The School of Life

Rachel Heller and Amir Levine on Attachment Styles

How would you react to the following scenarios?

• You call your date/partner and after the first ring, you're transferred to voice mail.

Do you barely notice or do you assume s/he is purposely ignoring you?

• You're sitting in an experiment room and suddenly you notice smoke seeping out of the computer? 

Do you assume everything's under control or do you immediately alert those around you to  the imminent danger?

• Your spouse buys you your favorite brand of coffee on the way home from work.

Do you feel gratitude or are you more likely to take this gesture for granted?

What all these scenarios have in common is that your response is likely to vary depending on your attachment style. 

Attachment styles were first discovered by Mary Ainsworth in the context of the infant-parent bond.   She devised an experiment by which she observed children playing in a room with their mothers.  The infant's response to a series of separations/reunions from their mother determined their attachment style. 

Infants with a secure attachment style were able to use their mother as a secure base from which to explore the environment and derive comfort in times of stress. Anxious infants were too preoccupied with the mother's whereabouts to be easily soothed and Avoidant infants were too seemingly indifferent toward her to use her as a secure base.

A couple of decades later, researchers Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver, both then from the University of Denver, set out to discover whether these three styles of relating in infancy continued into adulthood.  Their groundbreaking study confirmed that adults too fall into three attachment styles that influence the way they interact with their romantic partners:

• Secure people feel comfortable with intimacy and are usually warm and loving

• Anxious people crave intimacy, are often preoccupied with their relationships and tend to worry about their partner's ability to love them back

• Avoidant people equate intimacy with a loss of independence and constantly try to minimize closeness.

Every person, whether he or she just started dating or has been married 40 years, falls into one of these categories (or more rarely into a combination of the latter two). Just over 50% are estimated to be secure, around 25% are avoidant and 20% are anxious.  The remaining 3-5% fall into the mixed anxious-avoidant category. 

During the past two decades since Hazan & Shaver's seminal paper, hundreds of scientific studies in a wide range of countries have carefully delineated the ways in which adult behave in romantic ties.  Understanding these styles is an easy and reliable way to understand and predict people's behaviour in romantic situations.

One of the most fascinating aspects of attachment research is the discovery that people with different attachment styles perceive situations in different and often opposing manners: They pay attention to different aspects of situations, they interpret them differently; even their brain activity is often remarkably different.

Gaining insight into adult attachment styles is akin to a having a road map to romantic behavior, not only others' but also your own.

And in case you were wondering:

If you interpret the transfer to voicemail as a rejection, you may well be anxious

If you alert others to the smoke hazard, it's likely you're anxious or avoidant but not secure

If you're unimpressed by your partner's coffee gift, it's more likely you're avoidant.

[Of course, in reality, no one criterion determines your attachment style but rather a combination of factors.  To discover your attachment style, go to: http://www.attachedthebook.com/compatibility-quiz/ 

 

Rachel Heller, M.A and Amir Levine, M.D are authors of 'Attached: Identify your attachment style and find your perfect match' (Published by Rodale). Visit www.attachedthebook.com

Lizzie Shupack on Becoming Comfortable in Your Own Skin

So here I am, at the end of Week Two of my 12 week programme, as outlined in The Artist's Way.  Despite misgivings about its spiritual undertones, I am determined to get to the end, would love something enlightening to happen as a result, and continue to remain slightly doubtful about the probability.

This week has been challenging, not least because I've changed countries three times.  My week began in Amsterdam, continued in London and Los Angeles, and ended yesterday in San Francisco.  That kind of travel schedule is a killer for Morning Pages.  

Actually I take that back, that’s not true, it's really just a killer excuse for not doing Morning Pages.  Consequently, I’ve fought the urge to skip (multiple) days, and have stuck to the routine relentlessly, despite doing myself a huge disservice in buying myself a lovely, over-sized but annoyingly thin-lined, moleskin notebook.  In any event, in spite of myself, I am diligently filling it, as per Cameron’s instructions.  

Second to Morning Pages is The Artist's Date, another compulsory activity to be done throughout the programme.  It's a weekly creative adventure, that is for you alone.  It's time set aside to do something fun, that constitutes as "play".  Aside from the fact that I generally feel too guilty to play - "There's "proper work" to be done!" - I also tend to feel too self-conscious to even allow myself the chance.  

I like the fact that Cameron writes that if you find going to an art gallery boring, then it can't constitute an artist's date, and that perhaps you should put on a purple wig and dance around your kitchen to Lady Gaga, enjoying yourself instead [*my suggestion, not hers].  As such, my own excursion to Amsterdam's Dance Valley, where I unselfconsciously lost myself in eight hours' worth of music, pretty much did the trick!

Beyond that, Week Two of the programme is about becoming comfortable in your own skin, and protecting your creative identity.  That begins by identifying the people in your life who are a negative influence on your self-esteem.  Who is it that takes up your time, who drains you of energy, whose needs come before your own?  The sound advice Cameron gives is to ditch these people.  Or at least put them on hold until you've completed the twelve week course.

She also emphasises the idea of synchronicity, of setting aside as much skepticism as possible, and as a result, allowing yourself to be open to new possibilities.  The idea is that the more open-minded, confident and curious you can be, the more interesting opportunities will arise, of which you should be prepared to take advantage.  

Synchronicity, skepticism or whatever else aside, all I know is that this week my partner and I were approached by the Amsterdam Film Festival about a collaboration, and a design team that I've been itching to work with called me back and said "we have a project for you".  Both made me happy.

Next week I embark on the chapter called "Recovering a Sense of Power" and I'll let you know what that entails.  In the meantime, I thought I'd end with a few points, well-made by Cameron, that I have started to take seriously:

- Stop waiting until you make enough money to do something you'd really love.

- Stop telling yourself that creativity is a luxury and that you should be grateful for what you've got.

- Stop telling yourself that your dreams don't matter, that they are only dreams and that you should be more sensible.

Lizzie Shupak is a Digital and Brand Strategist.  She is also one half of the international social experience, Wok+Wine.  She is currently on a journey of creative discovery, which may or may not affect her biography, in the weeks and months ahead.

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Mark Vernon on the Rules of the Group

 The last couple of nights, we’ve sat in the house – watching the blogs, exchanging texts – as our part of London operates a virtual curfew. The looting and arson is rightly condemned. I’m glad about that. But the moment is arriving to try to understand what has been happening on the streets of the UK’s cities too.

It is complex. However, one concept might be particularly useful. It’s the psychological phenomenon of group conscience.

The modern world teaches us that we are individuals. I make my own choices, attend to my own interests and strive to be self-sufficient. Autonomy and individual rights are the moral ideals that shape our age.

In truth, though, no-one is an island. We are social animals, as Aristotle observed, meaning not that we like to socialise, but that our identity is primarily collective. My family, my gang, my team, my nation are where I feel most fully myself and we will go to extraordinary lengths to maintain that sense of belonging. This is what group conscience protects and enforces. It keeps you in, even if that means keeping others out.

It can be likened to the way birds flock in the air, making the most extraordinary patterns as they wheel and swirl. The science suggests that the birds obey just one or two rules. Head for the centre. Mimic your neighbour. They are the rules of the group. We humans are driven by similar compulsions. We long to know our place.

What, then, of the rioters? There is a lot of outraged comment about why youths don’t know the difference between right and wrong. But criminologists point out that this is necessary but by itself also misses the point. Like the birds, the looters are not primarily acting as self-autonomous individuals. They are copycats – doing what their mates are doing; doing what other gangs are doing. This also explains why the violence spreads, and why that is so alarmingly hard to control.

As journalists interview rioters, this is what you hear them say. ‘It was fun.’ ‘We show we can do what we want to.’ ‘It’s time for payback.’ These are collective sentiments. The morality these guys obey is that of the group. And unsettlingly, it can be half good as well as bad. Some of their values, it seems, are driven by a sense of rage and injustice. Others are driven by the culture of greed that opportunistically puts its hand in the till – a value embodied in many other groups too, it should be said.

In fact, we are all the same. The difference is that our groups probably follow values that are mostly, thankfully, pro-social. Group conscience has been heart-warmingly demonstrated by #RiotCleanUp: ‘It's a movement’ declares Dan Thompson, the organiser of the broom army. It has also been on display amongst the vigilantes seeking to protect their property – though they must be careful to monitor the rules they obey.

Heading for the centre and mimicking your neighbour are powerful urges that can lead anyone astray.

Mark Vernon is a philosopher, author and faculty member of The School of Life.  Follow his blog www.markvernon.com

Image by illustrator Emmeline Pidgen see@emmelinedraws

John-Paul Flintoff on #RiotCleanUp

I’m typing this quickly, to get it out before I hear that any more rioting has started, and before setting out to run a class this evening at The School of Life for any intrepid learners not scared to venture out too.

So: #RiotCleanUp. I have been very excited since first seeing this combination of words last night, while the riots were still going.

You see, I’m trying to finish writing a book about changing the world (I know!), but am struggling with the dense horror of the term “non-violent action”. I love the idea, but the words are so off-putting.

I think that #RiotCleanUp more or less conveys much the same idea: it’s dramatic, but also wholesome. There’s a bit of yin and yang going on, as my Chinese doctor might put it: a hint of the liveliness of “riot” that was relished by, among others, the “Riot Grrrrrl” punks, but also sober helpfulness and putting-things-right.

I’ve been a fan of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh for some time, ever since reading one of his books opened my eyes to the possibility of (momentary) enlightenment while washing up. So any movement that takes as its logo a yellow washing up glove is a movement I want to belong to.

(Not that I usually wear washing up gloves, as it happens, because they don’t seem ever to fit my big hands. And washing up gloves are hardly what you need when gathering the broken shards of glass after a riot. But they’re immediately identifiable, and I like them.)

Anyway, am off shortly. But before I go, I’m going to make a trial badge using this image and a make-your-own-badges kit that my brother gave my daughter for her birthday a couple of years ago.

If it’s any good, I might make lots more, the industrial way, and even try to get retailers to sell them.

Would be glad to know what you think.

John Paul Flintoff is a faculty member of The School of Life.  Follow his tumblr here and keep your eye out for #RiotCleanUp badges coming soon........Join the clean up at www.riotcleanup.co.uk

Lizzie Shupack on Discovering Her Creative Self

Last week, a friend told me that she'd started working her way through a book called "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron.  She suggested I might want to take a look at it as well, talking as we were, about the stressful subject of career paths and prospects.  

Our stories shared much in common; we both went to the same fiercely academic independent girls' school in North London, we both went on to study Theology at Cambridge, and we both continue to struggle with the fact that our mutual rejection of careers in Investment Banking, Law, Management Consultancy and Medicine, has left us in a pretty confusing place.  

Between us we'd lived in the US, Zambia, New Zealand, India and the UK, gaining experience in Brand Strategy, Cooking, Psychotherapy and Digital Development.  We both acknowledge that it’s not a bad CV, and yet we both remain concerned about what it is exactly that we do at the moment, and what exactly it is that we want to do in the future.  Enter The Artist's Way.

It's not the kind of book that I'm naturally drawn to, because it's written with a continuous spiritual undertone, something I find quite off-putting and difficult to stomach.  (And yes, I did say that I studied Theology, but that was from an entirely academic rather than a personal perspective).  As a result, my eyebrows rose numerous times, on reading the book's first few chapters, confirming my position as a "cynical reader".

Nevertheless, The Artist's Way does have some solid psychological principles behind it, and author Julia Cameron, is herself a success as an international screenwriter and author.  That it hasn't been written by a "Wellness Guru" or "Life Coach", I find reassuring.  

The basic idea is that over a twelve-week period, you develop the confidence and the discipline, to pursue whatever creative activity you choose.  Consequently, much of the book is about building self-esteem, through perfectly sensible exercises, and focuses on getting you past the "I don't feel like painting/writing/singing/designing today" excuse.  

The first step is "Morning Pages", which comprises three continuous pages of writing, done first thing in the morning, falling somewhere between a stream of consciousness and a journal entry.  In essence it's about becoming comfortable with producing large amounts of rough-and-ready content that you are not allowed to re-read, edit, or polish in any way.  For "Type-A" students such as myself, the idea of putting pen (and yes it has to be pen, no computer typing for Morning Pages), to paper, without knowing that the result will be perfect, is a real challenge.  The willingness to iterate, to acknowledge that anything is better than nothing, and the recognition that being a good writer-in-your-head is not actually being a writer at all, is fundamental to the creative process, and a substantial hurdle to clear. 

But I think I'm off to a good start.  I have twelve pages of handwriting to show for my efforts, and I decided on Saturday to start a Tumblr blog of interesting things that inspire, amuse or pique my curiosity in some way, as a public record of my journey with the book. 

Next week is all about "Self Definition" and learning to assert yourself as a Creative without feeling like a fraud, which all seems pretty close to home…  I'll keep you posted!

Lizzie Shupak is a Digital and Brand Strategist.  She is also one half of the international social experience, Wok+Wine.  She is currently on a journey of creative discovery, which may or may not affect her biography, in the weeks and months ahead.

Wok+Wine - The World's Most Delicious Social Network

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Chris Johnstone on Resilience

Imagine a child tugging at your arm and asking “what is resilience and how do you get it?” Our reply expresses our ‘story of resilience’, our inner understanding of what resilience is and what it is based on. Because that story powerfully shapes our response to adversity, reviewing it and identifying ways we can develop or strengthen it is one of the keys to becoming more resilient.

When I worked for many years in the addictions treatment service, my clients would often describe how, as children, they’d watched family members use alcohol or drugs as a way of dealing with stress. We learn by watching others, and the story they took in was that resilience is based on chemical props. A big part of my work involved teaching ways of dealing with crisis and adversity that didn’t involve alcohol or drugs.

When our story includes a good understanding of how we can develop resilience, then we carry this into every situation we face. A strong story of resilience is more than the sum of its parts; it can become a source of strength within us. So what I teach is how we get to know this story, have a clear sense of the shape of it, so that whatever we face, we can ask ‘what would a story of resilience look like here, and how can I play my part in it?’

There is good research evidence that teaching resilience skills to adults and children reduces their risk of depression. Strengthening our capacity to cope with adversity also liberates us to pursue more exciting goals, because we’re less likely to be put off by the inevitable bumpiness that journeys of significant change involve. That’s why I love teaching resilience. It is a life skill that brings us more to life.

Dr Chris Johnstone is author of 'Find Your Power' – A Toolkit For Resilience and Positive Change' (2^nd ed, Permanent Publications, 2010). He is teaching this week at our Summer School and will be running the Resilience One Day Workshop at The School of Life on Saturday 24 September.

Robert Rowland Smith on feeling lonely

To say that feeling lonely is different from being alone has become a commonplace: some people prefer their own company and that is that. So too the notion that one can be lonely in a crowd: you spend your days surrounded by others but somehow still feel unwarmed. Less understood is what loneliness actually is.

The great French critic, Maurice Blanchot, wrote about "essential solitude", and it’s worth stating that there’s a loneliness proper to all of us, regardless of how extrovert we might be. Being human involves things that cannot involve others, things like going to the dentist, taking exams, and having a medical. Nobody can take your place. And if those things sound relatively ordinary, the same logic applies to life and death. No one can be born on your behalf, and no one can die. No matter how full our lives might be, there’s an essential solitude that belongs inalienably to all of us, a connection to our fate that can’t be taken away. When it comes to certain fundamental aspects of being, we are all alone.

Is such essential solitude the same as loneliness? Not quite. Part of the comfort in having a partner lies in the fact that, although each of you will separately die your own death, you share life together until death do you part. The partnership makes your mortality bearable; your essential solitude never has to manifest itself as loneliness.

But what if you are alone and lonely, with nobody around to comfort you? Loneliness might be a form of self-pity, but it’s mainly a yearning for others. And yet it’s not about wanting to possess other people, as in romantic or erotic love. Loneliness starts with an unrequited desire to share life with another person, if only for an evening. It’s not about claiming someone else; if anything, it’s about being claimed, about not being left in lost property.

Because of this, loneliness engenders in us a respect for other people. It might make us feel sad, but it shares a root with compassion. Our sense of our own suffering, when lonely, makes us more attuned to the beauty and goodness of other people, and to how they too are doing what they can with their fate.

Robert Rowland Smith is the author of Breakfast with Socrates: the Philosophy of Everyday Life, which is published by Profile Books.

This article originally appeared as part of the ES Life Lessons series.

Naomi Alderman on the Evolution of 'Self-Help'

Samuel Smiles' 'Self-Help', published on this day in 1859, was one of the most successful books of the second half of the 19th century. It sold more than a quarter of a million copies before Smiles' death – nomean feat since the population of the world was much smaller, and the literate population smaller still - and was widely translated.

Given the author's name - is it possible to imagine Mr Sam Smiles without envisioning a jolly, beaming Victorian paterfamilias? – and the associations of the self-help genre today, what might one expect to find in this volume? An exhortation to love one's inner child? Some encouragements to 'think positively', 'believe in yourself', and a general reminder that 'you're worth it'?

Far from it. The Victorians had a far grimmer - though perhaps more realistic - idea of what it meant to help yourself: work, work and more work.

For the modern reader, 'Self-Help' is frankly pretty dull. Although organised into themed chapters on subjects like 'Application and Perseverance', 'Helps and Opportunities' and 'Money - its use and abuse', there's no real line of argument. Instead it's a compendium of hundreds of stories, all on the same pattern:

1) A young man (and they are almost all men) grows up poor or disadvantaged

2) He conceives an ambition but is repeatedly thwarted

3) Nonetheless, he perseveres, and works extremely hard

4) Finally, success!

'Self-Help' certainly isn't part of our modern 'quick-fix' culture. Phase 3) of this process often lasts for decades. Smiles is wary of genius or prodigy too, saying that "wanting in perseverance, such natures are outstripped in the race of life by the diligent, even the dull.' Better to be somewhat stupid, as long as that encourages you to work hard.

'Self-Help' does contain some intimations of later outcroppings of the self-help movement, in this story of 'affirmations', for example:

"It is related of a young French officer that he used to walk about his apartment exclaiming 'I will be Marshal of France and a great general.' His ardent desire was the presentiment of his success; for the young officer did become a distinguished commander, and he died a Marshal of France."

What did the legions of Victorian readers get from this book? Inspiration, certainly. It's not a book that's meant to be read at one sitting; one can imagine it being read much more as a fortifying tonic a new story of adversity overcome every time you begin to feel discouraged. And with its praise of hard work, one wonders how many copies of this book were given by parents to disappointing offspring.

'Self-Help' has something in common with that modern self-help voodoo, 'The Secret'. That book also promises that unlimited success is just a matter of persistence - and both fail to take into account the randomness of luck and the benefits of family and personal advantages.

But in The Secret all you have to do is persist in thinking positive thoughts. So perhaps we still have something to learn from 'Self-Help' - after all, you can't change your luck, and you can't change your background, but the one thing we can all do is keep on keeping on. That is the rather grim-faced message of Mr Smiles.

On Adultery

Is sexual liberation over? You may think so, reading Jealousy, the sequel to The Sexual Life of Catherine M. In it, lusty Parisian academic Catherine Millet, who hung out with the whores in the Bois de Boulogne, reveals something controversial: a heart. When her man slept around, she went barmy. 

 

Hypocrisy is the most logical attitude to infidelity, as it fuses many issues, and beliefs about it formed in a world very different to our own.  It has a religious dimension.  As an infidel betrays God, so infidelity betrays the faith between two people.  The assumption is that loyalty in body, mind and spirit are interchangeable.  But arguably, people began disapproving of infidelity for a more practical reasons, to stop rows about property.  

Avid debauchee Alexandre ‘Three Musketeers’ Dumas lamented, ‘Why is what was called cuckoldry in the seventeenth century called adultery in the nineteenth?’  His answer was inheritance law.  Once, first-born sons got it all, then the law changed, giving every child a portion of the estate.  So husbands who once worried only about the paternity of their heir grew to fear every cuckoo in the nest.  And society grew fiercer about female infidelity, while in men a mistress remained a badge of success.   

Female sluts got it in the neck since Eve bit the apple.  Katie Price is slated for cavorting with her cage fighter.  But male sluts are less tolerated than before.  The court of public opinion is still out on randy Ashley Cole, while Cheryl is a latter-day saint for fighting for her love.  But for those whose private lives are private, now we have DNA-testing, good contraception, fidelity seems less relevant.  With the internet and the liar's friend, the mobile phone, slipping the marital leash is ever easier.  Why can't we act on passing fancies without breaching emotional loyalty?  

I understand infidelity’s fans.  Yet I believe monogamy, with the right person, is the least-worst path through life. Even empty sex threatens a relationship, as nobody can guarantee it will not come to mean more.  This belief is less old-fashioned than imagining that mind rules body, like 17th-century rationalist, René Descartes.  On the contrary, scientists have found neurochemicals released in sex, vasopressin and oxytocin, mean that where lust leads, territorial feelings often follow.  Love and sex, mind and body, are as interchangeable as ever. 

 

- Catherine Blyth

 

Tom Mellors shares his ambivalence about our herding instincts

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche observes that "for as long as there have been humans, there have also been human herds." He considers humanity's long history of obedience and concludes that "everyone on average is born with a need to obey, as a kind of formal conscience that decrees... 'thou shalt!'"

 

The herd instinct may originate in our desire to become one with our community and surroundings but it can all too easily negate our individuality. It’s an instinct to fit in with the group and 'to follow'. At its best an instinct that joins us in family groups, congregations, tribes, peoples, and nations. But at its worst an instinct responsible for youth gangs, celebrity worshipers, of people who "stick to a brand", or submit to a dominant idea of how to live.

 

The dominant commandments in our "developed" society too often seem to comprise 'thou shalt consume', 'thou shalt work and be successful', 'thou shalt desire', and 'thou shalt love thyself above all others'. Although these commandments are not chiselled into stone or scripture, they are proclaimed subtly from almost every billboard and television advert. John Carpenter's cult film They Live incorporates this idea into its main plot. In the film George Nada, a homeless labourer in Los Angeles, finds a pair of sunglasses which reveal the true messages in the advertising around him. So when he looks at a billboard advertising something, all Nada sees is the words "Obey", "Watch TV", or "Marry and Reproduce".

 

The humanist philosopher Erich Fromm often talked about the biblical creation story, with particular focus on Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise. Fromm believed that when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge they suddenly became aware of themselves as being separate from nature, while remaining in nature. This, he says, explains why they suddenly felt ashamed and naked. Fromm believed that humanity's subconscious awareness of its disunited and separate existence is a source of guilt and shame, creating a deep desire to escape the feeling of loneliness. One way to overcome this loneliness is through conformity with the group and obedience. A quick scan of 20th century history provides many examples of where the herd instinct has become a religion and a goal in itself - few examples more destructive than Nazi nationalism.

 

The herd instinct today is a complex one, driven by strong narcissistic drives as well as the drive to obey and conform. The stories you hear in the news about absurd crimes committed over the gain of petty objects are arguably an example of when the tension between the need to obey and narcissistic desire fall out of balance. Yet to presume that all herds are exploitative would be to overlook the importance in life of smaller herds, such as family and friends. Confucius saw virtue in these groups, and he believed that familial duty especially helps individuals to cultivate personal and social harmony.

Nietzsche’s alternative to the herd is a life of extreme individualism which is supremely narcissistic. Rather than chase after extreme states of being - within or without of the herd - we should strive to negotiate a balance between the two.