Dr. Dan Siegel is the executive director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization that focuses on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families, and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes.
The idealization of parents has an understandable benefit as a child. Because it makes you feel safe in the world, it makes you feel that there’s an entity called “parent” that is perfect and does what it needs to do to keep you feeling good and protected from harm and reliable. But the normal course of adolescence is to find your own way towards seeing the truth, which is that your parents are people, people who have both positive sides and negative sides.
How we perceive ourselves and the world around us largely shapes how we are seen by the world. Truly knowing ourselves can mean the difference between creating the life we want and yielding to the life we lead. And while it’s empowering to acknowledge that we are the strongest source for real change in our lives, it is admittedly scary to realize how much of our lives is in our own hands.
Beyond the bodily and survival concerns of the brainstem, beyond the evaluative and emotional limbic functions, beyond even the perceptual processes of the posterior cortex and the motor functions of the posterior portion of the frontal lobe, we come upon the more abstract and symbolic forms of information flow that seem to set us apart as a species. In this prefrontal realm, we create representations of concepts such as time, a sense of self, and moral judgments. It is here also that we create our mindsight maps.
When it comes to how our children will be attached to us, having difficult experiences early in life is less important than whether we’ve found a way to make sense of how those experiences have affected us. Making sense is a source of strength and resilience. In my twenty- five years as a therapist, I’ve also come to believe that making sense is essential to our well- being and happiness.
Mindsight is a kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our own minds. It helps us to 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, and moves us beyond the reactive emotional loops we all have a tendency to get trapped in. It lets us “name and tame” the emotions we are experiencing, rather than being overwhelmed by them.
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Dr. Dan Siegel is the executive director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization that focuses on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families, and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes.
