Missing Each Other (How to Cultivate Meaningful Connections)

In our daily tech-obsessed lives, we don't really pay attention to each other. We're stressed and preoccupied with our own thoughts and worries, unable to really listen to each other for long. Often, we seem to somehow "miss" each other, misunderstand each other, or talk past each other. Our ability to tune in to ourselves and to others seems to be withering. This alienates us from both our own inner life and from others.

In Missing Each Other, researchers Ted Brodkin and Ashley Pallathra argue that we must find the ability to be in tune with each other again, and they show us how. Based on years of research conducted with the National Institutes of Mental Health, the authors take a wide-ranging and surprising journey through fields as diverse as social neuroscience and autism research, music performance, pro basketball, and tai chi. They use these stories to introduce the four principal components of attunement: Relaxed Awareness, Listening, Understanding, and Mutual Responsiveness-explaining the science, research, and biology underlying these pillars of human connection, but also providing readers with exercises through which they can improve their own skills and abilities in each.