We are social beings that crave relationships. In 2013 there was a study at the University of Virginia showing how strongly human brains are wired to connect. When individuals were put under a brain scanner and then threatened to be shocked, the parts of their brains associated with threat lit up. With the same person in the brain scanner, they then threatened to shock a stranger and those regions remained quiet. But, when they threatened to shock a friend the same regions of the brain were activated as when they were going to receive the shock themselves. “The correlation between self and friend was remarkably similar,” said James Coan, a psychology professor in U.Va.’s College of Arts & Sciences who co-authored the study. “The finding shows the brain’s remarkable capacity to model self to others; that people close to us become a part of ourselves, and that is not just metaphor or poetry, it’s very real.”
This means so many things, but on the top of my mind today is how when we enter therapy for some kind of issue whether it’s couples therapy for “we”, or individual therapy for “me”, both we and me will be impacted – this is simply how our brains are wired.