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Good relationships allow us to feel calm and accepted, to be responsive and energetic. These benefits are associated with certain neural pathways in the brain. By strengthening these pathways with the CARE system, you can improve your relationships with others and enjoy life.
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There are four neural pathways in our brain that are “fueled” by good relationships and, conversely, are destroyed or weakened if we do not get along with others or these connections cause us pain. And weakened neural pathways, in turn, prevent us from properly interacting with people. Each neural pathway provides its own relationship benefits. The intelligent vagus transmits signals that help relieve stress. Thanks to the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, we can feel accepted by other people. The mirror system allows you to accurately interpret the actions, intentions, and feelings of those around you. Dopamine pathways associated with healthy relationships produce feelings of energy and satisfaction. Psychiatrist Amy Banks created the CARE program (each letter in the name denotes one of these benefits: calm, acceptance, resonance, energy – “calmness, acceptance, resonance, energy”), which allows you to assess the quality of certain relationships, strengthen broken connections and use them as a tool for self-development.
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How does this program work? First of all, it allows us to evaluate the quality of our relationships and determine how well each of the four neural pathways is functioning.
Identify the 5 most important people to you. Write down the names of those adults (namely adults, children do not belong to them) with whom you spend the most time. The names of those with whom you communicate most actively, and those who most often own your thoughts, should be at the very top of the list. Don’t make the mistake of only including the ones you like the most on this list! The first five of these are the people whose relationships have the most impact on your brain.
Below in this text you will be able to assess whether there is mutual understanding in your relationship, how energy-consuming they are and whether they bring you satisfaction. And you can analyze your relationships in terms of their stress resistance and security here.
“R” – “resonance”: mirror system
The mirror system allows us to accurately interpret the actions, intentions, and feelings of those around us. When it functions properly, we experience a sense of resonance with other people, if it fails, it can feel like a wall has grown between us.
In order to evaluate the performance of your mirror system, take a sheet of paper and answer how often the following 5 statements are true for each of the five people important to you. Rate the statements on a scale of 1 to 5: 1 = never; 2 = rare or extremely rare; 3 = from time to time; 4 = quite often; 5 = in most cases.
- This man is able to understand how I feel
- I can understand how this person feels
- When I am with this person, I understand better who I am.
- I think we understand each other
- I understand that my feelings affect this person
Calculate the sum of points in all five answers to these statements. The maximum score is 125 points (five statements with a maximum score of 25 each: 5 maximum points x 5 relationships).
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Amount from 95 to 125 points. Your mirror system is working properly. Your relationships don’t require a lot of emotional expense, and you and your friends don’t have to spend a lot of time presenting yourself. In most cases, you understand others and feel that those close to you see your true nature.
Amount from 70 to 94 points. Sometimes you confuse people. From time to time, you get the impression that people important to you do not understand you, and you, in turn, misinterpret the intentions or reactions of others, and this happens more often than you would like.
The sum is less than 70 points. In all likelihood, people are a mystery to you. You may often find yourself shaking your head in disbelief as you say to friends and colleagues, “I just don’t understand you!” Some people with such a low score are overly suspicious; others behave too innocently, naively believing that others always have the purest thoughts. Your intentions are also misinterpreted: when you show kindness, you are accused of being too ingratiating or intrusive, or that you are sending signals that indicate your romantic interest, when in fact you did not plan to do this. All these feelings make you feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed.
“E” is for “energy”: the dopamine reward system
Dopamine is the pleasure neurotransmitter. Ideally, the neural pathways of the dopamine reward system should be associated with healthy relationships; in this case, contacts with others cause a feeling of energy. But if the relationship is draining, paralyzing, and unhappy, you can turn to other sources of dopamine, such as food, alcohol, drugs, mindless sex, and other forms of addiction. One way to get rid of bad habits and addictions is to rewire your dopamine pathways to enjoy healthy relationships, not bad habits.
To evaluate the performance of the neural pathway of energy, answer how often the following 4 statements are true for each of the five people important to you. Rate the statements on a scale of 1 to 5: 1 = never; 2 = rare or extremely rare; 3 = from time to time; 4 = quite often; 5 = in most cases.
- Being in a relationship with this person helps me achieve more in life.
- I like spending time with this person
- Laughter is one aspect of the relationship with this person.
- Thanks to communication with this person, I am energized
Calculate the sum of points in all answers to these statements. The maximum score is 100 points (four statements with a maximum score of 25 each: 5 maximum points x 5 relationships).
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Amount from 75 to 100 points. Your relationships with people provide you with a natural influx of energy, increased motivation and increased ability to act in your own interests and those of your friends.
Amount from 55 to 74 points. Your relationships don’t always bring you satisfaction. Perhaps there is one or two contacts in your life that cause you true enthusiasm, but all the others leave you indifferent and do not inspire. Chances are, you often turn to chocolates, alcohol, or other sources of dopamine for solace.
The sum is less than 54 points. Your connections are devastating. Perhaps you yearn for close relationships, but prefer loneliness to contacts that do not bring inner satisfaction. To cheer yourself up, you resort to unhealthy habits like cigarettes or shopping.
To analyze how functional the other two neural pathways are – the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the intelligent vagus nerve – and to understand whether relationships bring you a sense of security, you can here.
In the book of psychiatrist Amy Banks (Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2015) you will find a detailed description of the CARE program, as well as recommendations and exercises to help activate weakened neural pathways and build healthier, more positive relationships with others.
Amy Banks, MD, taught psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and currently serves as director of training at the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute. She is in private practice in Lexington, Massachusetts, specializing in relationship neuroscience and therapy for people suffering from a chronic lack of healthy relationships.