I am absolutely hooked on the book The Body Keeps Score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD. It is not a book based solely in education, but it has so many educational implications. From an academic standpoint, the material interests me because I think that the brain is fascinating. From a personal standpoint, I would like to learn more about myself and the people around me. The book is fantastic on all levels.
One of the many concepts discussed in the book is a specialized group of cells in the brain’s cortex called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are the cause of why sometimes when we spend time with someone we begin to pick up the cadence of their voice or the specific way they move. It’s the part of the brain that causes mimicking even if it is subconscious. The part of the chapter that stood out to me was:
“But our mirror neurons also make us vulnerable to others’ negativity, so that we respond to their anger with fury or are dragged down by their depression.”
The author also discusses the need for traumatized people to learn to control this mirroring as to not have their emotions “hijacked” by negative people around them.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, I’ve seen it in action. In one of the districts I worked in, there was a school that had an incredibly negative climate. I was between several schools at the time in the position I was in, and this school was the only one that was so negative. I found that if I spent more than three days in a row at that school, I began hating my job. I would complain nonstop. I would want out of the building as soon as possible. I just felt all ugly and yucky inside. After reading this part of the chapter, I’m wondering if that was my mirroring neurons at work reflecting what I was seeing in the teachers I was working with.
This experience made me very aware of how the people I surround myself affect me. I began to connect with more positive people and noticed a huge change in my own personality. I didn’t want to be negative anymore. It was so much more rewarding to be positive. Sometimes, even still, I get looked at funny by people who previously knew the me that was more sarcastic and negative, but I don’t allow them to affect me. There are times that I feel like I’m surrounded by people like this:
but that’s when I know I need to move on to being with my more positive colleagues and friends. I’ve always said that I am only as good as the people I surround myself with and that doesn’t only mean professionally. It also affects everything from my positivity to my self-worth. Everyone should have people around them that makes them feel good, and our brain even functions in the way to mirror those people. So, when you find yourself in a group of people, the questions are: are these the people you want to mirror and are we being the person that others would want to mirror? By being aware of the mirroring phenomenon, we have the ability to change the climate just by making the decision to not be like the negative people around us. Then, ideally, people might see the positives as something they’d want to mirror instead eventually breaking the cycle of negativity.
