Reading Corner

Links related to the weekly posts.

 

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This week, we wrote about why it’s important to be aware of both words and emotions in your relationships. Here are some articles that will help you focus on the emotions and not get caught up in the words.

12 Reasons to Pay More Attention to Your Feelings “Emotions are such an internal and integral part of our lives that it can be easy to just ignore them. Yet our feelings are an expression of our deepest selves that can be very helpful when we listen. From motivation and mindfulness to decision-making and authenticity, much can be gained from simply paying attention to your feelings.”

Emotional Intelligence in Love and Relationships “Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the secret of lasting intimate relationships, largely because it makes us extremely aware of the changes—large and small—that are constantly occurring in ourselves and others. By building your EQ, you’ll have the sensitivity that each of us is always seeking in a significant other. You’ll automatically sense, through active awareness and empathy, the little shifts in the dynamics of your romance that signal a need for action.”

Attachment Styles and How They Affect Your Relationships “Attachment Theory is an area of psychology that describes the nature of emotional attachment between humans. It begins as children with our attachment to our parents. The nature of this attachment, and how well it’s fostered and cared for, will then influence the nature of our attachment to romantic partners later in our life.”

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This week, we discussed why it is important to be honest and share your truth in relationships. Here are some other viewpoints to that topic.

Why Honesty In Relationships Is Non-Negotiable & 7 Rules To Follow “Honesty is the quality of always speaking the truth and being totally authentic, straightforward, and transparent in our words and actions. It involves a few key practices: never lying, never hiding the truth, and never purposefully omitting or misdirecting people from the truth.”

Why Honesty is Important in a Relationship “When you build something, whether it’s something like a house, a business, or a piece of software, you want to start with a solid foundation. If you don’t, you may find yourself with problems down the line because what you created can’t withstand the stress of everyday use. The same goes with building relationships, be they business, family, neighborly, or romantic relationships. A key ingredient for a solid foundation for your relationships is honesty. ”

Love and honesty: what we hide and why we lie “I want to talk about honesty and dishonesty and how it comes into play in relationships…. This is about emotional honesty – the habits and ways of being that seem small, but actually create who you are and how you form bonds with others. Because the simple act of being honest can change your life in awesome earth-shattering ways. What I’m talking about is kind of like emotional lying – it’s subtler and therefore insidious in how it hurts your life – and it’s tied a struggle with acceptance. What I hope to offer is insight into why either you are “shielding” others from the truth or why others are doing this to you. I’d also like to sell you on the amazing and powerful benefits of being honest and letting go of control. Because that practice has amazing benefits in your life. Without further ado – three parts: what why and how!”

 

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This week, we said stay in touch – it’s deeply important for your relationships. Here are some interesting articles on the social and physiological nature of touch.

The Vital Importance of Human Touch “The research demonstrating the need for human touch is vast. From a developmental standpoint, infants literally cannot survive without human touch. Skin-to-skin contact in even in the first hour after birth has been shown to help regulate newborns’ temperature, heart rate, and breathing, and decreases crying.”

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Touch “The sense of touch is one of the central forms of perceptual experience, though it has often been overshadowed by vision in both philosophy and psychology. Thought to be one of the first senses to develop, touch occurs across the whole body using a variety of receptors in the skin. It often combines these signals with feedback from the muscles and tendons as we actively move and explore the world, and with proprioceptive information about the position of our tactual surfaces.”

Hugs and kisses: The health impact of affective touch “When we touch, hug, or kiss a friend or partner, that gesture is loaded with meaning. We seek affection, try to establish a connection, or attempt to communicate a need. Various cultures use touch in various ways to display tenderness or respect, and other non-human primates use it to create a connection and establish social hierarchies. Recently, however, some experts have expressed concern that Western societies are experiencing a moment of crisis, as physical touch becomes more strictly regulated and we are less and less likely to engage in social acts such as hugging.”

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This week, we wrote about how empathy helps to make peaceful relationships possible. Here are some articles on aspects of empathy, Theory of Mind and mirror neurons.

Empathy: How to Feel and Respond to the Emotions of Others “Empathy has an important role to play in your life. First, it can strengthen your bonds with the people you interact with. As you try to understand others, you also make them feel heard and understood. They’re then more likely to take the time to empathize with you as well. This deepens your relationship and promotes that feeling of connection that all of us desire.”

Do Mirror Neurons Give Us Empathy? “Did you ever have that sensation where you’re watching someone do something—serve a tennis ball, say, or get pricked by a needle—and you can just feel exactly what they must be feeling, as if you were in their shoes? Scientists have long wondered why we get that feeling, and more than two decades ago, a team of Italian researchers thought they stumbled on an answer. While observing monkeys’ brains, they noticed that certain cells activated both when a monkey performed an action and when that monkey watched another monkey perform the same action. “Mirror neurons” were discovered. Since that time, mirror neurons have been hailed as a cornerstone of human empathy, language, and other vital processes.”

Teaching Theory of Mind and Perspective Taking “Theory of Mind is the ability to attribute mental states to the self and to others, and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, and perspectives different than one’s own. For a person who has developed a theory of mind, they will be able to understand that people’s interests are different – you might like sports even though I don’t and I might like hiking even though you don’t.”

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This week, we wrote about how your acceptance needs to go beyond the words to their deeper meaning. Here are some perceptive discussions on various aspects of listening.

We Are Using the Same Words, But Are We Speaking the Same Language? “… it becomes entirely clear that while we may all be using the same words, we absolutely positively are not speaking the same language. We use words to represent our thoughts, feelings and ideas in this culture, but the meanings that we attach to these words are always different for each person using them. We have different educations, memories, associations, experiences, traumas, preferences etc., and all of these differences affect the meanings and interpretations we attach to our words.”

12 Ways to Be More Understanding in Relationships “Understanding relationships is tough! Two people together, emotionally connected, and trying to navigate adulthood side by side is complicated. It gets even harder if there is a lack of understanding between those two people. The idea of understanding each other in a relationship seems simple enough on the surface, but it can be challenging to execute well. I hear clients often lament that they don’t feel understood or struggle to understand their partner.”

Listening to People Although this article is oriented toward businesses, it contains a great deal of wisdom. “It can be stated, with practically no qualification, that people in general do not know how to listen. They have ears that hear very well, but seldom have they acquired the necessary aural skills which would allow those ears to be used effectively for what is called listening. For several years we have been testing the ability of people to understand and remember what they hear. At the University of Minnesota we examined the listening ability of several thousand students and of hundreds of business and professional people. In each case the person tested listened to short talks by faculty members and was examined for his grasp of the content.”

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