It wasn’t that I gave up on her healing, but, as she continued to struggle to get in the door and actively needed her self-hatred to stay functional, I began to realize more deeply that her patterns had meaning and that it wasn’t useful for me to predetermine what recovery might look like for her.

Each time I experience the unseen wisdom of a person’s system, it deepens my trust in the inner process unfolding and my awe at the way we are organized to be protected until the possibility of healing arrives.

We are deeply sensitive to one another’s presence.

We humans are always seeking the warmest attachments we can imagine.

This may be the signature of the right-hemisphere's leadership -- that over time the left is infused with knowledge and wise principles based on repeatedly perceiving experience through the lens of the right, a kind of true nourishment for optimal relatedness between the two. Then, when the left speaks, it can support and add stability to the interpersonally rooted vision of the right.

Gentleness, humor and abundant support are wonderful resources on this ever-unfolding, stubbornly non-linear journey from control to receptivity.

Relational neuroscience increasingly assures us that we are continually shaping one another's embodied brains, and that the safety provided by deep listening offerings a unique support for engagement. However it is one thing to believe it cognitively and quite another to grow into the practice of this belief.

Paradoxically, the kind of leading we want to offer is the opposite of taking control. Instead, it begins with accepting responsibility for getting support for our inner world and healing process to such an extent that the need for control recedes in favor of trust in the inherent healing capacity that is awakened when the necessary interpersonal sustenance arrives.

We can dedicate ourselves to staying connected to supportive people who will receive us without expectations or judgments. In that process, we will internalize them as they nurture our wounded ones. They will then join and foster those parts of ourselves who can be present with the ones who come to us in their suffering and recovery.

It can help us keep our balance to distinguish between the living people who were hurtful and the internalized ones who are now part of our neurobiology. Those who harmed us may never change, but once they become part of us, they seem to partake in our impulse towards healing.