Solutions Training Institute
Lessons from the New Brain Science:
Implications for Love, Sex and Relationships
Pat Love, Ed.D.
Information
As therapy, e.g.
Because we are not
reptiles
Why relationships?
We are mammals
Relationship is necessary
To survive
as an infant
Relationship is necessary
To thrive as an adult
Why relationship therapy doesn’t work
What happens
When relationship therapy works?
Research direction
Growing apart
Resentment
Withdrawal of interest
Basic needs
Experience me
Understand me
Respond appropriately to me
A simple therapy model
Contract
Causality
Congruences
Example:
Contract—”How can I help?”
Causality—
How does the client make it hard for the partner to give…?
When the partner gives…does he/she notice? Respond appropriately?
Congruence—Attunement
Contract—”How can I help?”
“I want my partner to be more loving.”
Causality
How does he/she make it difficult for partner to be more loving?
Watch for response to loving gestures
Congruence
Take loving gesture reciprocity beyond words
The Relationship between
Experience
Perception
You are born with billions of brain receptors
(not drawn to scale)
With few neural circuits
The brain comes with some assembly required.
Experience forms neural pathways
Human stimulation
Stimulation via the senses
Forms perceptual groups and associations
Neurons that fire together
Wire together
Forming a neural circuit
The more neural pathways are traveled…
The more they are etched in your brain.
Neural circuits constitute memory
and association
Touch Calm
Our neural circuits and associations
Formulate our view of the world
Touch is calming
When you make an association
A repeatedly activated state
Even subtle alterations
Of voice and/or facial expressions
Can set off a limbic alarm.
Other’s emotions regulate your internal state
And you respond accordingly.
Stimuli resembling former trauma
Fear conditioning
When you make an association
It decreases the probability you will make a different association.
“Life is stressful…”
“But I’m laid back, NOT!”
Associations form perceptions
“Men are unavailable.”
“You can never please a woman.”
Neurons ignore
Unfamiliar stimuli
We are drawn to the familiar
Regardless of merit.
Others can see what you cannot.
“ I love you.”
“I can’t see it.”
Two Types of Memory
Explicit
Implicit
Implicit memories
Are quickly activated in intense emotional relationships.
And are not subject to self-reflection.
You can’t always trust
Your feelings!
You can’t always trust
Your mind.
Recalling any memory
Changes the recall.
Neuroscience and technique
Indicated
Contraindicated
A simple therapy model
Contract
Causality
Congruences
One crass definition
Successful therapy occurs when the person who pays the bill is happy
Neurochemistry
Neurotransmitters
Hormones
Affect:
Perception
Behavior
Neurotransmitters
Influence the meaning of the neural message.
The release of stress hormones
Leads to excessive death of neurons in the crucial pathways responsible for emotional regulation.
Individuals
Are unique
Diversity strengthens
Our species
Our culture
Difference
Makes life interesting
Men and Women
Are different
1% different
99% the same genetic coding
When you are aware of your innate impulses
You can choose how to act—and improve your connection and communication.
When you are aware of your partner’s vulnerability
You can improve your connection and communication
The key is connection
When people are connected—they communicate effectively
Until 8th week
Fetal brain is female
8th week huge testosterone surge
kills off cells in the communication center
Grows more cells in sex and aggression center
Male physiology
Differs from female physiology
Males have
Added muscle mass
More blood vessels to muscles
Inclined toward hyper-arousal
Larger brain center for anger and aggression
2.5 times brain space devoted to sex drive
Men have
11% fewer neurons in the language and hearing centers
Connecting through talking is not as rewarding for males
Testosterone
Has been shown to decrease talking
Decrease interest in socializing
Except for sports
Sexual pursuit
Men think, men feel
They don’t do both at the same time
It takes more time and effort for men to discern a specific emotion
40% of the time
Men pick up subtle signs of sadness in a face
Women pick up 90%
On the contrary…
Threat to the relationship or physical danger detected by men immediately
Men can also read angry emotions quickly
Men have a muscular (hyperarousal) response to anger and/or threat
Another’s tears…
Can evoke brain pain in men
Male brain registers helplessness in the face of pain
Helplessness evokes inadequacy
Impulse to “stop and hide”
Sex can do for a man…
What intimate talking does for a woman.
Louann Brizendine, M.D.
“Men come in two different categories: hot sex vs. safety, comfort and child rearing. Women are constantly longing for both wrapped in the same package.”
Men have an instinct to
Provide
Protect
Providing and protecting
Are survival strategies
Males hone their survival skills by
Competing
Ordering
Directing
Confronting
Doing
Bragging
Threatening
Even boys’ play is about
Competing
Social rank
Power
Defense of territory
Physical strength
Stamina
When a man cannot provide and protect
He feels inadequate
Shame
“What do you mean I don’t love you…
Clinical strategies will fail
If you assume men and women are exactly alike
Two men
Two women
Man and a woman
Relationships will fail
If you do not honor gender differences
The impact of gender on relationships
Women have an instinct
To tend and befriend
The female brain
Outstanding verbal agility
Ability to connect deeply in friendships
Heightened capacity to read faces, emotions
Ability to diffuse conflict
Females and conflict
Creates feelings of
Stress
Upset
Fear
Ways females manage conflict
Placate
Repress needs
Avoid
Please
Freeze
Dissociate
Medicate
Procrastinate
Lie
Passive/aggressive methods
Females and aggression
Linked to cognitive, emotional and verbal functions
Use relationships as threat and punishment
Use aggression to validate needs (i.e. you have to get angry to tell the truth or express your needs)
Females who make more estrogen and progesterone
More resistant to stress because they have more serotonin
Connecting via talking
Activates pleasure centers in the female brain
Sharing relationship information gives a dopamine and oxytocin rush
Female oxytocin rush from
Gazing
Positive emotional interaction
Kissing
Orgasm
When oxytocin and dopamine are high
Loving circuits are activated
Caution and aversion circuits are shut off
The hippocampus
Hub of emotion and memory formation
Larger in female brain
Prefrontal cortex
Larger in women
Controls anger, fear and aggression
(caution with anger is survival skill with more powerful male)
Women can
Hear a broader range of voice tone variation
Hormone surges
Make female brain more sensitive to emotional nuance
Women are designed to connect
When they cannot connect they feel fear
Alone…
On the edge of their stress
On the edge of their depression
On the edge of their anger
Alone, period.
Alone on the edge of addiction
Alone on the edge of insensitivity
When a woman feels fear
She wants to move closer
When a man feels shame
He wants to move away
Question for men:
Does this make me feel valued and esteemed
Or look weak, lose status or feel like a failure?
Question for women:
Will this make me feel valued, safe and connected
Or afraid or isolated?
Only compassion
For the others’ vulnerabilities improve the relationship and form lasting connection
Improving relationships
Neurological fact:
It’s easier to add positives than eliminate negatives!
Humans survived through cooperation of the sexes
Cooperation requires
Respect for differences
Respect for roles
Role failure produces anxiety
Protection and connection are survival mechanisms
When a man cannot protect
He feels like a failure
Sense of failure
Evokes shame response
Shame response
Is physiologically
psychologically
Anger, which numbs
Is effective in alleviating shame
Emotional and psychological withdrawal
Avoid shame pain
When a woman cannot connect
She feels
Anxious,
afraid
Isolation, distance
Evoke fear response in women
Fear response
Is physiologically
psychologically
Contact lowers fear
Alleviates fear pain
Touching and giving
Trigger the release of dopamine and oxytocin in women
Sexual coupling releases
Large amounts of oxytocin
In both males and females
Oxytocin causes relaxation
Bonding
Needs constant reinforcing through closeness and touch
Males need 2-3 times more touching
To maintain the same level of oxytocin as females
Male response to startle
Is aggression
Female response to startle
Is freeze
When mates are away from each other
Dopamine and oxytocin circuits and receptors can feel starved
Couples may not be aware of their connection and attachment until they are apart
Male love circuits
Get an extra kick when stress levels are high
Women rebuff affection
And desire
When under stress
Stress hormone cortisol blocks oxytocin’s action in the female brain
Shuts off desire for sex and touch
Even contact via conflict
Alleviates fear pain
Isolation, deprivation, distance
Can evoke fear response in women
Repeated failure
Evokes hypersensitive shame response in men
Repeated disconnection
Creates hyper-sensitive fear response in women
When a man’s role as:
Protector
Provider
Lover
Parent is threatened
He feels shame
When a woman’s role as:
Connector
Supporter
Friend
Family is threatened
She feels fear
Female brain
Half as likely to be wired for same-sex attraction as male brain
Sexual orientation in females more along continuum than in males
More bi-sexual interests in females
Safety circuits
Are formed via experiences with nurturing, predictable, secure, caregivers
Without good enough caregiving
Long-term emotional attachment may be harder to achieve
Can still fall in love for a short term, i.e. experience infatuation
After 2-3 years
Love relationships evoke critical judgment brain activity
Rather than pleasure and reward brain activity
#1 cause for divorce and/or separation…
Disconnection
#1 cause of disconnection is resentment
#1 cause of resentment is withdrawal of interest
What we have to do:
Value the connection; regard it as precious
Care about how the other feels
Respect, honor fear/shame vulnerabilities
Think connection as a mental state
To love a man:
Accept that the partner provides the meaning in a man’s life
Understand his dread of failure as a provider, protector, lover and parent
Connect more through routine, fun activities, touch and sex
Avoid controlling
Ways to connect with a man:
Touch
Activity
Routine
Kindness/sex
To love a woman:
Appreciate her importance to you
Make an effort to understand her
Avoid controlling, protecting is fine
Understand
Her fear of harm
Her fear of your anger
Her fear of deprivation
Forget feelings
Think motivation
Approach
Avoid
Attack
Improve a relationship without talking by…
Think motivation—approach
Step into the puddle
Love is cheap; pain is expensive
Three techniques to avoid shame and fear
Binocular vision
Connection
Compassion
Binocular vision
You will never get your partner to care about how you feel if you do not care about how he/she feels.
When two people are connected
They communicate
Good communication flows from connection—a sense of caring
When you are aware of your partner’s vulnerability
You can improve your connection
Improve your communication
Create love beyond words
When you are aware of your innate impulses
You can choose how to act—and improve your connection and communication!
Connection rarely flows
From talking—which tends to be about the other person’s failures
Deepest form of intimacy
Is beyond words
Serotonin sites affected by…
Sugar
Marijuana
tobacco
Serotonin—Your natural Prozac
Regulates temperature, blood pressure, blood clotting, immunity, pain, digestion, sleep
Promotes relaxation and regulates sleep
Eases tension
Emotional stability
Self-confidence
Sense of well-being
Deficiency of serotonin
Can cause depression
Tendency toward suicide
Obsession
Anxiety
Insomnia
Carbo craving
Irritability
Dopamine—Your natural cocaine
Facilitates pleasure and motivation/drive
Dopamine
Activates the pleasure center
Mediates pleasure seeking
Promotes receptivity to pleasure
Creates sense of well-being, love, contentment, inner peace.
Activates cravings
More focused and quick thinking
Gives you energy
Deficiency in dopamine
Angst
Anxiety
Depression
Irritability
Sense of urgency
Anhedonia
Craving
Scattered
Lethargic
Dopamine function decreased
Cocaine
Speed
Marijuana
Alcohol
Tobacco
Sugar
Norepinephrine—Your natural cocaine
Norepinephrine
Produces energy
Motivation
Ambition
Power
Alertness
Hyper-focus
Function of norepinephrine
Deterred by
Cocaine
Speed
Caffeine
Tobacco
Marijuana
Alcohol
Sugar
SEX
Releases a surge of endorphins
Endorphins—gives a natural high better than heroine
Create a feeling of pleasure
Decrease cravings
Enhance feelings of love
Relaxation
Euphoria
Ecstasy
Relieves physical and psychological pain
GABA—Your natural valium
Enables you to relax
Has a calming effect
Rejuvenates
Restores balance
PEA-phenylethylamine
Promotes energy
Elevates mood
Regular use of drug-like foods
Refined sugars
Flours
Alcohol
Drugs
Some medications
Can inhibit your brains natural pleasure chemicals
Some of us inherited genes which undersupply vital mood chemicals
The only food source of amino acids which constitute the mood-enhancing chemicals is protein
Those of us from alcoholic families
May be born with too little natural pain tolerance.
We are overly sensitive to emotional (and sometimes physical) pain.
We cry easily.
Your thoughts, emotions and behavior affect body chemistry
Relaxation produces norepinephrine
Exercise produces endorphins
Malnutrition due to low-calorie dieting
Number One Cause of Overeating, Weight Gain, Bulimia, and Anorexia (endorphins)
USDA standards- minimum 2500 calories for women per day
Men at least 2800 calories a day
It’s not just the calories; you need plenty of vegetables, fruits, proteins, and fats, as well as healthy carbohydrates, for your body to function properly.
Testosterone
WHO
Starvation begins at 2100 calories (or less) per day
Low-calorie dieting results in
Low sex drive
Mental dullness
Estrogen
Oxytocin
The power of touch
Lifestyle
Diet
Exercise
Lifestyle changes
Principles of Neuroplasticity
Flexibility
Adaptability
Malleable
Neurogenesis
How new brain cells are made
Using your gray matter
How new pathways are made
Neurogenesis and second order change
Change your brain and change your life
Novelty
Enrichment
Physical exercise
Limbic resonance
The brain seeks a higher brain.
The importance of Repetition
You won’t defeat what you repeat.
Making therapy last
Past the therapy door
A Therapeutic Protocol
For the Brain-Savvy Therapist
Assessment
Stress level
Anxiety and depression
Close relationships
Work life
General life satisfaction
Personality style
Common Client Profiles
What client has presented a challenge to you?
Interventions
Psychopharmacology
Cognitive restructuring
Anger management
Stress management
Self care
Diet
Exercise
Recreation
Corrective Encounters
Examples
Attunement
Regulates your emotions
Non-Complementarity
Cultivating antidotes
“I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”
Making the implicit explicit
“I’m prepared, but I’m still scared.”
Gratitude
Changes your mood immediately.
Compassion
Universal antidote
Pathway to Intimacy
Uncommon Approaches
Novelty
Enrichment
Spiritual endeavors
Lessons from Chaos Science
Linda Duncan, Ed.D.
Four Minutes to a Better Life
Passion as Panacea
Anticipation
Challenge
Absorption
Energy
Congruence
The importance of ritual and celebration
Intra and Inter Gender Differences Pat Love, Ed.D.
Based on the book
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR MARRIAGE WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT IT
WHY WOMEN TALK AND MEN WALK
By
Patricia Love, Ed.D. and Steven Stosny, Ph.D.
Men are taller than women.
Individuals
Are unique
Diversity strengthens
Our species
Our culture
Men and Women
Are different
Difference
Makes life interesting
Men and Women are different
99% same genetic coding
1% difference
Honoring difference…
Reduces the dichotomy
Maligning or denying difference
Strengthens it
When you are aware of varied innate impulses
You can choose how to act—and improve your connection and communication.
Awareness of others’ vulnerability can improve home…
And work
The key is connection
When people are connected—
They communicate effectively
Are more productive
Are healthier
Happier
Until 8th week
Fetal brain is female
8th week huge testosterone surge
kills off cells in the communication center
Grows more cells in sex and aggression center
Male physiology
Differs from female physiology
Males have
Added muscle mass
More blood vessels to muscles
Inclined toward hyper-arousal
Larger brain center for anger and aggression
2.5 times brain space devoted to sex drive
Men have
11% fewer neurons in the language and hearing centers
Connecting through talking is not as rewarding for males
Testosterone
Has been shown to decrease talking
Decrease interest in socializing
Except for sports
Sexual pursuit
Men think, men feel
They don’t do both at the same time
It takes more time and effort for men to discern a specific emotion
40% of the time
Men pick up subtle signs of sadness in a face
Women pick up 90%
On the contrary…
Threat to the relationship or physical danger detected by men immediately
Men can also read angry emotions quickly
Men have a muscular (hyperarousal) response to anger and/or threat
Another’s tears…
Can evoke brain pain in men
Male brain registers helplessness in the face of pain
Helplessness evokes inadequacy
Impulse to “stop and hide”
Sex can do for a man…
What intimate talking does for a woman.
Louann Brizendine, M.D.
“Men come in two different categories: hot sex vs. safety, comfort and child rearing. Women are constantly longing for both wrapped in the same package.”
Men have an instinct to
Provide
Protect
Providing and protecting
Are survival strategies
Males hone their survival skills by
Competing
Ordering
Directing
Confronting
Doing
Bragging
Threatening
Even boys’ play is about
Competing
Social rank
Power
Defense of territory
Physical strength
Stamina
When a man cannot provide and protect
He feels inadequate
Shame
The Great Male Dread
Failure as a:
Protector
Provider
Lover
Family man
Most of his emotional energy goes to avoiding this kind of shame
When a man cannot protect or satisfy
He feels like a failure
Shame response
Is physiologically
psychologically
Anger, which numbs
Is effective in alleviating shame
Emotional and psychological withdrawal
Avoid shame pain
“What do you mean I don’t love you…
I go to work every day!”
Male Attachment Style
Protect and Connect
If he feels successful at providing and protecting, he can make emotional connection.
Relationships will struggle or fail
If you assume men and women are exactly alike
Two men
Two women
Man and a woman
Women have an instinct
To tend and befriend
Primary Female Dread
Fear of:
Harm
Isolation
Deprivation
The female brain
Outstanding verbal agility
Ability to connect deeply in friendships
Heightened capacity to read faces, emotions
Ability to diffuse conflict
Females and conflict
Creates feelings of
Stress
Upset
Fear
Females and aggression
Linked to cognitive, emotional and verbal functions
Use relationships as threat and punishment
Females who make more estrogen and progesterone
More resistant to stress because they have more serotonin
Connecting via talking
Activates pleasure centers in the female brain
Sharing relationship information gives a dopamine and oxytocin rush
Female oxytocin rush from
Gazing
Positive emotional interaction
Kissing
Orgasm
When oxytocin and dopamine are high
Loving circuits are activated
Caution and aversion circuits are shut off
The hippocampus
Hub of emotion and memory formation
Larger in female brain
Prefrontal cortex
Larger in women
Controls anger, fear and aggression
(caution with anger is survival skill with more powerful male)
Women can
Hear a broader range of voice tone variation
Hormone surges
Make female brain more sensitive to emotional nuance
Women are designed to connect
When they cannot connect they feel fear
How men leave women
alone
Women falling in love say
I felt:
Safe, secure
Partner was interested in me
Partner was generous (within means)
Easy to be with
When a woman feels fear
She wants to move closer
When a man feels shame
He wants to move away
Question for men:
Does this make me feel valued and esteemed
Or look weak, lose status or feel like a failure?
Question for women:
Will this make me feel valued, safe and connected
Or afraid or isolated?
Only compassion
For the others’ vulnerabilities improve relationships and form lasting connections
Humans survived through cooperation of the sexes
Cooperation requires
Respect for differences
Respect for roles
Role failure produces anxiety
Protection and connection are survival mechanisms
When a man cannot protect
He feels like a failure
Sense of failure
Evokes shame response
Shame response
Is physiologically
psychologically
Anger, which numbs
Is effective in alleviating shame
Emotional and psychological withdrawal
Avoid shame pain
When a woman cannot connect
She feels
Anxious,
afraid
Isolation, distance
Evoke fear response in women
Fear response
Is physiologically
psychologically
Contact lowers fear
Alleviates fear pain
Touching and giving
Trigger the release of dopamine and oxytocin in women
Sexual coupling releases
Large amounts of oxytocin
In both males and females
Oxytocin causes relaxation
Bonding
Needs constant reinforcing through closeness and touch
Males need 2-3 times more touching
To maintain the same level of oxytocin as females
Male response to startle
Is aggression
Female response to startle
Is freeze
When mates are away from each other
Dopamine and oxytocin circuits and receptors can feel starved
Couples may not be aware of their connection and attachment until they are apart
Male love circuits
Get an extra kick when stress levels are high
Women rebuff affection
And desire
When under stress
Stress hormone cortisol blocks oxytocin’s action in the female brain
Shuts off desire for sex and touch
Even contact via conflict
Alleviates fear pain
Isolation, deprivation, distance
Can evoke fear response in women
Repeated failure
Evokes hypersensitive shame response in men
Repeated disconnection
Creates hyper-sensitive fear response in women
When a woman’s role as:
Connector
Supporter
Friend
Family is threatened
She feels fear
When a man’s role as:
Protector
Provider
Lover
Parent is threatened
He feels shame
Female brain
Half as likely to be wired for same-sex attraction as male brain
Sexual orientation in females more along continuum than in males
More bi-sexual interests in females
Safety circuits
Are formed via experiences with nurturing, predictable, secure, caregivers
Without good enough caregiving
Long-term emotional attachment may be harder to achieve
Can still fall in love for a short term, i.e. experience infatuation
After 2-3 years
Love relationships evoke critical judgment brain activity
Rather than pleasure and reward brain activity
#1 cause for divorce and/or separation…
Disconnection
#1 cause of disconnection is resentment
#1 cause of resentment is withdrawal of interest
What we have to do:
Value the connection; regard it as precious
Care about how the other feels
Respect, honor fear/shame vulnerabilities
Think connection as a mental state
To love a man:
Accept that the partner provides the meaning in a man’s life
Understand his dread of failure as a provider, protector, lover and parent
Connect more through routine, fun activities, touch and sex
Avoid controlling
Ways to connect with a man:
Touch
Activity
Routine
Kindness/sex
To love a woman:
Appreciate her importance to you
Make an effort to understand her
Avoid controlling, protecting is fine
Understand
Her fear of harm
Her fear of your anger
Her fear of deprivation
Forget feelings
Think motivation
Approach
Avoid
Attack
Improve a relationship without talking by…
Think motivation—approach
Step into the puddle
Love is cheap; pain is expensive
Three techniques to avoid shame and fear
Binocular vision
Connection
Compassion
Binocular vision
You will never get your partner to care about how you feel if you do not care about how he/she feels.
When two people are connected
They communicate
Good communication flows from connection—a sense of caring
When you are aware of your partner’s vulnerability
You can improve your connection
Improve your communication
Create love beyond words
When you are aware of your innate impulses
You can choose how to act—and improve your connection and communication!
Connection rarely flows
From talking—which tends to be about the other person’s failures
Deepest form of intimacy
Is beyond words
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