the ability to do something effectively.

As describe in Stephen Coveys “7 habits of highly effective people”, seeking to understand and be understood is a fail proof strategy, even if you are dealing with someone that has not yet learned how to be effective.

Explaining with love and kindness the tremendous energy drain that any nervous system uses up to reconcile differences in reality, may be a perspective that they have not come across before. Let’s face it, if someone frequently employs contradictory behaviors as a way of relating to others, not many will stay by their side, let alone invest any energy to understand a behavior that hurts. If anything can provide compelling evidence of the power we all have for positive change, this is it!

  1. Role model emotional intelligence.

It’s very easy to simply get mad at someone who makes the most wonderful promises and when we challenge them for not delivering, they say: “I don’t know what you a re talking about”. Speaking emotional language with someone and the impact their actions have on us, can often times trigger feelings of empathy even in people with reported structural deficits in the anterior insula region of their brain. (Brain region involved in healthy development of empathy.)

After all, emotional intelligence is nothing other than making intelligence use of our emotions.

By role modeling emotional intelligence, we have a much better chance of getting through to someone, but even if we don’t succeed, at least we maintain our internal balance and prevent our selves from getting out of our zen!

  1. Set and enforce healthy boundaries.

We can be kind and loving to all life, but first and foremost we have to be kind and loving toward our self!

Brene Brown, Ph.D., best selling author of a number of books on the power of vulnerability, defines betrayal as “choosing not to connect to someone when the opportunity is there”.

We have to face our fears and practice being assertive, speaking clearly of what we are willing to tolerate and what we will not.

We can work with our internal resources to maintain our inner balance in the face of someone who does not have the ability to relate to us in a healthy way. We can even have empathy for their condition and understand that their behavior reveals that they have established intimacy and vulnerability as a threatening situation and that it’s nothing personal.

But at the end of the day, if we employ all the skillful and effective techniques and we are still not able to see accountability from the person that confuses us with contradictions, we may not have many options left.

The healthiest and most effective approach may be to love them and leave them.

Loneliness kills!

At a time when despite medical advances, we struggle to reach and maintain optimal health, could there be elements we overlook that would positively impact the trajectory for our health and quality of life?

The ancient Greeks said it best: “Balance is excellence”! However, as important as it is to have a diet rich in fruit and vegetables, with regular daily activity, (while minimizing obvious toxic substances), I think we seem to overlook a really important factor towards our health and wellbeing: Our social connections!

In fact, several decades of scientific data clearly reflect, that we could be killing our self at the gym every day, starving our self to loose those extra pounds and yet social isolation and insufficient social relationships, could be one of the most inconspicuous risk factors for our health and longevity!

Social relationships represent an incredible opportunity to enhance not only the quality of our life but also our survival!

THE PROBLEM

Despite increases in technology, that allow us to connect even with our high school friends we have not seen for decades at the click of a button, (that would presumably foster social connections), we are becoming increasingly isolated. We are experiencing a tremendous amount of loneliness and our level of social connection is extremely low. Research uncovered that 25% of Americans don’t have someone they feel comfortable opening up to about their woes. In fact, over the last two decades, there has been a three fold decrease in the number of Americans who report having a confidant. The lower our social connections are, the more prone we are to inflammation, anxiety, and depression, while people with high social connections, are shown to recover faster from disease and live longer.

THE EVIDENCE

In the late 80’s a review of 5 large prospective studies, concluded that social relationships predict mortality. As provocative as this hypothesis was at the time, it generated a tremendous amount of research on the impact of social relationships to health outcomes and mortality. (HouseJS, Landis KR, Umberson D (1988) Social relationships and health. Science 241: 540-545.)

The plethora of research that followed and a myriad of publications, clearly substantiated that social support is linked to improved immune function and inflammatory response mediation processes.

In 2010, a meta-analysis of 148 studies, involving 308,849 individuals followed for an average of 7.5 years, (Holt-Lunstad J, Smith T., Layton B., (2010), Social relationships and Mortality, PLoS Medicine, volume 7, issue 7, e1000316), provided empirical evidence nearly 30 times of what was reported by previous studies, to support the criteria for insufficient social relationships as a risk factor of mortality.

The data from this 2010 meta analysis is strong enough to suggest that social isolation needs to be added to the list of well documented risk factors, since the mortality risk of social isolation, has been shown to be comparable to smoking, drinking 6 alcoholic drinks per day, not exercising and twice as harmful as obesity!

The next steps in the research of these profound findings, is to further understand the mechanism of action and protective factors of social relationships. Current research, illuminates several different biological pathways, that can justify how social relationships influence disease end points and greatly impact health outcomes, for example in depression and stress mediation. One of the ways strong social relationships impact health is through a strong ability to buffer effects of stress. Social support appears to sustain the organism by promoting adopting behavior or neuroendocrine responses in the face of stress. In other words, despite the stressors one may face on a day to day basis, strong social relationships, have been proven to be a significant shield against the way our body responds to external stressors, neutralizing their impact and minimizing the symptoms of stress we experience.

Considering stress is the epidemic of the century and has now been proven to be linked to 90% of today’s disease, we could greatly benefit from improving our health through nurturing healthy attachments to other people.

THE SOLUTION

We now know that the quantity and quality of our social relationships is a significant predictor of psychological and physical health. This knowledge should be used to develop interventions and policies that can greatly improve public health and clinical practice. The question is what can we do at the individual level to improve our social connections?

Here are my top 5 ways we can take advantage of the science on our day to day life and enhance our health and happiness through the art of human connection:

1. Elevate human connection on your priority list.

Most of us, struggle to manage the little time we have against the overwhelming list of things we have to do every day. However, we can choose to replace solitary activities with ones that foster community. Is there an interest you have that involves collaboration with like minded souls? You could sign up to take a dance class, volunteer at a local non profit organization for a cause you are passionate about, or join a hiking group. The camaraderie that develops amongst people that have a common bond can lead to significant relationships that are based on healthy relational patterns.

2. Nurture the relationships you already have.

In this information overload modern life we live in, we sometimes take for granted what we already have. If we are lucky to have people in our life that love and support us, nurture those relationships! The research of John Gottman, Ph.D., has shown that doing the small things often is all it takes to build healthy long lasting relationships that can withstand the storms of life. Every day, take a few moments to recount what it is that you love about the important people in your life and express your fondness and admiration often. Whatever we put our attention to grows! Don’t let your demanding schedule dilute your focus on what seems to be the most important component to your health and wellbeing.

3. Nurture your own ability for empathy. Empathy is the ability to feel what another person is feeling. Although we are built to feel other people empathically, our fear based society has conditioned our mind to look for differences between us and others. We are all different and we can easily release our negative emotions by identifying and focusing on our differences with others. What if we switch our attention to having empathy for the woman that cut us off on the freeway? Chances are, she too had to get lunches ready and kids dropped off to school before she could catch her early morning flight. How does it help us to get mad at her? We have been conditioned to get frustrated with others as a way to discharge the stress we feel within. But we need to remember that our nervous system, is built much like a sounding board, not only reflecting and impacting the people around us, but also constantly changing depending on where we direct our energy and attention. When we see someone else in pain, our brain regions associated with pain get activated…we feel their pain. Equally, when you see someone smiling, the facial muscles in our face get activated… We can start being the change we want to see and increase the grey matter in the regions of our brain associated with empathy by simply having empathic experiences. I promise you, the results will be amazing!

4. Brave vulnerability!

We are often too scared to show our true colors and we prefer to play it safe by presenting the “facade of the invincible” to the outside world! We stay locked up in our “kingdoms of isolation”, never letting anyone see our true beauty. We seldom express any needs and even if our heart is aching, we say we are doing great! We don’t want to come across too “needy”, so we tippy-toe around issues and would rather put our energy into building an impression of perfection. Although undoubtedly, one has to earn the right to hear our story, there is so much power in being courageous enough to show our authentic self with no fear of being judged or not accepted. It seems that the great effort we make to fit in, is the exact obstacle to true connection. But most importantly, not being willing to be ourselves, reflects a lack of self acceptance.

The absolutely brilliant researcher Brene Brown Ph.D., whose outstanding research has uncovered that perfectionism is nothing other than a hidden fear of “not being good enough” said it best: “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

5. Savor human connection.

We make the mistake of expecting to find people who totally get us, with whom minimal effort is needed to enjoy connectedness. We therefore pull away when we identify the slightest difference between us and another, hoping that “some day” we will meet “the one” in love but also in friendships. In actual fact, “to relate” by the dictionary definition, means “to make a connection between two different things”. Even when someone behaves in a way that ruffles our feathers, it does not serve us to take it personally. Every single one of us, will behave according to our degree of evolution at that moment in time. He who breaks your heart dreams of having robust healthy relationships too, they just don’t know how yet!

However, the way we translate human interactions, promotes the development of neural connections in different parts of our brain. Our automatic, conditioned way of thinking establishes differences as threats and reinforces the development of brain regions that are associated with negative traits, (like hypervigilance) and ultimately this creates imbalances in our nervous system.

It is up to us, to direct our thoughts, state and actions to aid the development of brain regions that are associated with inner strengths instead. Once we recognize this truth, we will no longer feel threatened by the differences we may have with another and we can cherish others love and their different perspectives, as a way to enhance our human experience.

We live at an incredible time, with robust research outcomes that literally can hold our hand through living out a healthy and long life. We know one by one all the risk factors that can interfere with our optimal health and scientists have uncovered the exact mechanism of action that relate risk factors, to the path that leads us to the big killers of our time, cardiovascular disease and cancer. The truth is we cannot control many things in life that hi-jack our nervous system and deprive us of our valuable resources.

But if we really want to receive the biggest return on the investment of our time and effort, that is 100% within our control, the simple act of love and kindness towards our fellow human beings, may very well be the biggest opportunity to enhance our health and happiness!