Human Resources

All humans beings have certain things in common. We call the things which nature gives us when we are born the "givens of human nature" or the "Human Givens". We can divide these "givens" into human needs and human resources. The human resources which we all share include the following:

The ability to develop rapport
Long term memory
Imagination
A rational mind
The ability to know through metaphor
A dreaming brain
An observing self

The ability to develop rapport

We are born with an innate ability to connect with others. A new born baby has no knowledge of his or her face, even less the fact that they may have a tongue, but will stick out their tongue in order to mirror the same action performed by their mother. We automatically tend to like people who are "like us". When two people are in close communication their body language tends to match - each mirroring the actions of the other. Even when we feel that we are alone in the world we have an innate ability to develop rapport with other people.

Long term memory

All of us have a long term memory which we can use to improve our knowledge of ourselves and the world. This is a basic human resource which improves the more we use it.

Imagination

Whether we are labelled as imaginative or not we all have the ability to use our imagination. We use this to focus away from our immediate emotional issues, to dream of future possibilities, a better life or a creative masterpiece. As with memory, the more we use this resource the more refined it may become.

A rational mind

We all enter this world with a rational mind which provides us with a tool with which to understand things, to make plans and execute them. We only have access to the more logical part of our brain when our level of emotional arousal is low. Whenever we are emotionally aroused we tend to act instinctively according to patterns of emotional behaviour. The 7/11 breathing technique can help us to access our rational mind.

The ability to know through metaphor

Whenever we feel that we really "know" something we have connected a pattern or metaphor concerned with that thing to an existing pattern which we hold in our subconscious. People have different ways of learning and this relates to the different metaphors which we all hold for the things which we know. See knowing implies pattern matching.

A dreaming brain

Our dreaming brain has evolved to fulfil a specific task associated with our mental health. Each night we dream and whether we remember the dreams or not is unimportant. Recent research has shown that this is nature's way of flushing out the expectations which have built up over the day, freeing the circuits of our brain to be ready to accept new expectations at the start of each new day. Rather than "wish fulfilment" this concept is know as the "expectation fulfillment" theory of dreaming.

Poor sleep patterns are one of the major causes of poor mental functioning. If we have a lot to worry about we can overload the dreaming mechanism, causing exhaustion upon waking (common to so many sufferers of depression), and reducing the amount of slow wave sleep during which time the cells of our brain are nourished and repaired. This can cause us to start the new day less capable of coping with the pressures of life, causing more worry and more overloading of the dreaming mechanism. This is the cycle of depression which once set up tends to reinforce itself and continue.

Human givens practitioners are trained to help you to begin getting some of your needs met. This reduces the amount of worry you experience during the day. During REM sleep the brain discharges its stored patterns of emotional expectations which have built up during the day. Reducing the amount of worry therefore also reduces the need for REM sleep at night. Reducing REM sleep has the knock-on effect of increasing the amount of slow wave, restorative sleep and therefore allows you to wake feeling more refreshed. Feeling slightly better, you are more likely to be more active during the day, thereby getting more needs met. The spiral out of the pit of depression then becomes self reinforcing. Anti-depressants are sometimes effective because they diminish the amount of REM sleep during the night. This can be an equally effective route out of the cycle of depression.

See why-we-dream.com for further information.

An observing self

There is a part of us which is separate from all the things we think we are. When we consider that every cell in our body is replaced over a period of years it becomes easier to understand that what we are is more than the cells of our body. The part of us which can see that our problems are separate from our identity, our mind and our body is pure awareness and we use the term "Observing Self" to describe this concept.

See the book "The Observing Self" by Arthur Deikman - ISBN 0-8070-2951-3 for further discussion of this concept.