114-2008-07-08

Teddy Bears and Mirror Neurons
By W. Owen Thornton

If what we suspect about mirror neurons is true, then teddy bears may have a phenomenal and positive impact on human kindness.  Susan Hurley wrote about mirror Neurons in her 2004 essay, “Imitation, Media Violence and Freedom of Speech.”  The material is groundbreaking.  Daniel Goleman, in his book Social Intelligence, examines much of the details about mirror neurons calling our experience of it, emotional contagion.

First, let me give you the short, short version of mirror neurons.  The discovery of them helps us understand who we are as creatures better than we have known ourselves in the past.  They create two direct impacts on our psyche.  One, when we see even a picture of a person in terror, we feel the same terror.  Put us under an MRI brain scan, have us look at a picture of someone smiling and the same parts of our brain become active as the person who originally expressed the smile.  We have the same emotional experience to a “T” though perhaps somewhat lesser.  This means that the same brain chemicals that fired in the person’s mind who did the initial action then fire in the exact same way in our own minds. 

Two, we also have the desire to immediately copy the act we’re witnessing.  The desire to mirror has been proven in two human cases.  One, it happens in babies.  Have a button on the floor to turn on a light and touch that button with your forehead, and the baby will turn on the light in the same way.  Even a sophisticated ape, with similar brain functions, might turn it on like that once or twice, but would eventually realize that a more efficient way of doing it would be to reach out and press the button with your hand.  Not so with the human baby.  The reason why adults don’t imitate everyone else and can act independently?  Eventually a part of the brain evolves that allows us to filter this response and we no longer have to copy people.  However, the second group of people who are compelled to mirror others are those who have had brain damage to this part of their mind.  Once again they will imitate everything they see.  They are compelled to imitate.

Hurley talks about why we resist even allowing this knowledge to enter our minds.  One, denial of the desire to imitate appears to be internal … without our own comprehension of it.  When you ask someone with the part of their brain that is damaged which prevents normal people from imitating NOT to imitate, they continue to imitate and they simultaneously deny doing it even while they are imitating.  For example, tell them to not imitate scratching their face as you are and they scratch their face.  Confront them with the fact that they are doing what you asked them not to do and they will say, “I am not doing it!” 

Two, denial of imitating others or denying to have the desire to imitate others seems rationally motivated.  We believe ourselves to be strong, fierce, independent creatures.  We have free will.  To even consider that we feel compelled to mirror what we see, even though this appears to be fundamentally true and proven according to the best science we can apply to the situation, would mean that somehow we lose a portion of our autonomy.  This is such a hideous concept that we cannot rationalize it and we deny that this element exists within us.  We cannot be ‘determined’ to do things based on simply seeing what someone else is doing.  If you are one of these latter people, then the speculation portion of this article about teddy bears is not for you.  If you can accept the notion that we have mirror neurons that compel us to feel and react in a controlled fashion than you just might be able to use this ability to practice even more human kindness.

Just before we get to teddy bears, then, we need to deal with envisioning ourselves to success.  This is tricky business.  To lose weight people have often placed pictures of pigs on their refrigerators, or people who are massively obese.  But seeing these images mean we are pigs … we are obese.  Our minds fire off chemical compounds to confirm that we are these things.  Therefore, what we need to do is place a picture of a person on our fridge who looks like we want to look like.  We place a healthy-bodied person on our fridge door and then, the mind affirms that we are healthy … we’re experiencing healthy, even if we are at the moment overweight.  Remember, see it … and experience it.  See it and you mentally have the desire to imitate it.  Only place things around the house that allow you to envision what you desire for yourself, and you manifest this result for yourself.  Those who emotionally or rationally deny that we imitate therefore lose this special ability we’re talking about.

And so, we arrive, at last, at teddy bears.  Let’s think about what a teddy bear represents to a child.  Teddy bears are stalwart companions.  They are loyal.  They love you.  They care about you.  They are totally dependent upon you.  They love hugs and kisses and tea parties with dolls.  They like to sit and watch you play baseball, or better yet, they even like to have their own hand of cards in front of them so they can play with you.  Humans anthropomorphize teddy bears: that means we project human characteristics into them.  And we usually project the best of human characteristics into teddy bears.

Now stick with me on this next bit.  Because we, even as adults “know” teddy bears are ‘human’, they therefore still must have human characteristics even if we rationalize that they don’t have any of these characteristics … that they are thread, fabric and cloth … that they are no more ‘human’ than a lampshade.  Really!  Why else would we buy a teddy bear for a child: because we connote meaninglessness to a teddy bear?  No!  We buy a child a teddy bear because we connote all of these meanings with them … even as an adult … even though we know it’s not real.  If we didn’t believe we were giving all these loving, kind, caring things to a child while we simultaneously gave them a teddy bear, we would buy them a computer game instead … or … a desk lamp.  Just think about how long it takes most of us to buy that child’s bear.  We examine them, pick the right colour, choose the one with the friendliest face, and determine the one we think will most connect with the child.  I’m betting that in almost all teddy bear purchases, they are examined for these human characteristics to some degree.  How heartless it appears to us to simply reach out and buy a teddy bear like we were grabbing a box off a shelf that contained an alarm clock.

Just what are we talking about here, when it comes to mirror neurons, then?  We make teddy bears real with how we think about them.  They evoke real emotions.  Therefore just as when we see a picture of someone flirting and we feel ‘flirted with’ then as we see a teddy bear we must be feeling loved, accepted, and cared about.  So, when we hug or kiss a teddy bear, or if we tell it our sad stories, then we must be getting the same chemical buzz in our brains as though we had hugged or kissed or told a real person our sad stories.

I believe what I am about to reveal to you is an anecdotal story, that it is not a fiction.  A man who had suffered from child abuse became powerful in industry.  While psychologists estimate that the dysfunction caused to most people suffering from child abuse is in the billions in Canada alone (lost wages due to horrific low self esteem, costs due to hospital and psychological treatments for physical harm and emotional problems etc.) sometimes these folk can bury the hurts deep enough to truly succeed … for a time. 

It all unraveled for this man while he was in the midst of running a successful company.  The threat of the loss of his livelihood and the negative impact on his employees should his problems run amok and destroy his company compelled this man to do whatever he had to do to overcome the abuse.  He sought professional help and did so in a way that allowed him to do whatever was required to get better … fast!  He found a counselor who wanted to fix what was broken: the man’s childhood.  The only real way I’ve heard of helping folk like this is to have them parent themselves to wellness.  This laborious task means buying … yes … a teddy bear and treating it like the abused child within the adult.  You have to be emotionally hurt or damaged a great deal in order to desire to be fixed to the point where you will buy a teddy bear and treat it like it was you when you were a child.  If you cannot overcome this bit of weirdness, true therapy remains a long ways off. 

Guided by the therapist the hurting adult gives the child (teddy bear) the emotional support it needs.  The only way to overcome the things never received as a child, which are required to let people be fully-functioning adults, is give the child what it needed when it needed it and how it needed it.  This means saying the words of love and comfort aloud to the teddy bear, telling it that it is loved and cared for and wonderful and a delight to be around etc.  As the barriers to treatment and a dysfunctional life are broken down, the adult survivor of child abuse slowly comes back to him/herself for the first time.  At last the mentally tortured child within integrates with the adult.  The child learns it was not the cause of the abuse … that it was not a black hole of evil … and that it was a loving, caring child who is accepted and … well … perfect.

So, this man went through the healing process.  A good therapist can walk someone through this healing path in six months.  Grateful for the cure, and in love with his teddy bear/child the man then wanted to fix his company.  I’m betting that there were two problems with his company at this stage.  One, for however long he was in treatment, his company was probably taking second fiddle and so he would have to bring it back to its earlier status.  Two, people who suffer from child abuse are most often polarized flight or fight people.  In other words the way they survive is by either being so nice no one will ever get angry with them, or they act angry all the time and dominate others before they can dominate you.  It would seem likely that the man succeeded by being a holy terror.  This then, because people mirror what they see, would have been the dominant attitude of his management team.  Be a holy terror or cease to survive in this company and ‘get out!’  The owner had to do something to bring everyone back to a more normal sphere … to make his business a friendlier, more caring place to work.

That’s when he had a stroke of genius.  He bought teddy bears for every manager’s desk and sent down an edict that it must be clearly displayed and kept on their desks.  Now, the edict might have been a hold-over from his old days and patterns of behavior, but it surely would have been clearly understood by a crew of staff he had groomed to respect that method of management.  They would do what they were told upon threat of being fired!

Subtly, slowly, everything in that company changed … for the better.  It is unknown clearly why, it changed but the speculation relied on those teddy bears.  When employees came into the office to chew out the boss’s a**, they would see the teddy bear.  Either they couldn’t take a boss with a teddy bear seriously and so they didn’t yell and shout and complain, or there just seemed something disarming about a man or woman with a teddy bear on their desk that they couldn’t yell, or complain, or … maybe you just couldn’t yell and complain in front of a teddy bear because you simply don’t do those kinds of things in front of loving, caring teddy bears.  And if the boss has a loving creature on his/her desk, then maybe the boss is a loving creature (though at the time it may have seemed highly unlikely!). 

And the power of the Teddy Bear worked in reverse too.  When a manager called an employee into their office to yell and scream at them, bosses found that they couldn’t do it.  They couldn’t be taken as mean-spirited SOBs who would fire someone’s a** as soon as look at them because … well … there was that darned teddy bear on the desk.  Somehow, people in that company found their humanity in stuffed teddy bears who, in reality, had no more love and affection than a desk lamp.

So teddy bears must trigger reactions in mirror neurons just as though we were dealing with a caring, loving person.  What you do and say to a teddy bear is what you do and say to yourself and others.  Maybe teddy bears are loving, little ‘people’ because we envision them that way as a child.  And because we envision them that way as a child and we carry that vision inside of us into adulthood (even when we know this is silly).  I’m betting, therefore that if we could place someone under and MRI and have them hug and kiss a teddy bear we would discover one of two things.  Either the same parts of the brain would light up as would in a child doing the same act, or the same part of the brain would light up when you were doing it to a human being.  I’m suggesting, though I’ve not seen the scientific study to prove it, that teddy bears are like perfect creations of accepting, loving human beings. 

This then has massive and positive repercussions for us.  If you’re feeling lonely, or down, you could talk to a teddy bear and receive the same positive brain chemistry as though you had done that with a real person.  You may not get the advice you need, (or you may, I’m not sure even about that because sometimes just having someone to listen to you is all you really need) but you would get the same positive feelings as though you told a real person.  And you can tell a teddy bear anything.  Remember what we said about teddy bears earlier? 

Teddy bears are stalwart companions.  They are loyal.  They love you.  They care about you.  They are totally dependent upon you.  They love hugs and kisses and tea parties with dolls.  They like to sit and watch you play baseball, or better yet, they even like to have their own hand of cards in front of them so they can play with you.  Better still teddy bears can keep secrets perfectly.  And when something is distressing you on the inside, the best medication is to get it out … safely.  What’s another great characteristic of teddy bears?  They never judge you.  You can tell them anything and they still love you. 

So if you’re lonely and you need a hug and a kiss, would you get the same brain chemistry reaction from doing it to a teddy bear than if you did it with a person?  Well the entire therapeutic model that the business man above went through seems to rely on this fact doesn’t it?  Otherwise, the entire treatment method wouldn’t work … it would be powerless to change the person.  How could telling a teddy bear, which you project your little wounded child into, that you love it and that it is important and perfect and loving … how could that work if somehow the mirror neurons weren’t aiding the process?  I know!  I was healed this way!

So where do we find ourselves?  Teddy bears may have a great dearth of purposes.  Feel lonely?  Hug and kiss a teddy bear.  If you check in with your ‘numbers’ as I’ve written about before, I bet if you check in before and after the hug, that your number of how you are feeling goes up.  Need to confess a sin?  Tell a teddy.  Want to unravel negative thoughts?  Talk them out with the teddy.  You’re NOT insane!  The beauty of mirror neurons means this is a good thing … this is a good way to be … this is a way to practice real and meaningful change in a completely safe and loving environment.

Can’t say a speech in public?  Place teddy bears around a room at home.  The great thing with them is they won’t laugh at you if you make a mistake.  And they have eyes.  As you speak, roam your eyes around the room making meaningful eye contact with the teddy bears.  Suddenly the thought of doing the same thing in a human setting isn’t quite so frightening.  I wanted to write, “in a real setting” where I wrote a human setting in that last sentence.  But the thing is, talking to a room full of teddy bears, because it may be triggering the exact same responses in you as though you were talking to a group of adult humans, means that delivering your speech to a group of teddy bears IS A REAL SETTING!

If you’re nervous for your first board meeting, place teddy bears around the table at home.  Set up as many chairs as real people in the meeting.  I have over 70 bears around the house.  I could probably hand-pick them according to teddy bear characteristics in order to somewhat ‘match’ the characteristics of the real people who will be in that meeting later on!

If you’re running a small business, you know how many hats you wear.  But this next example doesn’t have to be about running a small business.  Any job today has more tasks required of it than there are hours in the day to get them all done.  Sometimes getting all the work done seems impossible.  As you can guess I’m a writer.  So, I have writing to do most days.  But I have marketing, financial (invoicing/accounts receivable and my favorite part, paying the employee!), scheduling, upgrading/training, hardware and software concerns, public relations, branding, ordering supplies, seeking out new clients and new story ideas … all of that.  It got out of control.  And so, I listed the number of hats I wore, got bears on a table to represent each ‘department’, and had a board (bear-ed?) meeting with them.  I would do this whenever I would feel overwhelmed with all the tasks of running a writing business.  I even suggested this to the local media and the London Free Press came and took a picture of me in my ‘board room.’  I may have looked queer to people then, but now, with what we know about mirror neurons, I may well have been ahead of the curve!

On the Negative and Mirror Neurons

And here’s my last tip of this article.  Always express what you desire for yourself in the positive.  This is a sidebar to mirror neurons which is quite important.  Scientific evidence suggests that the human mind fails to comprehend the negative.  If this way of expressing what I have just stated sounds or ‘feels’ weird, here’s what I mean.  To write that, “The human mind does not comprehend the negative,” is improper if we comprehend that the human mind fails to envision the negative.  In other words to write, “the human mind does not see the negative,” is to really be writing, “the human mind does … see the negative.” (But it clearly does NOT see the negative.)  Therefore in writing what we would consider to be a traditional sentence with a negative in it, because of the way the human mind works, we are stating a sentence which really means the complete opposite to a reader than what we intended to impart.  (Maybe this is where reverse psychology comes from?)

All this goes to say that if I ask you to close your minds and imagine the following, “The dog is not chasing the cat,” most people envision a dog chasing a cat.  The word NOT goes unheard or unregistered in the statement.  So when I look in the mirror (a real mirror this time) and see my ‘muffin tops’ (excess weight around the middle) and I say, “I do not want to carry this weight,” I am really saying, “I want to carry this weight.”

Therefore you need to be clear of what you desire.  It would be better to express that which I do want, rather than that which I don’t want.  Therefore saying, “I desire to have a trim ‘middle’ or core,” would be better.  Better still would be to say it as though I already possess it because this would conscript the positive aspect of mirror neurons.  See it or say it and therefore you feel it.  “I have six pack abdominal muscles on a trim body.”  Somehow, this statement then makes me more like the person I desire to become.  In fact, I am that person, because as I say it, the brain chemistry fires in my mind so that it affirms what I have just said.  I am pleased that I am the way I envision myself.

I think it is important to examine what is really going on here when we say something like this to ourselves.  In one aspect, telling ourselves we’ve succeeded at something when we haven’t feels like a lie.  It seems wrong.  But mirror neuron science tells us it is truly the way to change ourselves, of how we should begin the process of becoming the people we desire to be.  The science doesn’t lie.

For example, here’s an instance of how truth and falsehood exist in the same instant.  Hold your arms up in the air in triumph, hold your head up high and then say, in a down, depressed voice, “I feel terrible.”  Next, round your shoulders and look down as though the weight of the world were upon your shoulders and shout, “I feel terrific!”  Most people experience the body aspect of these moments as the truth and the words as the falsehood.  You cannot feel down, when you’re head is held high.  So … in holding your head high and sitting up straight, there must be some brain chemistry firing off in the right directions to overcome the audio of the words you are saying.  What’s most effective, then, is getting both the language and the body in the right aspect to help begin to change who we are … how we think about ourselves.

This, of course, all sounds too easy … too packaged … too canned.  Sometimes you feel crappy.  Life blows up.  You lose your job unexpectedly, loved ones die, health concerns pile up.  There is a time and a place to practice these things.  You know yourself well enough to know when you should make the attempt.  Use your mirror neurons to your best advantage whenever you can.  And when you’re doing nice things for yourself, people see that, and desire to model that, and then they’re doing nice things for themselves and this improves everyone’s attitude and that means … we’re all happier and if we’re happier we have time to practice, just a little more human kindness.

God Bless

Owen