Understanding others means knowing onself

As I advocate how important is it for a person to have relationship with oneself, I also stress on the need of other people in our lives. We all grow together in relationship with each other, as our brains are linked to the people we are attached with.

We all know that the quality of the relationships we had as infants with our surroundings determine our initial place in the spectrum of our mental health. Our ability to understand our inner experience, and from that, work out accurately the other person’s feelings is known as ‘mentalization’ as coined by psychoanalyst Peter Fonagy. This process gives us the ability to make and sustain healthy relationships.

When we become more sensitive to what other people are feeling, which can only be aided by self-observation we are able to form and sustain better relationships. We must acknowledge that if we are not able to understand the feelings of others in respect to the way they feel and think which might be different from the way we do, we might misinterpret things and fail to understand others. We can begin to understand others and have satisfying relationships if we acknowledge their feelings. In the same way, our happiness will have more to do with our interpersonal relationships than with what the weather is like, or what job we do, or our hobbies. We run around to earn a living, achieve things, etc., but what affects us most are people around us: our parents, our children, our lovers, our colleagues, our neighbors and friends.

In the words of Louis Cozolino, a psychotherapist ‘From birth till death, each of us needs others who seek us out, show interest in discovering who we are and help us feel safe.’ Staying connected with others is a vital - the vital – part of staying happy.