Of course, very often team members are women. Thousands of years ago the marauding hordes that began conquest of this planet were misogynists. Unfortunately in conquering us, they passed on that meme.

The reason most of our famous people are men is not, as my son likes to wickedly tease me, because men are superior beings. It’s because our culture believes men’s work to be more valuable and important. My art professor assured us many times that male artists created more important art. He firmly believed it. In a culture where male ideas are considered to be more significant, it’s not surprising that women would support them.

I have several men in my past who were supported physically and emotionally by me and they are what they are because of my help. I will sink into oblivion. They get their pictures in the paper. I do not mind oblivion, because I simply do not need the notoriety. What I do mind is the belief that Love has no value. By ignoring the team, our culture ignores the power, creativity, value, and importance of Love and those who love. What a terrible shame.

Superman is *%#& Baloney

What makes this concept that human beings are meant to rely on each other so surprising is that for years now we have believed that people are meant to be alone like the Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger traipses around the prairie and survives by his wits. He doesn’t need anybody. The Lone Ranger pulls himself up by his bootstraps. He’s a self-made man or woman.

We start training kids early to be little Lone Rangers. They are taught that they must be good at everything in life, as if they will not be able to count on anyone else to help them.

We portray people like Spiderman, the Hulk, Superman, and countless other storybook heroes as role models. We applaud Einstein, Darwin, Benjamin Franklin,

Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and so on as instances of great men who by their remarkable lone example lead the way. I am surrounded by people buckling under the weight of all these miraculous examples of lone men doing great things.

Balderdash! Poppycock! Ridiculous!

No one does anything great alone. Period. Gandhi, Beethoven, and Picasso were the result of loving teamwork. I know a famous painter. His wife lovingly catalogs each painting, liaisons with the galleries, keeps track of his shows, feeds him, and keeps his home organized and running. She supports him emotionally and intellectually. He could not do what he does without her. He most certainly could not have the notoriety he does without her. He will go down in history as a lone great man. Countless boys will read about him and try to imitate him. But if they don’t have a team member willing to help, they won’t join him in history. The team is the hidden ingredient. Our society ignores and devalues it.

My Phantom Lover

I have a crush on someone right now. The person in question lives far away and so there’s practically no chance that the crush will turn into anything else. But I’ve been noticing that as I daydream about him, it’s almost as if the romance were real. You know how the psychologists always say that our emotional brain can’t tell the difference between reality and imagination? Even coaches are advising athletes to imagine a new skill first before trying to do it, because the brain experiences the imagined skill building as real skill building. Well, I can see what they mean. I feel as if I am in love. And it’s all in my mind.

So here I am, having that fall in love feeling, by myself. At first, I was amazed that I could recreate this feeling alone. Then I remembered that most falling in love is a total projection anyway. Even if there is a real person involved, we rarely see them for who they are. We imagine them a certain way and fall in love with our own imagining. In the past, I could pretend the person really said what I imagined, but in this case, where there is no actual date, I can’t pretend that he said this or that or misremember any body language.

Instead I have to face rather squarely that these feelings are completely self-made. I feel loved, because I imagine being loved. So in a way, I have fallen in love with myself and am using a projection to profess my love instead of just loving myself directly. Now why would I do that? And it’s not just me. Everyone I know needs to hear love coming from another person. It’s as if love doesn’t feel real unless we perceive it from the outside. Which brings me again to this growing conclusion, that other human beings are essential to our lives. We need each other to reflect love back. Falling in love is so exquisite because that feeling feels like complete surrender to affection. It’s falling in love with Love itself. And somehow that surrender feels more real when it involves another person, even if the other person is completely imagined.

How We Have the Power to Change Others

What is the one thing that we can do that will have as much impact on someone as his or her genetics? Everyone, from mental health workers to foster care advocates, is talking about it. It’s called Attachment Theory. Basically it says that how secure a person feels in his or her relationships impacts the physical health, mental health, morality, and ability to handle ordinary life of that person.

We need to feel secure in our relationships; we need to feel loved and accepted as we are. Our brains literally work better when we feel cared about and understood. I remember my mom teaching me how to play tennis. She teased me and shamed me the entire time. I definitely did not feel cared about, accepted, or understood. Instead my reaction time got slower, my understanding of the game plummeted, and I came off the court after each lesson with even less ability than when I started. I felt clumsy and uncoordinated. Needless to say, I never learned the game of tennis.

On the other hand, a friend taught me how to ride a horse. She was patient, attentive, caring, and nonjudgmental. I became skilled and confident. Eventually I could ride my horse bareback and without reigns. I saw my capable self in her gaze. Her belief in me bolstered and made my own belief in myself. Her confidence literally became my confidence.

Take Home Point: When we feel loved and accepted by others, we become healthier, live longer, learn more, are more creative, and more capable.

Great Ways to Calm

There are ways to build and widen the country path of cognitive nerves.

Meditation, hiking in the woods, holding hands, pets, avoiding toxins in foods, avoiding drugs/alcohol, taking deep breathes, inspirational music, and psychological inquiry all strengthen the path of the cognitive nerves. Or in other words, they help you to access all of your own wisdom - to tune into your inner teacher.

So when you are swamped in an emotional soup, before you say anything back that you might regret – give that rational, intuitive, and empathetic prefrontal cortex a chance to send a message to your emotional brain – go for a walk, listen to music, dance, write in your journal, call your best friend and vent. It really works! It’s biological.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I will begin posting again next week, Monday 28^th.

Spock Nerves Completely Outnumbered!

OK, so loosely there are 4 main areas of the brain. There’s the reptilian brain, so named because it covers the same function in reptiles, too: breathing, body temperature, emergency responses, digestion and so on.

On top of the brain stem perches the limbic system. All mammals have a limbic system.

It involves memory creation, emotions and their regulation, as well as the sense of attachment or care for another.

Next the neocortex, somewhat in mammals and very much in primates, which controls language, thought, spatial reasoning, and sensory perception.

And then the human part of the brain - the prefrontal cortex. This unique part of the brain allows for complex social behavior like empathy, understanding other points of view, emotional balance, impulse control, reasoning through difficult social challenges, and intuition.

As you can see in the side diagram, there is a place where the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system connect. Between them run massive numbers of nerves. The nerves from the emotional limbic system to the prefrontal cortex out number the nerves going from the rational prefrontal cortex to the limbic system by ten to one. Significantly, that ten to one ratio means that the emotions have a super highway to get our attention, but the cognitive nerves have something more like a country path.

Take Home Point: It’s a lot easier to become swamped by messages coming in on the super highway of emotions than for the emotional self to sense the messages coming in from the country path of reason.