Missing Each Other

INTRODUCTION

MANY STORIES HAVE BEEN TOLD about extraordinary feats accomplished by advanced practitioners of meditation or yoga, including the seemingly magical control they have of their own bodies and physiology. If anyone should have such powers, it would be His Holiness the Dalai Lama, one of the great meditation masters of our time. Once, at a public talk, a close friend of the Dalai Lama’s, Professor Robert Thurman of Columbia University, was asked very directly about this. Had Professor Thurman ever seen the Dalai Lama perform a miracle or do something magical? He didn’t know how to answer. He’d seen some remarkable things happen around the Dalai Lama, but perhaps His Holiness wouldn’t approve if Professor Thurman seemed to exaggerate his abilities or proselytize. As he was mulling over how to reply, Thurman’s wife, Nena, also a close friend of His Holiness, spoke up and said that she’d seen him perform plenty of miracles. What she meant, she explained, was his ability to give his full attention and focus to each and every person he met. The gentleman, who was hoping to hear a story of some dramatic, unexplained miracle, seemed disappointed with the answer. But Nena insisted that the way His Holiness connects with people is miraculous.²

The Dalai Lama, Buddhist monk and spiritual leader to millions, is understandably a very busy person who meets with countless people at various events virtually every day. Nevertheless, many observers have described that, in every single social interaction, he engages with people by giving them his complete and total attention. No exceptions. Entering into conversation with him is a unique experience in which you feel completely seen and heard, without distraction. Professor Thurman described this by saying, “normally, when we talk to each other, we reach out to the person over there and communicate with them. With the Dalai Lama, there isn’t space between us. He is over here, with us.”³ At first, it might seem inconceivable that someone’s style of communication could be considered almost supernatural, a miracle, even if that person is the Dalai Lama. How could the ability to connect with another person ever seem outside the realm of ordinary human potential? His abilities seem virtually miraculous because so few people, despite their potential, are able to connect and communicate with people in quite that way.

This kind of connection may seem light years away from the real interactions we observe in our own lives, where we often don’t pay more than cursory attention to each other. Most people move through their days chronically stressed and preoccupied with their own thoughts and worries, making them unable to really listen to others for long. With “busy” being the increasingly popular answer to questions about how someone is doing, we often seem to miss each other, like two ships passing in the night—almost touching, but not quite making contact. Even when we do meet, we somehow misunderstand each other, or we talk past one another. Genuine, lasting connections feel elusive. In an era in which technology progressively takes up time and space that had previously been devoted to live, in-person interactions, attunement—the ability to be aware of our own state of mind and body while also tuning in and connecting to another person—is perhaps the most needed, and most neglected, human capacity.

Take a moment to consider your own life and your daily interactions with others. How many work meetings have you attended that seemed to be a waste of time because people were distracted by their devices? Everyone seemed to talk over each other or past each other, and responded not to what the other person said but to what was in their own head. It was as if each participant occupied their own world and remained stuck in their own perspective. How often have you noticed yourself getting lost in those situations, unable to identify how you were feeling or how you were coming across to others? At home, how many times has your child or partner felt lectured at instead of listened to? Other times, maybe it was you who was left feeling disappointed, hurt, or alone, because even those closest to you—friends, family members, partners, children—will not, or cannot, seem to fully tune in to you, listen and understand you, respond to you. How much have you wished for someone who could?

Then there are the constant pings of our smartphones and tablets that have conditioned us to attend to texts, emails, social media alerts, and other notifications that seamlessly draw our attention away from each other. Often it’s not until we offend our partners or friends by excessively looking at our phones when talking with them that we realize our connection was even broken. Have you ever realized that you missed everything your friend just said to you because you were lost in your own thoughts and were unable to maintain focus on even a brief conversation? You leave the interaction feeling disheartened and guilty, and you promise yourself that you’ll do better next time. But when the next time comes, phones get pulled out, our attention fails, and we become distracted yet again.…

Maybe that’s why encountering someone like the Dalai Lama can be such an emotionally powerful experience. To be seen with consistent interest and attentiveness by another person is an incredibly stimulating and empowering experience that energizes you and inspires you to invest back into the interaction, and to attend to that other person. That positive feedback loop then provides the same feeling back to the person you’re interacting with. Even in brief interactions, consistent attunement to one another can leave lasting effects on any relationship. While achieving the power to connect with people like the Dalai Lama may seem beyond reach, there are concrete, progressive strategies that any one of us can implement to attain more of this ability to tune in and engage people with confidence and ease. In this book, we invite you to explore with us the science and art of attunement, and to try some strategies and exercises for developing this ability in yourself.

Our passion for this topic emerged through our work together at the University of Pennsylvania in autism research, which made us aware of the crucial role attunement plays, not just in the lives of people on the autism spectrum, but in all our lives. It also made us aware that the study of attunement, in psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience is still in its infancy. It has, however, started to grow rapidly in recent years. Attunement is something we can feel subjectively in an interaction, but it can be difficult to put our finger on exactly how it works, and how we can get better at it. This realization set us on a journey to delve into the existing research and develop a framework for understanding how attunement works, a framework that is understandable and accessible to people outside of the sciences and mental health professions. In addition to understanding attunement better, we wanted to create something practical—a method for developing attunement that anyone could use. By drawing on our combined years of research and training in fields relevant to attunement—including social neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, music, mindfulness, Tai Chi, and other martial arts/movement disciplines—we created a set of progressive exercises for developing and practicing the fundamental skills of attunement.

IN THE FALL OF 2014 at the University of Pennsylvania, we set out to explore the questions of how we connect, or fail to connect, with each other. We began from a very different place than the remarkable abilities of the Dalai Lama. We were trying to help people who were facing significant challenges in connecting with others—adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The autism spectrum is part of the neurodiversity of humanity. Neurodiversity is the wide variability among human beings in brain function and behavior. Autistic individuals may be quite gifted and talented in certain areas, yet autism is largely defined by difficulties with social communication and relationships. With funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, we started to develop a novel program to provide autistic adults with support for their social functioning. Many people on the autism spectrum feel lonely and desire connections with others, but they don’t know quite how to make them—especially with neurotypical people (people who are not on the spectrum)—and they don’t completely understand what makes it so difficult to maintain them. As of 2014, very little work had been done in developing and testing supports and services for autistic adults.

Our challenging task, in this research study, was to determine at which points—in the intricate, complex dance of social interactions and relationships—these adults were having difficulties. We also strove to develop strategies that would help these individuals become more comfortable and capable in interacting with others. We knew that intellectual disability wasn’t what was getting in the way, because the group enrolled in our study was not intellectually disabled. Many were college students, college graduates, or working professionals. Our study participants generally had difficulty “reading” social situations or navigating their way through them. For example, they might have difficulty initiating conversations or try to enter a conversation that other people were having at an awkward moment. Or they might keep talking about a topic at great length without realizing that they had monopolized the conversation and had lost the interest of the other person. While any of us might do these things from time to time, in many autistic adults, these are consistent patterns.

What makes it difficult for individuals on the spectrum to navigate typical social interactions? We already had some ideas, based on our clinical experience and previous research. We were familiar with the concept of “social cognition” (understanding other people and interactions), which has been studied at length in psychological science and has been identified as a challenging area for many autistic adults. However, as we worked with the participants in our study, we began to think more and more about an ability that includes social cognition and social skills but goes well beyond each. It’s the same ability that the Dalai Lama has developed to such a remarkable degree—an ability to “make contact” with others, not only at a thought level but also at a gut and emotional level, and to stay “in tune” and “in sync” with both the feelings of others and one’s own feelings, not just in a single moment of understanding or empathy but over time during the unpredictable twists and turns of an interaction. That ability—what we will call social-emotional attunement, or attunement for short—is what makes the other person feel that you have genuinely connected with them. Attunement is an elusive concept that has not gotten as much attention from researchers as it deserves, although substantial research has been done on the role of attunement in mother-infant interactions.

In more recent years, neuroscience research into “mirror neurons” has begun to suggest possible brain mechanisms of attunement.⁴ Moreover, the idea of misattunement between people on the spectrum and neurotypical people is just beginning to gain traction in autism research.⁵ For example, attuning with others can be challenging for autistic individuals, due to their difficulties with processing social cues or responding in ways that are considered typical by the wider society. However, it can be equally difficult for neurotypical individuals to understand and connect with people who they are unfamiliar with (e.g., people on the spectrum, strangers, bosses, and so forth), due to anxiety, fear, discomfort, or a host of other emotions, preconceived notions, and biases.

The more we considered this phenomenon of attunement, the more we began to realize that difficulties with attunement crossed all populations. We began to observe similar challenges in the lives of our colleagues, our friends, and the people we interacted with on a daily basis—as well as in ourselves. Realizing the near universality of this issue, we were inspired to explore attunement further, investigating what makes it work, how it can go awry, and how it can be developed. So we began to put together a framework that could help anyone become better attuned to another person.

WE ALL SHARE A fundamental need for human connection—something that seems increasingly neglected in our culture. In this book we emphasize and examine the research on quality connection and describe realistic ways that every one of us can work on improving the connections in our lives. We examine person-to-person connection, clearly defining attunement and exploring its components in depth, and we lay out a step-by-step, practical approach for developing it. When we refer to “connection,” we are referring to a deep tuning in to each other. This tuning in is not so dependent on the amount of time you spend with someone, but has more to do with the quality of that interaction—the degree to which you and another person hear and understand each other, and the skill with which you respond to each other. The quality of the connection is determined not only by the words you say to each other but also by the skill and timing of your nonverbal communication: through the use of eye contact, facial expression, and body language.

In an age where we can use technology to communicate with anyone anywhere at the drop of a hat, the ability to remain attuned is a capacity we need more than ever before. Even though many things that humans can do are being replaced by computers and robots, true attunement is unique to living beings, particularly us humans, and is invaluable. The greater our ability to tune in and connect with others, the more effective and comfortable we will be in our personal and family relationships, and in our work. If many of us work on developing our powers of attunement, there is the potential for ripple effects that could positively impact the larger social, political, and environmental crises of our time, which are prolonged and exacerbated by poor communication across communities and governing bodies.

Developing attunement is a powerful way to improve many areas of our lives. For example, true friends are able to tune in to one another and develop mutual understanding and support. The essence of every romantic relationship is born from a feeling of connection or attunement at an intimate level. In parenting and child-rearing, secure attachment arises from a child’s ability to feel, at a fundamental level, that their parents love and care about them. A child needs to trust that their parents can reliably tune in to them and can actively try to understand them. When children have this foundational feeling toward their caregivers, they become increasingly resilient and are able to thrive in a greater variety of environments. Professionally, the key to successful leadership and team building, as well as favorably engaging clients, is having the ability to connect in some way with others. If there is that feeling of connection, then motivation, communication, and cooperation within the team grows. Attunement improves communication within teams and with clients. It helps in resolving conflict and working toward a shared set of goals. In almost every workplace or profession, there are moments in which the stakes are high, anxiety peaks, and nerves are frayed, often resulting in reactive behavior that breaks communication between peers. Developing a new set of habits and skills that strengthen the capacity for attunement in your daily life allows for easier access to these skills in high stress moments, like those found at work. With regular practice, those fundamental skills of attunement become easier to tap into and use in a pinch. They empower you to focus on whomever you’re working with, connect with them on a human level, and develop mutual understanding.

Missing Each Other makes an argument for reinvesting in ourselves and each other by improving the quality of our daily interactions. This book defines and explores details of what we call the four components of attunement: relaxed awareness, listening, understanding, and mutual responsiveness. Our explorations will include both the mental and physical aspects of each component, relevant research, exercises to help you develop that component, and stories that bring to life the inner workings of attunement. All four components work together, simultaneously, and they are so closely related that there is some overlap among them. Ultimately, the goal is to put all four components into action at the same time. It will take practice, but we’ll show you how.

Now, about the exercises. We’ll start with still meditation and mindful awareness exercises, then progress to solo movement exercises, and lastly build to partner-based movement and conversation exercises. Each exercise includes both physical and mental components. Attunement has some overlap with the concept of mindfulness—something you’re probably familiar with through its wide dissemination within popular culture in recent years. The first component of attunement, relaxed awareness, is a type of mindfulness in which you are calmly aware of yourself and the person you are interacting with. But the concept of attunement goes beyond mindfulness because attunement also involves incorporating mindful strategies into dynamic social interactions. The methods for developing attunement that we present will be most helpful if you commit some time and effort to the regular practice of at least some of the exercises. The exercises are simple enough that you can do them when you don’t have much time on your hands or when you just want to reorient yourself to the components of attunement.

A major, recurring theme of Missing Each Other is balance. Developing attunement involves balancing the physical and mental aspects of the exercises, balancing physical alignment and muscle relaxation, balancing awareness and calmness, and balancing awareness of oneself and awareness of the other person.⁶ But the goal is not to reach a static, motionless balance point that one could call a final state of perfect attunement. Our interactions with others are always evolving and changing, so attunement is a dynamic process that ebbs and flows around a balance point. Attunement is always a work in progress. Much like a dance, attunement involves alternating between leading and following, connecting and taking some space.

Developing attunement ultimately involves developing attention and timing, developing the ability to be in sync and connected during the twists and turns of a changing interaction, and developing the ability to respond flexibly and appropriately according to what the particular moment of the interaction calls for. Whether it is two people having a conversation in which they feel mutually heard and understood, two dancers moving smoothly together, two basketball teammates moving down the court in a well-coordinated fast break, or two musicians improvising together, the elements of relaxed awareness, listening, understanding, and mutual responsiveness are involved. Attunement is a kind of power worth developing, because it can widen and deepen our perceptions of ourselves and other people, which in turn can lead to remarkable improvements in our effectiveness, in our ability to manage conflict, and in the quality of our interactions in many different contexts and many types of relationships.

Our work as researchers and clinicians is in the tradition of scientist-practitioners, and we bring this balanced approach to the way that we have structured the book. Missing Each Other is devoted not only to developing a more detailed understanding of the elements of attunement but also to showing you how to develop these elements and how to put them into practice in your day-to-day life. By the end, this book should bring you greater awareness of your own connections with others and the knowledge and skills necessary to grow, deepen, and strengthen these bonds further. Let’s get started.