I go to an art class in my community once a week. I love it. However one thing detracts from the experience. How to put this? …
I am not welcome.

When I walked into the studio the very first time the long-timers in the class looked at me with stern, disapproving faces and turned away to continue their merry chat with each other.  

Six weeks on, my ‘good morning’ greetings are oftentimes not reciprocated, or met with a tersely mumbled ‘Hi’.  

My little attempts to engage a long-timer in conversation return me curt, clipped replies.  

Certainly, no-one at any stage has said ‘Welcome’, ‘How are you finding the class?’, ‘You’re doing well’, ‘Come join us for coffee afterwards?’ 

Before I farewell you for the year with Christmas greetings from Coach, I invite you to join me now on a one-second neurobiological trip, and walk through the virtual doors of my art class with me to find out what’s going on in the brains in that room…

Let’s strap on some neuro-vision goggles together and light-speed-travel into the base of my brain, just above my brain stem. We’re heading to the right side of my amygdala—two conjoined kidney-bean shapes in the fashion of a walnut.

The right side of my amygdala is a dynamic emotional stimulus detection system. It is processing scents, sounds, sights—scanning all available sensory stimuli including the energy being generated by the brains of the other budding artists in the room. But most of all my right amygdala is obsessively trained in on the emotional facial expressions of tacit contempt presented around me. And because these are repeated facial expressions that my brain has registered before, my amygdala is receiving the same information internally from a number of other regions. This information is firing off to my dorsolateral prefrontal cortex now. It is reducing happiness stimuli in the left side of my frontal lobe, and increasing fearful stimuli in the right. Now in the conscious part of my brain I am becoming aware of feeling less happy and more ill at ease.

Back at my amygdala, the information is also shooting down my brainstem, taking energy away from my brain’s quick-thinking and creative centres and redirecting it to my body—activating subtle social stress cues in my hands, heart, lungs, stomach …  So not only am I less happy, I am less dexterous with my brush, less focused on the creative task at hand, and less interested in performing it.  

Interpersonal neuroscience tells us that even mild displays of rudeness reduce cognitive performance, decision-making, creativity and pro-social behaviour. Incivility increases irritability in others and decreases wellbeing. Our interpersonal connections with each other—our relationships—are the strongest determinant of our mental health.

I have had more than one client tell me this year that the stresses of 2020 have brought out the best in some staff, and the worst in others. I’ve also heard a number of commentators observe the extremes of both care and of conflict behaviour in the community—and comment that extra kindness observed in the height of the crisis has abated alongside COVID anxieties.

This year more than ever I am reminded that the greatest gift we can give each other in Christmas 2020 is a face of acceptance and kindness. A welcoming smile. A nod of encouragement. An expression of understanding and camaraderie.  In one instant an emotion—carried on a neuron, conveyed one to another—holds the power to raise or reduce another’s vital wellbeing, effectiveness, ability and sense of self.

Zooming back into the art studio, through your neuro-vision goggles you can see mirror neuron networks firing in each of the brains in the room, and you can see them sending energy to each other. Those neurons are picking up the emotion in the others’ faces, replicating it and sending it on to the other brains.

This Christmas, and in the days of entry into 2021, let’s choose to start a viral contagion of emotions that help us all be our best creative, positive, adaptable, productive and most resilient selves—and shape a 2021 that we’re all excited to be part of.

Leanne