Wiki: Relationships

Improve your love life through simple meditation I had a fun interview with Jennifer Abbasi for iVillage.com, and the results are up: 13 Ways to Have More Mindful Sex. Shockingly, the articles and other posts in which I discuss sex and mindfulness always get tons of hits. Imagine that! I’ve posted the first part of [...]

Rick Hanson view on empathy is spot on.  Empathy is extremely powerful and anyone knows how it feels to be misunderstood or shut down from a lack of empathy.  Personal relationships and human interactions would greatly improve if everyone was more empathetic.  This article by Rick Hanson addresses the lack of empathy and inspires ways [...]

It is human nature to believe we should take on the happiness of those around us. But, If you aren’t in a place of happiness yourself, how can you possibly be that beacon for someone else?

I would like to thank Vaughanbell of mindhacks.com who directed my attention to this article.  The act of helping other people goes against the basic rules of natural selection.  Why would we want to help others to succeed when we could keep that knowledge for ourselves?  Michael Marshall dives into this and has devised that [...]

Early Attachment May Affect Our Ability to Resolve Conflict in Relationships. The University of Minnesota has found some interesting information regarding conflicts in relationships and how these conflicts can be tied to your emotional care as a child. Article From: UMNews Enjoy! ~ Marsha MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (02/10/2011) —People searching for fulfilling and stable [...]

Vulnerability, connection, empathy, shame… all wrapped up in a warm, funny, research-based talk. I love it! Video Credit: TEDxHouston Enjoy, ~ Marsha

An interesting read by Tara Parker-Pope on personal growth within relationships. Enjoy ~ Marsha A lasting marriage does not always signal a happy marriage. Plenty of miserable couples have stayed together for children, religion or other practical reasons. But for many couples, it’s just not enough to stay together. They want a relationship that is [...]

Do you use Twitter? If not, you’ve likely heard of Twitter. I’m willing to bet that you’ve got a Facebook profile.  After all, how could you possibly have avoided the mysterious Facebook allure? Despite the similarities between these two Social Media services, their models are quite different, and this difference mirrors a long-standing argument; namely, [...]

This article comes to us from the excellent ZenHabits site, and talks about the bringing “White Space” into our lives.  I love the analogy at play here.  This is a good one to integrate into your Mindfulness Meditation Practice. Enjoy! ~ Marsha Space is the breath of art.’ ~Frank Lloyd Wright Emphasis on the important. When [...]

This is a brief, to-the-point, spot-on  article from Lisa Kift, a therapist in Marin County California whose writings on the hard work and joy of relationships can be found at http://LisaKiftTherapy.com. If there’s one thing that we all seek – it’s happiness. I’ve never met a person who has told me they didn’t want to [...]

Fellow PsychologyToday.com blogger Christine Meinecke PhD on the “S” word in marriage – it ain’t sex Enjoy this article. By Christine Meinecke, PhD As much as we wish it were not so or seek to dress this wolf in sheep’s clothing, marriage (like any committed relationship) involves obligation.  No amount of denial, bargaining, anger or depression allows us to escape [...]

A fascinating talk by Jeremy Rifkin on “Empathy and Civilisation” – made all the more fascinating by the RSA animation.

By Daniel Tomasulo, Ph.D. When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you. — African Proverb Although I am in the business of hope through understanding, hot meteors of negativity break through the atmosphere of my serenity and occasionally derail me. I am jealous, angry or judgmental, or sometimes indifferent or overwhelmed. [...]

Gee, who would have thought that getting real, being authentic, and getting connected would be good for your mood? Feeling down? Having a stimulating conversation might help, according to a new study published in Psychological Science. Researchers at the University of Arizona and Washington University in St. Louis used unobtrusive recording devices to track the [...]

Independence is seriously overrated. We’re big on independence here in the US. I love the Fourth of July, our local neighborhood parade with kids and dogs, and politicians giving speeches at the end while we sweat and eat drippy popsicles. I love what it stands for, declaring what we hold to be self-evident truths and [...]

Video games, violence, empathy… read this carefully. The article below is not saying that playing violent video games will make kids into violent adults, and it’s not saying that violent video games are correlated with an increase in violent crimes. It is suggesting that having the experience — even virtual — of shoving aside one’s [...]

How going it alone brings couples together Author Credit: Christine Meinecke, PhD Going it alone is not what most brides and grooms envision on their wedding day.  We picture a lifetime of togetherness.  Expect to meet each other’s needs.  Hope never to feel lonely again. Of course, opportunities for togetherness are chief among the benefits of love and marriage.  If, however, [...]

Goldie Hawn talks about education, children and mindfulness, and brings in researcher Dan Siegel to show the scientific side of these important ideas.

From fellow PsychologyToday.com blogger, Ugo Uche, M.S., L.P.C. (thanks to William Harryman over at Integral Options Cafe http://integral-options.blogspot.com/ for bringing it to my attention). Increasing your capacity for empathy promotes all sorts of good changes in your brain, including emotional resiliency [link to the article I posted, "Nine Way That a Meditating Brain..."]. Good changes in [...]

“What were you thinking?” may be the hue and cry of many parents of teenagers, but the neuroscientists who conducted the study summarized below were more interested in the brain areas involved in figuring out what is going on in someone else’s mind. Knowing more about those brain areas is key in understanding the underpinnings [...]

As a psychologist, I see people in my practice all the time who complain that the thrill of sex dies down after awhile. It gets, well, routine. Same-old, same-old. Going through the motions. Sometimes, they get around to asking what they can do to spice things up. “Yes, there is,” I say. Their eyes get [...]

Empathy, the brain, and relationships. In a recent search for the latest research and popular media references about empathy, I was stopped in my tracks when I found the video below, in which Glenn Beck expounds on empathy: Yes, you heard it: Beck states that empathy “leads you to very bad decisions” (and, yes, he [...]

Mark Brady, PhD is one of my favorite bloggers about social neuroscience, about raising our kids more mindfully, and healing our own minds/brains: The Golden Rule of Social Neuroscience February 27, 2010 by Mark Brady Shortly after I graduated from high school, I took a job as a drill press operator in a funky machine [...]

“How does the focus of attention using mindful awareness actually change the function and structure of the brain? When we look at these three things together: relationship, mind, and brain, they’re not the same, but they influence one another….” In this video, you’ll get a great taste of “interpersonal neurobiology”—how relationships of all kinds shape [...]

From Robert Emery and Jim Coan, professors at my alma mater, the University of Virginia, answering a reader’s question. By Robert Emery and Jim Coan When people have their feelings hurt, what is actually happening inside the body to cause the physical pain in the chest? —Josh Ceddia, Melbourne, Australia Robert Emery and Jim Coan, professors of psychology at [...]

Frans de Waal’s work with primates fascinates me. In this clip, he talks with Carl Zimmer of Discover Magazine about how empathy is not something we “decide” to be — that we are able to empathize with the feelings of others because of an involuntary physiologic response. (I have always had a tinge of regret [...]

From Mas Ichise, MD and Bob Innis, MD, PhD at National Institutes of Mental Health comes some primate research on attachment, the brain, and later emotional and behavioral problems: Neuroimaging of the effects on the brain of maternal deprivation. Monkeys who suffered maternal deprivation (raise by their peers, instead) were shown to have a deficit [...]

In my work as a psychologist, I see a lot of very bright, insightful people who still struggle with relationships, and when I suggest that they start practicing mindfulness meditation, they want to know why and how sitting and meditating can help their love lives. They may know that they “should” meditate because it’s good for [...]

Why meditation does NOT make you a self-involved, zoned-out bliss-ninny. Here’s the polite version of a question I received recently about my support of mindfulness meditation as a practice for well-being in relationships: Why are you encouraging people to zone out? Sitting around pretending they’re above it all, and avoiding real feelings? Who wants to be [...]

Mindfulness isn’t just something to do during meditation. Try integrating even one of these ideas into your daily rhythm. You’ll be getting the laundry done and rewiring your brain at the same time… From the March issues of Shambhala Sun. Wake with the sun There is no purer light than what we see when we [...]

Your amygdala — an area associated with fear, anxiety, and anger — needs to have clean lines of communication to other parts of the brain. This piece of research reveals more detail about mis-connections from the amygdala in people with a particular anxiety disorder. (If you have anxiety which is poorly controlled, and then you [...]

Nice article on why you need a high-functioning prefrontal cortex — that’s the part of the brain behind your forehead, and it functions a lot like the CEO of your brain. But what’s missing from the article is that the prefrontal cortex needs to be able to communicate well with other brain areas, especially those [...]

From my perspective, having a full, authentic life is about having healthy, vibrant relationships — your relationship with yourself, with others you know, with the world at large, and/or with something greater, if that suits you. Without relationships, there can’t be much else. So how do you make changes in how you do your relationships? [...]

I feel fortunate to be a psychotherapist in this day and age. Aside from the change we and our clients can report anecdotally, there is increasing evidence to support the potential for true change within the brain via the therapeutic relationship. I’m no expert in neuroscience and relationships – but am excited about the notion [...]

Why employees (and your kids) sometimes lose the plot David Rock continues his excellent explanation of his model for understanding how your brain can function better at work. His SCARF model includes easy-to-understand neuroscience so you can be at the top of your game. S = Status, C = Certainty, R = Relatedness — covered [...]

It’s never too late to have a (brain that’s wired as if it had a) happy childhood1 Therapists get this question a lot: “Okay, so now that I understand how my history made me a mess when it comes to relationships, what now? It’s not like I can go back in time and change my [...]

You can re-wire your relationship brain. You have the technology. I’m a big fan of David Rock, a fellow blogger on PsychologyToday.com, whose recent post there spoke very compellingly about mindfulness, neuroscience, and how we think and experience the world. His focus is on how your brain works in a work setting, which he has [...]

Being in a relationship – or trying to be – can feel like hitting your head against the same big brick wall over and over. What if there were a simple way to move that brick wall out of the way?  A way to change the helpless, worn-out, stuck-in-a-rut relationship patterns, and to really, really [...]

More than you might expect, the wiring of your brain for relationships is determined by some of your very earliest experiences in childhood. The good news is that you can re-wire your brain for better relationships, using simple, 2,500-year-old mind-training techniques that are as sure as a neurosurgeon, but without all the mess. The newest [...]