VIEWING YOUR RELATIONSHIP FROM A NEW PERSPECTIVE

A good way to begin the healing of a relationship is to look at the story you tell about a problem that has come between you and another person. Why? Because our stories, and the way we tell them, are important elements in how we try to make sense of what has happened to the connection we had with someone else.

We tell the story of a past injustice to let others know how wronged we were and how our response was the only logical thing to do. With our tone of voice, the words we choose, our gestures and our posture, we want our listeners to remember the pieces of the story we want them to remember. The other person, of course, tells his version of the story and has a different point to make.

Nevertheless, it is through these narratives that we convey our understanding of our strained or broken relationship. It is through our stories that we view the mistakes that have been made and express our hope that the relationship will change, or at least end peacefully.

The purpose of this first chapter of Healing Relationships is an Inside Job is to help you notice what there is in the telling of your story that has kept you stuck in conflict with another person — and to recognize that your brain is determined to interpret your conflict from one particular, and persistent, perspective.

Pathways in the Brain

Whether and how change will occur in your relationship, and in the story you will later tell, depends on the change that will occur in your brain. That's where all change ultimately occurs and where you have an extraordinarily linked network of 20 billion neurons connected to an average of 10,000 other neurons, giving you an incredibly huge number of new potential connections.

Unfortunately, we tend to use the same groups of neurons over and over, routing old thoughts, behaviors, attitudes, emotional reactions, and beliefs back and forth along the same pathways. Through this process the brain assigns meaning to an experience and creates a belief or filter through which the next experience can be accepted or rejected as true and valid.

For example, imagine that your brother has political views diametrically opposed to yours, and that you argue so vociferously that your respective spouses are ready to boycott family gatherings. Every time you are about to meet him again, you tell yourself that you won't let him get you riled up. But he always does. In fact, he seems to enjoy it.

Why, you ask yourself, does he do it? I can tell you. It is because in his brain the beliefs he holds are routed through pathways formed from his experience and his temperament. He sees the world through the filters he has created and you see the world through your filters. Unfortunately, his filte