Identify and Free Yourself of Your Biases
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
—CARL JUNG, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
In biological systems, everything is related. The most fascinating manifestation of this is how a nonphysical awareness, a thought, becomes a tangible chemical, a protein in the body. It all starts with the perception of information. Let’s imagine a social worker is dealing with a “difficult” client named Joe, who causes her stress every time she encounters him. In the past, Joe had been argumentative and oppositional—thwarting all of her efforts to help him. What happens in Sheryl’s body as she walks down the hall and catches a glimpse of this man in the waiting room?
The visual perception of Joe enters a back area of Sheryl’s brain called the occipital lobe. That, combined with her previous experiences, causes her brain to make specific types of neuropeptides—brain proteins that affect the body. In this case, it produces a neuropeptide that triggers a stress response, which then starts a pervasive cascade of chemical reactions. One of the first is the creation of neuro-protein Y, which prompts her to crave sugar so she will have enough energy to “fight” Joe or “flee” from his presence. Her brain also triggers the secretion of corticotrophin releasing factor (CRP) from the hypothalamus, which travels down to the adrenal glands to start the flow of cortisol. Cortisol works by mobilizing sugar (glucose) to fuel her fighting or fleeing. It also causes weight gain. (If she doesn’t fight or flee, this extra energy will be stored as fat for future challenges.)
Sheryl passes Joe with a nod and a timid smile, comments on the weather, and tells him she will be with him in a few minutes. She conceals her authentic feelings of dread as she returns to her desk and spreads cream cheese on the bagel she is now craving. But, because Joe is Sheryl’s client, she cannot fight or flee. Instead, she stifles her emotions. The concomitant rise in the stress hormone cortisol raises her insulin levels, which increases fat deposits. This process, in turn, promotes inflammation in her body and the risk of disease. All this from an emotion prompted by earlier experiences with a client who Sheryl perceives as stressful. And now, she has to step outside her office and call Joe in for his consultation.
How can caregivers make a compassionate connection seamlessly even with difficult people, without stressing themselves and others to the point of burnout? How can they truly be of service? There are several positive steps to take in order to create the best connection possible—one that will help them genuinely be with the person who needs their help. Throughout the rest of this book, I outline these strategies. However, a true connection starts not with knowledge about the individual who needs help, but perhaps paradoxically, with a deeper understanding of oneself and one’s biases that include reactions to stress and to others.
WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?
Everyone has frustrations, prejudgments, and strong opinions accumulated from a lifetime of experiences. Those attitudes are imperative for guiding decision making and enabling people to interpret the world they live in, but they can also hamper close, personal interactions. In truth, and despite protests to the contrary, no one is ever genuinely objective. As diarist Anaïs Nin has astutely noted, “We all see life not as it is, but as we are.”1
The reality in which individuals live is always a product of their own minds—their consciousness. As they gain information, whether from years of education or from hard-earned life experiences, their brains become conditioned, and in fact, closed off so that it is difficult to allow new realities to enter or change their opinions.
One study at Harvard conducted in 2013 made it clear how even highly educated and attuned professionals can become blinded to certainties that exist outside their well-honed frames of reference. In this experiment, attention researcher Trafton Drew asked twenty-four experienced radiologists to look at CT scans of the chest for tiny cancer nodules. He intentionally superimposed on the area of the upper left lung the image of a gorilla that was forty-eight times the size of the detail the radiologists were searching for. The experts carefully examined this altered scan, but amazingly, 83 percent of them missed the gorilla entirely, even though the picture was quite large. An eye-tracking device showed that they had gazed right at it, but clearly, the gorilla hadn’t registered in their minds at all.2
How could this happen? Radiologists are looking for abnormal nodules that could be cancer. They know the shapes and characteristics of these lesions. To be as efficient as possible (in order to get through the stacks of charts and images they must read in a day), their minds home in on the configurations that trigger a “I-don’t-want-to-miss-this” response. A gorilla image does not have these “red flags,” so they ignore it and literally don’t see what is right in front of them.
People notice what they are looking for, but because of their biases may miss important details they either believe are extraneous or fail to attend to altogether. The way most individuals have become conditioned to see the world makes them perceive their opinions as established “truths.” But in the process of making a human connection, caregivers often must recognize that other people’s experiences have shaped their unique points of view. If they intend to initiate a compassionate interaction with another human being, they first must understand their own biases, where they come from, and why they hold on to them. Most significantly, they must avoid projecting those beliefs (what I like to call clutter) inappropriately or too quickly on people whom they wish to help.
HOW BIASES CAN BE DANGEROUS
Recent research has shown that if physicians interpret their patients as disruptive or “difficult,” not only do they experience negative emotions themselves but they may make inaccurate diagnoses, which can cause their patients harm. To test this theory, a research team in Holland created six scenarios that depicted patients as either difficult or neutral. Sixty-three residents in family practice were then asked to analyze these vignettes and make a quick or more deliberate diagnosis. The students also rated how likable the patients were. The results of this investigation showed that diagnostic accuracy was significantly diminished for patients who were deemed difficult as compared with those who appeared neutral. However, when the residents took the time to carefully reflect on the cases, the accuracy of their diagnoses improved, despite the patients’ behaviors.3
A related study surmised that when patients are difficult, their physicians make mistakes because they spend mental energy on dealing with the disturbing behaviors, which impedes “adequate processing of clinical findings.”4 If clinicians prejudge patients as “difficult,” this judgment (again, clutter) keeps them from accurately diagnosing the real problem. They start living in their own heads, which prevents them from seeing reality clearly. The truth is, no matter what the context, when we are nervous or upset, we make mistakes.
In a downward spiral, difficult patients may also trigger inappropriate behavior and job-related stress in the people charged with caring for them. For instance, another recent study investigated negative clinician behavior on their patients’ outcomes and on the health of the clinicians themselves. When 1,559 clinicians working at an urban U.S. academic medical center were rude, disrespectful, self-centered or egocentric, gossipy, passive-aggressive, and even in the rare case, physically violent, not surprisingly they were likely to cause harm to their patients. But this was also associated with more physical symptoms in the clinicians and a greater degree of job dissatisfaction.5 This dynamic is of particular concern in health care since professionals often work in teams. Unprofessional behaviors can affect not only the health of the patients being served and the clinician providing the care but they can also degrade the functioning of the whole team and by extension, the hospital they work in.
Biases—one’s own internal clutter—can seep out and interfere with a positive, healing connection. I learned this the hard way, when my frustration led to a regrettable choice of words that could have caused more harm than good with my patient Bob. He was a genial man in his midfifties who happened to come from a well-off family. He and his wife, Anna, were empty-nesters. They lived in a nice part of town, dressed well, and enjoyed traveling. One of their greatest pleasures was dining together in fine restaurants, and they ate out quite a bit. But, while Anna sought out opportunities to hit the gym so she could work off those extra calories, Bob had always been quick to tell me that he hated gyms and disliked most types of exercise.
As a consequence, over the years Bob had gained quite a bit of weight—even to the point of being obese. He was aware of his girth and remorseful about it, but he hadn’t managed to stop putting on the pounds. The weight gain had led to several health setbacks. He was now suffering from high blood pressure and worrisome cholesterol levels. In the previous year, he had also developed colon cancer. After finishing cancer treatment, he was back to see me in the office for regular checkups. We had completed his routine appointment, and we were talking about the importance of tests to check his blood glucose levels to ensure he was not developing diabetes. As we began to wrap up the visit, Bob sighed as he said to me, “Dave, when are they going to find a cure for obesity?”
Somehow his question hit a raw spot in me. Here I was sifting through ways for Bob to handle the physical toll of his lifestyle choices, which included his love of rich foods and his avoidance of exercise. I felt frustrated that he had not made any changes over the years to improve his situation. His colon cancer had been treated, but because of his weight, he was at higher than ordinary risk for recurrence. The complications of diabetes were right around the corner. It fit a pattern I was seeing in a lot of patients: an insatiable, never-ending desire to be taken care of, without any sense of owning their problems. It also fit a pattern of patients demanding a quick, silver-bullet fix to health issues, expressing impatience with doctors, never wanting to engage in the hard work of keeping themselves healthy. Where was Bob’s sense of accountability? Why did he have no resolve or self-discipline to address his own predicament? Aren’t we all responsible for taking care of the issues in our lives?
Bob’s question touched on several of the long-standing frustrations I’ve felt as a doctor—and as a person. Which may have been why the words that came out of my mouth next were less than compassionate. “They’ve already found the cure for obesity,” I blurted. “It’s move more and eat less!”
As soon as I had uttered these two short sentences, I wished that I could have taken them back. But it was too late. The look in Bob’s eyes at that moment was one of hurt. I recognized at once that my glib comment had undermined my overall objective, which was not to shame or punish Bob but to help him find a way to address his weight issue.
I immediately realized that my judgment had been muddied by my own set of biases. I had allowed my frustrations (Can’t he see the magnitude of his problems, and that they’re only going to get worse? He should know better! He never listens to me!) to interfere with our interaction. Not only had I caused my patient unnecessary pain but I had missed an opportunity. Instead of providing an answer that could help Bob, I had forced my worldview on him, hoping he would suddenly see things the way I wanted him to see them.
If I had taken the time to answer appropriately, I might have said, “Sometimes simple changes like eating less red meat, white pasta, and rice or giving up soda (even diet soda) can make a big difference.” But dietary changes work best (and patients are more likely to adhere to them) if the new regimen is their idea, their plan. So, if I wanted to maintain our connection, I might have offered words that would have enabled Bob to bring his own truths to the issue. For instance, I might have said, “Yes, that will be a great day, and I’m looking forward to it, too. But since we don’t have that cure yet, what kinds of things do you feel are possible for you to do in the meantime, to bring about the changes you want so much?” If only I had thought to say these words to him then, I might have avoided such a negative reaction that clearly hurt my patient rather than helped him.
Once people acknowledge and separate their biases, once they get out of their own clutter, they can then access what they know to be of service to others. When they don’t, they run the risk of becoming dogmatic and inflexible in their thinking. I fell victim to this kind of bias with Bob when I responded so unkindly to his wistful question about a cure for obesity. In my damaging interaction with him, I had jumped to apply my own viewpoint to his situation. I heaved into the conversation my professional perspective from medical journals, other members of my field, and my daily practice. These sources of information might have some factual substance, but they were not helpful to Bob. In the final analysis, at that moment of pique, I was unable to set aside my own preconceptions to truly be of service to my patient. In essence, I had enlisted the nocebo effect, and when I left the exam room, I felt terrible.
HOW PEOPLE DEVELOP BELIEF SYSTEMS
Research demonstrates that life experiences and the interpretation of information can cause physical changes in the body. Stress may manifest as elevated blood pressure, headaches, or literally, physical pain in various parts of the body. How does this happen? As I described in the beginning of this chapter, when we integrate information, we alter neuropeptides in our brains and engage the autonomic nervous system. Dr. Dan Shapiro and I created a name for this conditioned response—the info-medical cycle (see figure),6—and I developed the diagram below to illustrate it, although the process is part of collective knowledge that has developed over time.
Fundamentally, the info-medical cycle looks like this: As people enter a new experience, they receive information. Their mind works hard to interpret the input in order to understand what they’re seeing or the event in which they’re involved. But along with that interpretation, they also have an emotional reaction that prompts a physiological response or physical symptoms. Those feelings—whether it’s breaking out in a nervous sweat or experiencing the thrilling rush of joy—alter how they act. Ultimately, individuals base their behaviors on those feelings, and they store memories about them. Those experiences—and the changes in their bodies—help them form a belief system. The end result: the brain becomes accustomed to conditioned beliefs, and anything that threatens those beliefs feels foreign and makes people uncomfortable.
Even though the info-medical cycle is an inherent part of childhood, when every first experience is a potential source of learning and wonderment, people continue to reproduce this loop throughout their lives. When they encounter something for the first time, they don’t respond with judgment or critical thought. The lack of judgment is sometimes called looking through a child’s eye or as the Buddhists say, having a beginner’s mind. People simply see things as they are and can register them authentically. As they gain experience and external input, they often lose the newness—the openness, vulnerability, and awe—of the beginner’s mind. The positive aspect of growing up is that children eventually develop the ability to make beneficial decisions for themselves in this way. They seek situations that feel good and avoid those that feel bad.
But there’s an inevitable drawback. As people go through life, they extrapolate from the experiences they’ve had. They revert to the expert’s mind and come to believe their own established “truths” about the world. Although becoming “expert” might seem advantageous, in this context, the expert’s mind is not a wholly positive attitude. It actually narrows vision and limits observations so that when new information is encountered, one can’t help but apply the already established frame of reference, even if it doesn’t fit.7 Thus, the radiologists looked exclusively for cancer nodules in the altered CT scan and never even register the gorilla. It’s so hard for people to relinquish closely held ideas and frameworks that Einstein once said, “Physics advances one death at a time.”
BIAS AND NEURO-NETWORKS OF COMFORT
Imagine a picky eighteen-month-old who tastes a spicy burrito from his father’s plate. The first time the child (Brian) is about to try something that’s not on his ordinary menu, he’s excited that he’s doing what the “big kids” do, but he has no expectation about what he’s going to taste. When the food enters his mouth, however, he finds it much hotter than what he’s used to. His response to the spiciness leads to a bodily symptom: His mouth hurts, he sweats, and his heart rate rises. He bursts into tears. The event becomes ingrained in his neuro-network, creating a memory that he generalizes into a belief about the piquancy of all adult food.
The next time Brian’s parents offer him something from their plates—say a bite of roasted chicken—he’s wary. He sees the “information” differently now. Instead of feeling excited, he shuts his eyes and his mouth and shakes his head, “No!” His parents’ food has become something he believes he does not like. Because of the release of neuropeptides that caused his bodily response to the chili peppers before, he may have some of the same reactions such as an elevated heart rate and crying—without even tasting the chicken. The memory of pain in his mouth leads to a behavior in which he refuses to try anything new.
All is not lost, however. Eventually, after sampling other foods, Brian will have positive eating experiences that broaden his palate and food choices.
I call a child’s subsequent reactions to food after having eaten something that distresses him (or adult reactions to a previously painful event) the habituated neuro-networks of comfort. Life experiences create beliefs that start to feel normal. When this is reinforced, people begin to feel comfort. For instance, if a public speaker wants to give a talk that people will enjoy, she will tell them what they already believe. This conditioning process is neither right nor wrong. It’s simply part of being human.
The trouble is that people don’t always recognize the biases they hold from their accumulation of life experiences. Most importantly, they don’t always identify them as biases, which is to say, they don’t acknowledge that they’re the result of perceptions and experiences, as opposed to truths. Biases can become as ingrained in personalities as breathing and are often referred to as implicit or unconscious bias. Unfortunately, they can impinge on interactions with others. In fact, the details of one’s worldview can be so intrusive they may distort evidence that’s plainly apparent.
One investigation, conducted in the 1970s and published in Science, showed that the professional biases of medical practitioners can cause them to diagnose illness even in people who aren’t sick.8 The study tested whether mental health professionals could pick out “fake” psychiatric patients. A group of eight research subjects, including a graduate student, three psychologists, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a housepainter, and a housewife signed on to become “pseudopatients” at psychiatric hospitals. Even though none of them had ever been treated for mental health issues, as part of the research project, each presented themselves at the front door of eight different psychiatric hospitals with a false name, complaining of hearing “thuds.” At each site, the pseudopatient was immediately admitted, but soon after entering, he or she acted normally, displaying cooperative, pleasant, helpful behavior (as the researchers had previously instructed the study participants to do). When interviewed by psychiatrists, these individuals answered truthfully, providing accurate details from their own lives.
The pseudopatients underwent individual and group therapy and joined with the other residents in their activities. Because they’d been conditioned to do so, all of the medical staff believed the infiltrators suffered from schizophrenia. In other words, they regarded the pseudopatients as “sick” and even described their ordinary behaviors such as writing in a journal and walking the hallways as part of the illness. The pseudopatients were retained as inpatients for an average of nineteen days (one poor soul was discharged after fifty-four days!). For all of them, the discharge diagnosis was “schizophrenia in remission.”
Significantly, the only people who detected that the research participants were not sick at all were the psychiatric patients in the hospitals who interacted with them as they ate, exercised, and attended group therapy. Not having had the professional training to view people according to particular pathologies or to fit a diagnosis, the people with schizophrenia were able to relate to the pseudopatients without labeling them. Using their beginner’s eye instead of the goggles of professional training, the delusional patients with actual schizophrenia were the ones who were able to make the accurate diagnosis! The relationship they formed with the pseudopatients allowed them to see the latter authentically, as they truly were.
Meaningful interactions and the development of trusting relationships reduce fear and are the remedy for bias and prejudice. This makes for a movie plot that writers can count on for good reviews. Here is the scenario. . . . A “different” person moves into town. This individual is foreign in a way that does not match the “norm” of the residents. Sometimes this fear of different causes people of the norm to treat the “stranger” badly, or even to do him or her harm. Different skin color, religious affiliations, cultures, or sexual preferences become the chosen label by which the norm identifies this new person who does not fit within their habituated neuro-networks of comfort. As the plot unfolds, out of necessity (for example, the need to overcome a common enemy, win the state basketball championship, preserve the town) the norm starts to develop a relationship with the different, and slowly trust and acceptance evolve. As the connection grows, there is less fear, and this new experience becomes part of a collective norm. Now different is no longer seen as a label of fear, but as a person, a friend, a helper, a coach, a teammate, a neighbor. This allows the diversity of the town to expand, widening the neuro-networks of comfort. The community is better for it due to the multiplicity of perspectives. The townspeople become less fearful of different and more open to the potential of what is.
Cue the Oscar music. . . .
EVERYDAY BIASES
When people adhere to the rote rhythms of the day, moving without stopping, they depend on the patterns and processes already established in their brains to help speed along their lives. They stop at red lights. They wait for the appropriate step to arrive when boarding an escalator. They check the size of a sweater before trying it on. But that dependence, helpful as it is, makes it difficult to observe the world anew from moment to moment.
The philosopher and father of psychology William James said, “Genius . . . means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.” Genius, maybe. But it’s only through unhabitual seeing that caregivers can really bring their skills to bear in truly connecting with and helping others. To understand the brain’s love of habit and pattern, take the following challenge. Read the sentence below once and count how many times the letter f appears:
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT
OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED
WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.
It’s an ordinary, dull sentence, and it’s parsed in a way that’s not particularly tricky. Most people looking for the letter f are quick to find three or four repetitions. Actually, it appears six times. Most miss the f each time the word “of” appears. Researchers have suggested several hypotheses to explain why those fs go undetected. For one, the word “of” is smaller than the others, and the eye may quickly skip over this minor consonant. In addition, when people hear the word “of” in their minds, the English-speaking brain is habituated to pronounce the sound of a v. It’s possible readers miss the letter because it doesn’t match the same sound pattern as the f in “finished” or “files.” Whatever the reason, the effect is clear—the mind tends to perceive the letter without actually “seeing” it. The habits people have established in order to function in the world make it hard for them to discern important new details that are right in front of them.
People tend to approach their interactions with others in the same way. They look for behaviors and patterns they already know, placing strangers in categories they have previously defined. Fixed in their own biases, they might fail to seek out or perceive important details—for instance, a teary eye at the mention of a deceased family member or a physical tic that suggests discomfort. But in order to obtain the most authentic information so as to be of service, caregivers must first recognize how they view the world themselves. That means, they must acknowledge that they may not notice all the fs because of their mind’s conditioning. Once they do, they can do a better job of looking through the other person’s lenses, seeing them as they see themselves.
This was made clear to me when a school counselor described her experience meeting with an eleventh grader and his parents as the student transferred midyear into her high school. Melissa, relatively new to the job, quickly judged the Wilsons from their dress to be a white middle-class family. Working from that bias, she opened with several routine questions, asking sixteen-year-old Jeremy, “What prompted you to choose this school?”
With a dismissive shrug, he answered, “We just moved to the area.”
Melissa continued to question the family. From her point of view, the meeting seemed to go smoothly. However, this point of view was based on her conditioned biases that kept her from seeing what was actually going on with the Wilsons. And this prevented her from making a correct assessment of the family’s situation.
It was only later, upon further reflection, that Melissa realized her assumptions about the family were false. Jeremy had glanced at his parents before answering why he had chosen the school. His tone suggested a finality, a desire not to be asked anything more. Melissa later discovered that the Wilsons were homeless and were camped out in a shelter across town. Jeremy had no choice about which school he attended and was unhappy and embarrassed about their living situation. Melissa believed if she had clued in a little sooner, she might have looked beyond her biases and assumptions and established a better bond with him. That having happened, she might have observed his nonverbal communications more closely, and she certainly would have digressed from the standard questions on her list. Finally, she might have steered the conversation in such a way that she would have indicated to Jeremy that he could count on her as a supportive resource and ally.
Once caregivers understand their own biases, they can then try to see through the other person’s lenses to make the most accurate needs assessment. However, if they fail to identify their own biases, just like Melissa, they can miss important opportunities. They run the risk of projecting what they believe onto the other person before they’ve had the chance to gather all of the information to be of real service. This projection can cause them to misconstrue a situation or misdiagnose a disorder or offer the wrong treatment—one that does not get at the root of healing. It may also push the other person into places he is not ready to go or leave him feeling unheard, invisible, and even unimportant. All of these emotions will rupture the connection.
It’s easy to make the mistake of supporting one’s own wishes and biases that don’t serve the person in need. I’ve seen this painful situation among family members of dying relatives. For instance, some adult children who have not learned from their parent his or her final wishes want the doctors to do all they can to extend their parent’s life, even when the prognosis is poor and treatment will worsen and lengthen suffering. This may occur because the children feel guilty for not having spent enough time with their parent, or perhaps they just don’t know how to (or they don’t want to) let go and say good-bye. They believe that they are acting for their parent’s good. Unfortunately, however, they are operating out of their own biases and projections and are unable to step outside of them to really appreciate the best and most merciful course of action for their loved one.
One’s internal clutter can have a pernicious effect on everyone. Social worker Sheryl’s brief encounter with Joe caused her stress and eventual weight gain, and her reaction undermined her capacity to help him. She has the power to change this perception, but it takes work. She may need to recognize her reactivity and take responsibility—it might have caused her to identify in herself whom Joe reminded her of or what other issues she had projected onto him. Perhaps then she would have been more open and expressed to him her concerns or challenges. Maybe she needed to forgive a wrong he had done. No matter the process, it required that she turn toward Joe and connect in a way that would short circuit the same stress-related neuropeptide cascade the next time she saw him. And with this new frankness, it is possible that Joe could have revealed deeper insights about his life experience that would have helped Sheryl get beneath his crusty exterior so that she could truly be of service to him.
In some of the research I mentioned earlier, family medicine residents were more likely to make accurate diagnoses even with difficult patients when they took the time to deliberate on the cases. If caregivers never self-reflect, they may come to believe that everyone has the same habituated neuro-networks of comfort that they do. But after having been raised in a particular family and culture, every human being has been habituated to different beliefs. The good news is that once people recognize their biases, it gives them freedom to grow beyond them.
To be of service to others, it’s fine to be comfortable in one’s own beliefs, but caregivers must set them aside for the moment and transpose their perspective to appreciate another person’s way of seeing the world. It allows them to convey their caring authentically. And it creates a more powerful healing effect because two people are vested in the outcome.
CREATING TRUST
It’s easy to become mired in recurring mental processes or beliefs. But when people divert these habituated thoughts in a way that encourages them to see what’s before them differently, they can have an epiphany that results in a new way of appreciating reality.
The power of communication is essential. Words can manifest a patient’s potential toward positive or negative outcomes. One’s intentions change perceptions. It all starts with caregivers’ ability to recognize and set aside their own biases, to understand their universal connectedness, and to express their belief in the person. If they can create a strong bond, they are more likely to influence health outcomes for the good because they have forged a trusting relationship. I like to use the following equation, which I learned from The Napier Group, a management consulting firm based in Chester County, Pennsylvania, to define trust:
The higher the degree of risk, the more important the balance of competency and intimacy becomes. For instance, we might see a cardiologist who’s at the top of her game, but who is cold and distant. Or we might engage one whose medical expertise is mediocre, but who is warm and friendly. In either case, our trust and care would be jeopardized. The latter may make us feel good, but we may not receive the best evidence-based care available, while the former gives us solid, up-to-date information, but leaves us feeling uncomfortable. In this case, we likely won’t trust the physician or follow through on her recommendations. Moreover, the proposed therapy will likely be less effective because the detached clinician has not used the power of the connection to “stack the deck” in favor of the healing response. With the quick advancement of artificial intelligence, computers will be able to fill the gaps in competency, and human intimacy will dominate this equation.
The neuroplastic potential of the central nervous system can alter the neuropeptides that are generated with perception. A willingness to connect prompts an epigenetic influence in the caregiver that can create a healthy work environment or a dreaded one. In turn, a happier caregiver can shift her client’s course toward healthier outcomes. And all of this derives from recognizing one’s biases and stepping out of the clutter.
Ultimately, there’s truth in Anaïs Nin’s words: “We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.” To initiate a truly empathetic encounter, caregivers can heed the ancient Greek maxim: “Know thyself.” It’s also crucial to recognize how personal beliefs can potentially get in the way of healing. The better people understand the lenses through which they observe the world, the more clearly they’re able to see beyond and around them as they prepare themselves to be a positive conduit in their interactions with others.