Skip to main content

meaningful connection and support

We support each other in the most lasting and meaningful way by listening and providing a stable, safe connection to each other's underlying emotions and feelings, rather than following the impulse to get caught up in details or judgments, to fix mistakes, to immediately agree or disagree with actions, etc. 

So, what does empathetic connection look like?

1) We direct our attention to someone, and sustain it, putting aside all our inner commentaries and distractions


2) We read the core emotional state that lies beneath their words. This requires focused attention: reading facial expressions, body language, listening to vocal inflections, etc.


3) When a true connection occurs, we begin to somatically feel a sympathetic articulation of the emotion they're expressing and manifesting


We're choosing to focus on what lies beneath their stories; details separate and isolate us, while feelings unite and connect, for they are universally experienced. So, even if there's conflict, ask: what's motivating this conversation? What are they feeling right now? What am I feeling right now? 

By finding the mental states beneath the words, we can often defuse confrontation and defensiveness.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Imagination And Creativity as Spiritual Practice

It’s worth noting how few of childhoods’ freewheeling exercises—the entertainments that were once synonymous with youthful delight—journey through to adult life. To a great degree, we’ve moved, en masse, toward consuming entertainment via television, video games and social media rather than creating our entertainment: drawing, making pottery, dancing, singing, and other inventive endeavors. Those same kindergartners who sing, draw, dance, and engage in all kinds of play, will, in only a few years’ time, be streaming their content via iPad screens, which requires less imagination and effort.  Consider the mind’s two dominant cognitive networks: the first is the default mode network (DMN), a mental state wherein we can visualize possibilities or solve problems, but where we often wind up speculating about unknowable future outcomes or ruminating about interpersonal conflicts. DMN is largely activated by subregions associated with inductive reasoning centers of the brain (t...

Every Day a Reprieve

I woke up sweating, gulping for air. I was in the grips of a panic attack, my stomach cement hard yet churning. In my mind, movie screens played horror films in a loop; the images in this multiplex were darker than Dostoevsky. I’d been sober for six years, but it didn’t matter. My new marriage was surely destined to fail, the small house we’d purchased in Brooklyn destined to crumble. My skills were worthless and would, without doubt, leave me unemployable. Everything about me, an inner verdict announced, was phony and shallow. Friends and family would turn away once my true nature was exposed. I had the feeling that countless eyes were piercing through me and locating something pitiable. I’d awoken into what was eventually diagnosed as “a major depressive episode.” What was the root of it? A childhood spent in a household where rage was routine, violence not unknown. I recall the terror of being awakened from a deep sleep at 4 a.m. and dragged by my ankles into a b...

5 ways to resist obsessive thoughts (Vitakkasanthana)

The mind can be thought of as a committee Our thoughts are present by many "voices," some skillful and unskillful W there are some skillful voices in there, focusing on useful ideas, there are also the many voices in the "committee" that cause us suffering by advancing and encouraging useless, stress inducing ideas, plans, worries. Some examples of unskillful, stress producing obsessions —are dedictated to figuring out the worst possible outcomes (fear) of any situation —fixate on unknowable future events, i.e. what will we experience later in life? —try to figure out what other people are thinking about us —compare ourselves with others, especially in material concerns in general, the buddha broke these down the thoughts of craving, aversion and delusion. How unskillful internal voices persuade us some of these committee members try to get their way by —most work by repeating the same thought over and over —some split into thousands of variations that seem differe...