Areas › Anger › Growing empathy
Two people who spend time in step really do become more attuned. Nothing passes between your brains while it happens, though, so put the hours in rather than waiting for the wiring.
The phrase about brains wiring together is a picture, and a lovely one. What is actually available to you is ordinary: the same room, the same walk each week, a task done side by side without much said. Closeness is built out of that, and no amount of talk about neurons will substitute for the hours.
Qur’an and Sunnah
My mercy encompasses all things (Quran 7:156). Whatever grows between two people is a small share of something far larger, which is a gentler thought than the machinery.
۞وَٱكۡتُبۡ لَنَا فِي هَٰذِهِ ٱلدُّنۡيَا حَسَنَةࣰ وَفِي ٱلۡأٓخِرَةِ إِنَّا هُدۡنَآ إِلَيۡكَۚ قَالَ عَذَابِيٓ أُصِيبُ بِهِۦ مَنۡ أَشَآءُۖ وَرَحۡمَتِي وَسِعَتۡ كُلَّ شَيۡءࣲۚ فَسَأَكۡتُبُهَا لِلَّذِينَ يَتَّقُونَ وَيُؤۡتُونَ ٱلزَّكَوٰةَ وَٱلَّذِينَ هُم بِـَٔايَٰتِنَا يُؤۡمِنُونَ
Grant us good things in this world and in the life to come. We turn to You.’ God said, ‘I bring My punishment on whoever I will, but My mercy encompasses all things. ‘I shall ordain My mercy for those who are conscious of God and pay the prescribed alms; who believe in Our Revelations
Qur’an 7:156read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Among 412 adults treated with acceptance and commitment therapy for chronic pain, increases in perspective taking on the self were associated with improved functioning. The measurable gains in this area come from what changes in people's lives, not from anything seen passing between two brains. It was a treatment cohort followed over time, so the link is an association rather than proof of cause.
Yu L, Norton S, McCracken LM. (2017). Change in "Self-as-Context" ("Perspective-Taking") Occurs in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for People With Chronic Pain and Is Associated With Improved Functioning.. The journal of pain doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Knowing how another person moves and speaks is built up by time spent near them.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
There is more than one way into someone else's world. You can picture yourself in their place, picture them in it, or simply let their state affect you, and the three do not feel the same or lead to the same place.
The real feeling usually crosses someone's face for less than a second before the polite version arrives. If your attention is elsewhere, the polite version is all you will ever meet.
The thing worth admitting is not that you were angry. It is what you were frightened of underneath it: being made a fool of, being left, being counted as useless.