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C AN INTERPERSONAL NEUROBIOLOGY VIEW OF SUPERVISION School for Spiritual Direction: Spiritual Direction Supervision
What is IPNB? • Interpersonal Neurobiology: Developed by child psychiatrist Dan Siegel, MD • Defined as: A consilient approach to studying and understanding how brain shapes the mind and how the mind shapes the brain through relationship with self and other, drawing from and forming a common language for similar phenomena across the fields of neuroscience, psychology/psychiatry, sociology, mathematics, physics, anthropology, genetics, biology, etc. • Consilient: Different fields of study unifying their bodies of knowledge in the area of how relationship with self and others, including God, influences development (and healing) of the mind which then shapes the brain and how the brain influences the mind that influences relationships.
Why an Understanding of IPNB for Supervision? • Speaks to how relationships can not only heal relational wounds, but can facilitate growth. • Provides a way of understanding how an accepting, loving, gentle, compassionate and contemplative approach to supervision actually fosters a greater sense of wholeness in the director, thus, supervision becomes a means God uses to move the director into greater interior freedom. • Allows for an explanation of how Focusing and other means of being able to “stay with” a feeling, a body sensation, etc. may work. • Understanding how the brain works in relating with others can foster greater self-compassion in times of struggle, resistance and challenge.
Intro to the Brain: Brain in the Palm of Your Hand • Brain isn’t just in your skull • There’s a “heart-brain” and a “gut-brain” also – the “front line of perceiving input from the environment • Info-laden energy (nerve impulses) from heart and gut and other parts of the body make way to brain via the spinal cord through the brainstem. • Brainstem=mechanism of basic arousal and alertness of the body and brain; regulates states of the body(temperature, respiration, heart rate, etc.) and activates fight-flight-freeze survival response.
Intro to the Brain: Brain in the Palm of Your Hand • Limbic System: Processes a number of fundamental experiences, such as emotions, motivations, various forms of memory, appraisal of meaning, attachment relationships • Amygdala: Emotion center that scans the environment for danger, assesses the situation, and motivates the body for action; key in fight-flight-freeze, as well as attachment relationships • Hippocampus: time and date stamper of experiences that encodes memory • Anterior Cingulate: top of limbic, bottom of prefrontal cortex; focuses attention, links thinking with feeling; regulates bodily pain and social representations of interactions, such as rejection (social rejection is experienced similarly as physical pain neurologically)
Intro to the Brain: Brain in the Palm of Your Hand • Prefrontal Cortex: links differentiated lower areas to one another, as well as regulates them • Makes maps of time, connecting past, present and future = “mental time travel” • Middle Prefrontal Cortex: Coordinates and balances input from the cortex, limbic system, brain stem, and bodily regions and integrates them into a functional whole • Integrative region that processes the signals, especially nonverbal, from other people to create a neural map of their mental states – and even of our own internal image of our mental life
Intro to the Brain: Resonance Circuits & Mirror Neurons • Resonance Circuits: • connect the body (the heart-brain and gut-brain), brainstem, limbic areas, up to the middle prefrontal cortex; • help us “resonate” with another • Mirror Neurons • Located in the motor cortex of the brain that fire with intentional or goal-directed, sequential activity • Along with the resonance circuits create the pathway that connects us to one another – allows us to “feel felt” by another. • We resonate not only emotionally (i.e., empathy), but also physiologically – respiration, blood pressure, heart rate can all synchronize with another’s state.
Intro to the Brain: Resonance Circuits & Mirror Neurons • Our awareness of another’s state of mind, however, depends upon how well we know our own. • We feel what others are feeling by feeling our own feelings • “When we can sense our own internal state, the fundamental pathway for resonance with others is open as well.” (D. Siegel) • BUT losing ourselves in the other’s experience isn’t resonance • Resonance requires we stay differentiated (i.e., we know who we are) while being linked • Two “Mind Lessons” from this: • Becoming open to our body states is a powerful source of knowledge • “Relationships are woven into the fabric of our interior world.: (D. Siegel)
What is “Mind?” • Refers to our inner subjective experience and the process of being conscious or aware. • Definition of Mind: • An emergent, self-organizing, embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information that gives rise to our mental activities • Emergent: An ongoing process in which the interactions of the parts of a system make the whole greater than the sum of its parts, like a choir singing in perfect 4-part harmony or the process of spiritual direction or supervision • Self-Organizing: It emerges from the interactions of the elements of the system and then influences the subsequent functioning of those same elements; An unfolding, unpredictable process • For example, relational interactions give rise to the mental experience that then shapes those very interactions • Embodied: It is both in our skull-encased brain and in our body with which our brain is connected • Relational: Mind is that which emerges from relationships, which emerge from the patterns of interaction (flow, sharing or exchange of energy and information) between two or more people or entities. • Relationship with Self=way of developing our inner “caring observer” (B. Badenoch) – a persistent gentleness toward self • Relationship with Other=beholding and being beheld – the Ultimate Other=God • Both relationship with Self and with Other affect changes in mind and changes in mind create changes in brain
What is “Mind?” • Definition of Mind: • An emergent, self-organizing, embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information that gives rise to our mental activities • Regulates: • Regulation involves Monitoring (seeing how something moves, tracking it, sensing a process) and Modulating (shaping, modifying or transforming the process over time; moving energy intentionally) • Can include affect and emotion, physiology and motor movement, or communication and interactions with others • We can teach ourselves to monitor with more stability so that we can see with increased depth, clarity, and detail which then allows for choice leading to being able to modulate or modify what we have been monitoring • When we move energy and information flow toward integration, we move toward health • Energy: capacity to do something • Information: a pattern of energy that carries meaning and symbolizes something other than the energy itself (e.g., language) • Flow: the movement of change of something across time • Mental Activities: the dynamic processes that are part of the fundamental descriptions of our lives and shape how information is transformed (e.g., emotions, thinking, memory, beliefs, hopes, etc.)
Mind in Supervision • Supervision is the sharing of mind between supervisor, director, God and the absent other (i.e., directee). • The whole of that sharing has the potential to be greater than the sum of their parts – emergent expression of the movements of the Holy Spirit • “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” Matthew 18:20
Mindsight • A kind of focused attention that enables us to see and respect the internal workings of our own minds and that of others’ minds. • Benefits: • Helps us be aware of our mental processes without being swept away by them • Enables us to get ourselves off the autopilot of ingrained behaviors and habitual responses • Moves us beyond the reactive emotional hooks we get trapped or caught up in • Increases the capacity to perceive the mind with greater clarity • We are better able to balance our emotions • Can improve our relationships – including with ourselves • Three Principles: 1) Mindsight can be cultivated through very practical steps 2) When we develop the skill of mindsight, we change the physical structure of the brain 3) Well-being emerges when we create connections in our lives – when we learn to use mindsight to help our brain achieve and maintain integration
Mindsight: The Triangle of Well-Being Relationships Mind Brain hurtful incoherent disintegrated Integrated Empathic Coherent • Metaphor for the idea that mind, brain and relationships are each one part of the one whole – One reality with three facets (A “trinity” of sorts) • Represents the process by which energy and information flow changes over time • Mind, brain, and relationships all influence each other. • White: The “high road” • Red: The “low road”
Mindsight: The River of Integration • Hebb’s Law: “Neurons that fire together wire together.” – how differentiated parts of a system link into a working whole • Two steps: • Differentiation: Found in the ability to simply observe (to “notice) our minds that allows us to experience ourselves as separate from the moment-to-moment events (and from others) arising in our embodied brains and minds • Linkage (Integration): Kindness links our observing mind to these flows of energy and information through the gentle touch of comfort and understanding (so, the gentle, compassionate, contemplative approach to supervision actually fosters differentiation and linkage – helps us to develop mindsight!)
Chaos River of Integration Rigidity Mindsight: The River of Integration • The River of Integration is bordered by Chaos on one bank and Rigidity on the other • The middle of the river (integration/linkage) enables us to be flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable (FACES), i.e., harmonious, in freedom • The middle also represents the “Window of Tolerance”: The degree of affective experience we can tolerate without becoming dysregulated • Outside the “Window” we are in a state of chaos or rigidity – unable to stay with experience (our own or other’s) or becoming too immersed in it • The task: to widen the “Window” • “The presence of a caring trusted other person, one who is attuned to our inner world, is often the initial key to widening our windows of tolerance.” (D. Siegel) • In reference to the appearance of the Risen Christ to Mary Magdalene: “By calling her name, Jesus manifests his knowledge of everything in her life and his total acceptance of all that she is. This is the moment in which Mary realizes that Jesus loved her. This is the first step in her transformation.” (T. Keating)
Awareness and Attention • Awareness: The subjective sense of knowing or being conscious of something • Makes choice and change possible • The fundamental nature of our relationships is shaped by awareness: when we share something in awareness with another, it changes the nature of that experience; it alters the flow of information processing and creates the closeness we feel with another person. • Attention: The process by which energy and information are focused through the circuits of the brain • Recurring patterns of this focused flow can alter the way we connect with each other, how we experience our subjective inner lives and even how we come to shape the architecture of our own brains. “…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8
The Wheel of Awareness • A metaphor of the mind as a wheel: • Central “hub” of the “caring observer” – a place of peaceful awareness and acceptance – inviting God into that place and to rest there with God…to observe with God • Rim of individual experiences: 5 senses, body sensations, mental activity, attuned relationships (coinciding with the Dimensions of Human Person and the Arenas of Experience) • When we exercise our attentional capacity sufficiently to reside in the hub at will, that state of mind of focused attention has moved in the direction of becoming a trait and can support our ability to direct our awareness to any point on the rim without getting caught up and riding on the rim.
The Wheel of Awareness • With further development, we can also choose to sit in the hub as a caring observer, noticing with kindness whatever arises internally or comes to us from the outside. • We become anchored internally so that newly arising events don’t pull us as easily to the rim • Connecting with the “caring observer” in the hub: • Develops capacity for focusing the mind on a single experience as the foundation for being able to relax into receptivity while maintaining attentiveness to the present moment – through any contemplative prayer practice, as well as the Examen and Practicing the Presence of God • Accurately describing the feeling (by “sending out spokes from the hub to the rim) rather than explaining the reason for it calms the amygdala • May be used with the Examen and to complete the CRF
Conclusion • Supervision as a contemplative, compassionate presence for and with the director, in the service of the absent other, can serve as a means of helping us to simply “notice” and to be with our experiences and with God in our experiences. • In this way supervision can help us grow our minds and change our brains to bring us into greater interior freedom through awareness, attention, and acceptance. • Having experienced this through relationship with our supervisor and through our relationship with God, we develop greater capacity to be this presence with and for our directees.