Prioritize emotional empathy, which involves feeling what another person feels without conscious thought, over cognitive empathy (intellectual understanding) to foster deeper connection and facilitate real change.
To heal and change right-brain circuitry, seek out close, open, and vulnerable relationships where you can share your shortcomings and engage in reciprocal right-brain to right-brain communication.
Strive to integrate both positive and negative emotions rather than splitting them, as this capacity is central to secure attachment, emotional well-being, and a holistic view of self and others.
When strong emotions, such as disappointment, arise, allow them to come and be felt with full intensity rather than suppressing them, trusting that they will eventually transform into another shape or form.
Recognize that all emotions, positive and negative, have adaptive value; embrace and become familiar with the full spectrum of your emotions rather than labeling some as inherently ‘bad’.
Cultivate ‘wide-ranging attention’ or ’evenly suspended attention’ (a right-brain function) by broadening your focus beyond specific words to include internal sensations and the broader emotional context of an interaction.
Foster trust and synchrony in interactions by engaging in spontaneous, un-thought-out behaviors, allowing for genuine emotional exchange without a mind attempting to present anything.
Engage in smooth turn-taking behaviors during conversations, allowing for reciprocal communication, which is a hallmark of good relationships and fosters connection.
Actively cultivate a curious and open mind by seeking new experiences, challenges, and novel information, as this stimulates right-brain processing and personal growth.
Regularly engage in creative activities like drawing, painting, or playing music to ‘grease the gears’ of your right brain, fostering surrender from left-brain dominance and enhancing creativity.
Prioritize understanding information deeply rather than rote memorization, as this leads to more profound and lasting absorption, especially for right-brain processing.
Foster deeper understanding by engaging in activities that involve physical or sensory learning, such as playing an instrument, which bypasses purely logical, left-brain processing.
Enhance understanding and engage right-brain functions by practicing visualization, such as mentally picturing complex processes or cellular movements.
For deeper absorption and study, read and learn from physical copies of materials (e.g., printed papers) rather than solely from a computer screen.
Incorporate regular exercise as a fundamental practice for both physical and mental healing, supporting overall well-being.
Prioritize obtaining restorative sleep as a crucial component of overall physical and mental well-being and the healing process.
Engage in self-reflection and introspection to gain a deeper understanding of yourself, including acknowledging and seeing aspects you might prefer not to.
Become more aware of your personal psychological defenses (e.g., repression) to understand how they might be adaptively or maladaptively impacting your emotional processing.
Cultivate sufficient trust in relationships to be able to receive and integrate negative feedback from others, which is essential for addressing personal blind spots and growth.
Avoid arguing over text messages, as this medium lacks the emotional depth, nonverbal cues, and synchronous communication necessary for genuine connection and conflict resolution.
Nourish and stimulate right-brain activity by engaging in activities like traveling, spending time in nature, and sharing these experiences with others.
As a primary caretaker, continuously track a baby’s moment-to-moment arousal levels and emotions, then recognize, synchronize with, and regulate them to foster secure attachment.
When regulating a baby’s emotions, rely on intuition (a right-brain function) rather than explicit, left-brain reasoning, as this implicit approach is key to effective attachment.
Use your tone of voice to up-regulate a baby into an excited state or your facial expression and voice tone to down-regulate a baby experiencing hyperarousal.
When misattunement occurs with a child, actively return, resynchronize, and reconnect to repair the interaction, as this repair process is crucial for secure attachment.
Prioritize a child’s emotional well-being and conduct over their IQ, especially in early development, as these are stronger predictors of adult life satisfaction.
To understand attachment dynamics and emotional states, therapists (and listeners in general) should ‘surrender’ by switching from left-brain analytical listening to right-brain, intuitive listening, letting go of conscious, purposeful thought.
To achieve deep understanding, therapists (and empathic listeners) should synchronize their physiology with another person’s, allowing them to feel their emotional and arousal states interoceptively.
Once synchronized with another person’s emotional state, implicitly adjust your voice tone and facial expressions to interactively regulate their arousal, either slowing it down or up-regulating it as needed.
Use your face, voice, and gestures to somatically demonstrate auto-regulation or coordinated regulation to another person, conveying emotional states nonverbally.
In the first therapy session, prioritize synchronizing with the patient and forming a strong therapeutic alliance, as this foundational connection is more critical than immediate diagnosis.
When helping a dysregulated person, focus on how to be with them rather than what to say or do to them, as this implicit presence is key to facilitating right-brain changes.
To enhance empathic connection and pick up subtle communications, lean back and allow the emotional atmosphere to ‘come over you,’ rather than leaning forward in an overly engaged or impending manner.
Advocate for and support policies that provide extended parental leave (e.g., 3 months for paternal, 6+ months for maternal) to allow primary caretakers sufficient time during the critical early years of a child’s right-brain development.
Incorporate high-quality protein sources like protein bars when in a rush, away from home, or for a quick snack to easily meet daily protein goals without excess calories.
Consume a high-protein snack in the early or mid-afternoon to bridge the gap between lunch and dinner, helping to manage hunger and maintain protein intake.
Optimize sleep quality by controlling your sleeping environment’s temperature, aiming to drop body temperature by 1-3 degrees to fall and stay asleep, and increase it by 1-3 degrees to wake up refreshed.
Program your mattress temperature to be cool at the beginning of the night, colder in the middle, and warm as you wake up to enhance slow-wave and REM sleep.
Utilize smart mattress covers with snoring detection that automatically adjust your head position by a few degrees to improve airflow and stop snoring.