The moment I finished Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey’s book — What Happened to You? — I sent it to all of my friends. It offers an awakening lens into why we do what we do by explaining how our experiences influence our brain development, and thus our worldview and behavior.
Let’s say you grab a friend’s arm while sharing good news and they immediately pull away. Their fear response may seem unexpected, but if they’ve experienced physical trauma, your excited gesture was perceived as a threat. It’s processed in a different part of their brain.
Learning this helped me understand and extend greater compassion to myself and loved ones. What I didn’t anticipate learning from Dr.Perry, though, is that all healing traces back to a single source — connection — in moments I would have never expected.
Renowned child psychiatrist and neuroscientist, Dr.Perry helps us understand that healing doesn’t happen in a 4 o’clock therapy session on Thursday. It happens in thousands of small moments with loved ones. A conversation with a friend doesn’t just make you feel better. It changes your physiology. Sharing an experience, like receiving critical feedback at work, alters how that event is processed in your brain. It quiets your stress response and strengthens your immune system. One positive conversation with a friend literally influences how your heart and lungs function.
“When you feel connected, you feel whole.”
Dr.Perry’s vision for more connected communities, and the role we play in our own, gives me tremendous hope...“When you’re able to be an emotional anchor for somebody, those are really powerful moments. It matters that you do that work. When we make one person calmer, it’s like dropping a pebble in a pond. It has this impact well beyond what you frequently appreciate...You never know which moment is going to have this incredible, catalytic impact.”
We contribute to each other’s vitality.
For many of us, time with our friends and family is what fills us up most. Yet, I know I still struggle with truly orienting my day around it.
What would happen if we honored our time together as the greatest predictor of not only our own health, but the world’s?
“We could have a quantum leap in humanity,” Dr.Perry writes. “We have so much unexpressed potential.”
Who is one person who truly matters to you? How might you spend more time with them this week?
With gratitude,
Jenna