Most of us spend lots of time thinking about whatever we want or need in life: material security, wealth, health, success and recognition, love and affection, joy and happiness, and less stress. At the same time, we may think less often about how to be nice, or how to behave like a nicer person. We usually want others to be nicer to us.
Being “nice” is virtuous, and most would endorse its value.
But as Hall of Fame baseball manager, Leo Durocher, said, “Nice guys finish last.”
In some work venues, being nice is not part of the mission. Examples might be: the football gridiron, SWAT teams chasing suspected criminals, military operations. Even so, the individuals performing these duties have personalities, perceptions, needs, and values that can make them nicer (or want to be so) outside the role of their job duties.
However, if we assume that being nice (or nicer) is for the most part desirable, let’s examine what’s involved.
Expressions of “niceness” vary among different cultures. Courtesy and certain formalities are de rigueur in many societies. If we show politeness and consideration to others, we naturally expect people to be nice to us.
What are the characteristic expressions of niceness?
By temperament, many people are prone to be sensitive to and considerate of others. Life experiences—especially and significantly when we are treated nicely—will make an impression and prompt motivation to act nicely. Those guided by spiritual or moral principles surely embrace niceness as a desirable and necessary part of our outlook and behavior.
In my field, it’s often said metaphorically that the longest distance between two points is between the brain and the heart. Perhaps when there is a disconnect, it can interfere with the desire and manifestation of niceness.
As a clinician, I always endeavor to help my patients connect their brain and heart to be more in sync and be more empathetic and compassionate.
For the decades that I’ve been treating patients with EEG neurofeedback, I’ve come to expect certain improvements that are at first curious, but eventually observed as routine. People essentially become nicer!
Seeking treatment for the explicit desire to be nicer is a rare request in my experience. Patients might be aware of their irritability or anger and may acknowledge feelings of guilt or shame about these tendencies. However, their distress is mostly preoccupied with their own internal upset. By the time they seek my help, they are usually experiencing significant adverse reactions in life at home and/or at work. They may blame others or circumstances for forcing these emotions and reactions, justifying their own feelings and responses. But they know that something must change and, despite wanting others to be more lenient and tolerant, they want to change themselves.
Many people who seek treatment have problems far more complex than failing to be nice. Congeniality and decency are not their issues. Their other symptoms notwithstanding, they may treat people well, fulfilling their obligations with duty and sacrifice, and trying to put on a happy face. But the physical or emotional pain they endure whittles away at their joy and patience. If they are more stable, mature, and have a reservoir of coping skills, they are less likely to foist their suffering upon others.
When people become nicer as a result of neurofeedback treatment, it’s usually their family members who first notice and report it. This is especially salient with children in treatment. As they improve, parents report much better behavior, less defensiveness or denial, and more cooperation and respect. Though this is what we all hope for and want, parents seemed surprised by this (even though those characteristics and behaviors were high on the list for change at the onset of treatment).
Although behaviors such as finishing tasks, reducing complaining, talking more politely, or treating siblings decently were among the common targets, the amazing result (observed by parents) is that their kids have modified or dropped their bad attitudes. This change is worth its weight in gold for relationships as well as for formative character development.
Adults also become nicer in this process. The dissipation of anger or grouchiness is a blessing for those around them. One of my patients told me delightedly that her husband was able to stop taking his “anti-A-hole” pills since treatment, and that he was once again the thoughtful and indulgent man she married!
It’s reasonable to assume that when someone’s internal distress, pain, and unsettling symptoms are relieved, the person would indeed become nicer. But something more is happening: a “brain change” phenomenon takes place, which supersedes simple relief in a transformative way. People become more compassionate and empathetic. These transformations—sometimes subtle and eventually more comprehensive—are significant character and personality enhancements. Such gratifying results deserve scrutiny.
Neurofeedback trains the brain by showing the patient their own brain activity visually on a screen in real time, moment by moment. By observing their neurological activity via digitally transformed special effects, patients can subliminally alter brainwave patterns, thereby becoming more regulated, stabilized, and efficient in the way their brain neurons fire.
Over decades, this training has become more and more refined, and typically results in significant symptom reduction in a wide array of areas: sleep disorders, mood instability, focus problems, headaches, pain, seizures, behavioral problems, anxiety, fears, panic, and the list goes on. The seemingly disparate variety of symptoms responds because they are generated by the brain’s dysregulation.
Such dysregulation is due to many factors—genetic influence, trauma, illness, injury, medications and drugs, and lifestyle. As the brain becomes more regulated, the offending symptoms subside. Gradually, the brain adapts and forms healthier patterns of transmission that it retains as default central nervous system regulation kicks in.
Different individuals and their particular personal afflictions require specific treatment protocols. Commonalities are discerned and appropriately treated. Decades of research and clinical experience performed by many practitioners have collectively administered millions of sessions, and their accumulated clinical practice has gathered data that reveals trends that show which brain irregularities are most prevalent and disruptive. These findings correspond with what we know about the functions of neural substructures. They facilitate using appropriate training protocols to achieve desired outcomes appropriate to the differing brain needs and individualized protocol prescriptions.
The right hemisphere of the brain is most responsible for processing primitive emotions, inferential comprehension, and nonverbal information (such as body language and nonverbal cues). This is the foundation of the brain’s regulation and response to central nervous system arousal, which controls calming, excitement, and fight-or-flight responses. Disrupted regulation— oftencaused by trauma, among other sources—catapults the brain into heightened arousal, provoking and maintaining anxiety, panic, fear, intrusive thoughts and mind racing, and physiological arousal such as rapid heartbeat, increased blood pressure, breathing difficulty, and increase stress responses (including excess cortisol).
The majority of patients (even with varying symptoms and complaints) need right hemisphere training. The protocols are individualized for each patient, and we often titrate and train at infralow frequencies where the filters are set so the brain notices and follows patterns of regulation at cycles as low as .00001 Hz. These natural EEG rhythms (which the brain is always firing anyway) signify that one full cycle takes several weeks to complete. It’s hard to wrap the cognitive mind around this math; yet our brain does this all the time. These low frequencies organize brain behavior at higher frequencies, which the brain can then observe in a neurofeedback session. In short, we get to see these higher frequencies through the “window” of the low frequency. As we show the brain this activity in real time, it quite naturally acts upon that information to refine it and to calm itself.
In a conscious state, we’re accustomed to rapid response. When we say something or ask a question in conversation, we expect a quick answer. It can seem weird if the other person takes half a minute to respond. Underlying neural network processing works differently, accomplishing short-term responses as well as longer-term cycles. Like a boomerang or drone, you expect it to return right away.
Our brain normally includes these extended cycle times as natural rhythms necessary for calming and self-regulation. When they are disrupted or underdeveloped, the brain signals trouble and discomfort. Training the brain at these low frequencies highlights the EEG aspects of brain function that regulate and promote cell harmony and the anticipation of what the brain will encounter as time passes. This allows the brain to calm down and evade its temptation to respond to previously embedded traumatic fear responses.
What does this mean for becoming nicer?
By calming and regulating the right hemisphere, we restore and equip the brain to compose its regulation and refrain from overreacting to perceived provocations and embedded trauma. The brain as a whole (and notably the emotional brain) becomes better able to integrate and accommodate stimuli as less threatening. We grow calmer. Our faculties better sense other people’s feelings and intimations, because awareness has improved and is less impeded by internal preoccupation or fear.
Improving right hemispheric functioning allows the brain to become more engaged. This fosters compassion and appropriate sensitivity, and lays the groundwork for empathy, and more . . .
Several decades ago, some practitioners in the neurofeedback community (myself included) gathered data revealing that after neurofeedback, readministration of intelligence tests a year or two later showed marked increases in IQ scores. Within the staid community of psychologists who test, it is assumed that IQ scores become stable in later childhood and don’t change much (unless there is decrease due to brain injury). Offering evidence of significant IQ increases (even correlational) is treated as suspect.
Having administered and interpreted these score increases multiple times myself, and taking into account corroborating evidence from other professionals, I believe that what accounts for such improvements is the affective engagement in test performance due to an enlivened right hemisphere. Although we measured increased IQ scores across domains of cognitive functioning, I hypothesize that the analytic and logical features of brain functioning improved in these subjects because they were more motivated to perform and care.
Since our brain functions are integrated, it’s not surprising that fueling improvement in emotional functioning results in accelerated cognitive processing across the board.
Over the longer term, intelligence variables tend to be stable. One follow-up study (coauthored by Matt Fleischman, PhD, and Siegfried Othmer, PhD) showed IQ improvements held in a five-year follow-up. Quite possibly, neurofeedback may be making the brain sweeter and “smarter.”
Since I have been administering intelligence tests and other assessments for about fifty years, I appraise fluctuations and wide changes with caution. Still, we cannot ignore multiple inputs of evidence that regulating and improving right brain functioning results in overall betterment of symptom relief, patience and tolerance, and interpersonal sensitivity.
Calming and regulating the right hemisphere is a sure path to “sweetening up the brain and soul” (. . . and allowing our soul to rule our minds . . .).
Treatment protocols that can effectively allow people to become nicer (and maybe even keener) is an important piece of a larger puzzle, both in neuropsychological brain function and in global domains of philosophical outlook, spiritual involvement, and overall character development.
The right hemisphere does not operate by itself. It coordinates first with the left hemisphere, which has its own specialization that in turn must coordinate with the right hemisphere. Both hemispheres participate in memory, language, and problem-solving. The left hemisphere is more analytical, logical, verbal, and symbolic. The posterior (rear) of the brain processes more visual and spatial information. The anterior (frontal) brain is the “gatekeeper,” monitoring sensory input, potential threat and need for immediate attention, while censoring or inhibiting output and behavioral responses.
With a compromise or impairment in frontal functioning, the individual experiences fogginess; difficulty concentrating or sustaining attention or following through; and impulse control problems. Neurologically, we observe excesses of theta and alpha waves in the frontal areas, which lead to accompanying mood disorders as well as impaired executive functioning. These excesses diminish with neurofeedback training.
During sleep, our brain fires at predominantly lower frequency waves. While normal during sleep, this pervasive slower frequency activity is not appropriate or functional during waking hours. Yet in the brain of a person with ADD (attention deficit disorder), this is what happens. The frontal area of the brain—responsible of executive function and inhibition of impulses—fires with too much theta and alpha activity, thus making the person foggy, forgetful, and irritable. Their brain is sleepy while awake, preoccupied with trying to stay alert while screening out distractions.
Talk about obstacles to being nice! Not only does the afflicted individual feel out of sorts, but the ensuing adverse responses from others precipitate and reinforce a vicious cycle of irritability, moodiness, defensiveness, and poor adaptation.
So is there a formula for being nice?
Some neuropsychological underpinnings are directly tied to effective treatment strategies. The idea that when we feel better, we act better seems straightforward. That may be a prerequisite, a necessary but insufficient condition.
Becoming nicer also implies a desire to please and accommodate, a mature and humble awareness of the integrity and sacred nature of others. A tall order. In addition to taming and controlling our primitive instincts and selfish desires, becoming nicer evolves along with some moral imperative.
All our “shoulds” and “oughts” are subject to some degree of conscience and behavioral direction. When we are not successful in living the “right” way, the best we can do is to want to want something that we recognize is lacking in our will or motivation (e.g., I don’t want to exercise, but I want to want to exercise. I don’t feel like being nice to him, but I want to feel like being nice to him.).
The age-old human conflict between gratifying the desires of the flesh versus the spirit plays out in daily struggles with feeling and acting pleasant when there are myriad forces influencing us toward sourness and misery.
Spiritual enlightenment and guidance help bend the orientation toward niceness, and perhaps corrects with some governance over missteps through guilt, moral compass, and modeling. Neuropsychological regulation and brain stability contribute to self-control and successful efforts.
Whether nice guys finish last, or one’s job or mission requires steely toughness, I believe that all people have the capacity to recognize that what we desire is not exclusive to ourselves. Everyone wants consideration, respect, and affection. Many are too proud to ask or admit it, even to themselves. Putting oneself in the other person’s shoes may be difficult and ill-fitting—but this is a big leap toward becoming nicer on a regular basis.
I heard about a mother’s advice to her son who demonstrated one of the highest IQ scores ever measured. She said, “It’s nice that you’re smart—but be nice!”
Considering that longest distance between two points, as between the brain and the heart, is a peculiar, if figurative, neuro geometry!
If desired and worked at, perhaps this distance will be shortened by becoming nicer.
— Mark Steinberg, PhD
