{"id":368,"date":"2011-08-20T21:54:47","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T21:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/?p=368"},"modified":"2011-08-20T21:54:47","modified_gmt":"2011-08-20T21:54:47","slug":"a-social-animal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/?p=368","title":{"rendered":"A social animal"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is by far the most frequent comment I hear in therapy:\u00a0 \u201cI should be able be to handle this on my own.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Huh?<\/p>\n

This statement is uttered often and with much authority. Where, I\u2019m always left wondering, is it written that we should have to sort things out by ourselves? Is there some Big Book Of Living Rules<\/em> that I\u2019ve somehow missed in all my reading? Because everything I\u2019ve read so far, as well as my clinical and personal experience, suggests the exact opposite \u2013 namely that the human brain is a social organ, which requires sustained connection with other brains to function optimally.<\/p>\n

Basically, we\u2019re social animals.<\/p>\n

Through thousands of years of evolution the human brain has developed within a social context \u2013 a clan, tribe, village, extended family, polis or some other group of humans that gathered together in order to help each other survive. Expulsion from the group often threatened one\u2019s continued existence so a lot was at stake. And the human brain adapted accordingly: a large amount of brain capacity became devoted to things like communicating, recognising human faces, reading other\u2019s emotions \u2013 basically functions that keeps us involved with other human beings. As the American clinical psychologist Louis Cozolino says:\u00a0 \u201cOur brains are inescapably social, their structure and function deeply embedded in a group of other brains \u2013 the family, the tribe, the society\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

So, like it or not, we are – like other primates – social beings, and we suffer when our relationships don\u2019t work out. And most often problems are much easier and more effectively worked through when we do it with someone else. There are many reasons for this (I may write about that in more detail later) but an obvious one is that explaining to another human being what is troubling us, forces us to articulate what\u2019s wrong. And once that\u2019s done we can start figuring out what to do about it.<\/p>\n

So the next time you feel that you should be working through something emotionally difficult on your own remember this: your brain is built to resonate with other brains and some brain circuits only come online in the interaction with other brains.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just the kind of animal we are.<\/p>\n

Are you really going to argue against your own biology?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is by far the most frequent comment I hear in therapy:\u00a0 \u201cI should be able be to handle this on my own.\u201d Huh? This statement is uttered often and with much authority. Where, I\u2019m always left wondering, is it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-therapy-notes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":369,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions\/369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinicalpsychology.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}