Our brains are built through vibrational serve-and-return exchanges.
A massive amount of the data our brain uses to build its algorithms and predictive models comes through our interactions with other human beings.
Voice, eye gaze, smell, pressure, tiny movements of their face and eyes.
The way they hold us, touch us, move toward us or away from us.
.. what they do in response to us.
A term used in developmental neuroscience to describe this is “serve and return.”
Our brains get built through serve-and-return dynamics.
We serve something out into their environment, and another human being returns something.
A look, sound, frown, smile, word, proximity, touch.
All of this creates a feedback loop that our mind-brain-body can use to figure out what it can do to get what it needs.
These tiny back-and-forth exchanges are also doing something particularly powerful when we are very young..
They help build brain architecture. Especially the architecture that helps us regulate our own nervous system.
The developing brain takes in repeated experiences and learning from them.
What happens when I open myself to the world?
What happens when I signal that I need something?
What happens when I explore?
What happens when I make a sound or show an emotion?
Over thousands and thousands of these interactions, our little mind-brain-body system begins building a predictive dataset about what the world is like .. and what happens when we interact with it.
And because we are generally surrounded by the same small group of people again and again during the first phases of life, those signals can become learned patterns.
Those patterns lead us to develop expectations.
And some of the signals and strategies we learned to use in those first environments can become so automated that we continue using them much later.. in our friendships, workplaces, partnerships and families.
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Sometimes those patterns and expectations help us build healthy relationships.
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Sometimes they keep us from experiencing relationships that we really want to have.
But there is something I always find incredibly hopeful about our humanness..
We have experience-dependent brains.*
*(I mentioned this in a previous article)
Our first experiences matter.
But they aren't the only experiences our nervous systems will ever have.
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New experiences can give our brains new data.
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New relationships can offer different responses.
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New choices can create different feedback.
And with enough repetition and consistency, we can strengthen patterns that weren't available to us before.
Reflection:
Who in your life helps you build the experiences you want to have within your relationships? Who helps you see yourself in a way that feels regulating, energizing, soothing, alive?
Sometimes we can also use a mentor, teacher, a guide that we can learn from (in books, online, etc.) to help us get new signals for us to use within our exchanges with others.
What’s important is to open ourselves up NOW to data that can update an internal model that might have been limited by the serve-and-return exchanges we were surrounded by in our past.
P.S. Want to understand more about what nervous systems are constantly sending, receiving and responding to?
Inside Teach the Nervous System™, we explore the signals moving between nervous systems — including some of the subtle and even vibrational information that influences what happens within and between us.
9 short modules. Instant access. Lifetime access. $44.
EXPLORE TEACH THE NERVOUS SYSTEM →
And if you want to go much deeper, we'll explore these ideas through self-regulation, adaptation, attunement, attachment and co-regulation in Weeks 4 & 5 of the Super-Regulators™ Neuroscience Academy — including how we can build greater capacity not only within ourselves, but in the relationships and systems we're part of.
