Avigail Abarbanel – The Neuroscience of Self-Love and World Peace

How can we navigate uncertainty and embrace adaptability?

It would not come as a surprise to anyone that things are not going so well for humanity. A great deal has been written over millennia, describing, and lamenting the woes of our human existence. Despite the fact that there have been many suggestions about what we could do to make things better, we keep repeating destructive, painful patterns. Living like this falls far short of the potential we all know we have.

One of the most ancient and universal principles we have been given is to love one another as we love ourselves. This holds the promise of transforming human existence, however, the concepts of self-love, and loving one another have so far remained elusive. We have the ability to bring about world peace, but as a species, it appears we are still on a learning curve. 

If we are not peaceful inside, we cannot imagine, let alone create a peaceful society, even with the best of intentions. With the help of neuroscience, we can translate the concepts of self-love, and loving one another into something concrete. Evidence from the practice of psychotherapy shows that when people love themselves properly, they are more capable of loving one another. As individuals transform their inner ‘landscape’ — from a turbulent, troubled, war-like space, plagued with divisions, and littered with abandoned and rejected parts of the self — into a peaceful and harmonious space, they naturally transform the world around them. We are complex systems that exist within complex systems. We create the world in our own image, and in turn the world shapes us.  Anywhere you intervene in a complex system, would impact on the whole. If we want to transform our collective reality, it is valid to start with ourselves.

As an ethical psychotherapist, my work cannot remain merely theoretical, or in the realm of guesswork or speculation. Psychotherapy must work, or people continue to suffer, which affects everything, and everyone in their lives. What I share in this seminar is a framework that has been tested in well over twenty years of practice. It is based on the consilient framework of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), that learns from many sciences, and ways of knowing. IPNB has been a game-changer in my profession. It has highlighted the fact that for psychotherapy to make a difference, it must facilitate changes in people’s brain architecture. IPNB makes the concepts of self-love, and loving others clear and tangible. In other words, we now know exactly what we need to do to bring peace into our internal reality, and by extension also into the world. The same principles we use in psychotherapy, can be readily implemented in education, and parenting, or in any domain where people interact with one another. 

In this talk I will share the science, and practice that changes our brain, and transforms our subjective internal reality. The principles are simple, albeit not always easy to implement initially. This talk emerged out of an essay I published in March this year on my Substack page: You shall love your neighbour as yourself; The neurobiology of self-love and world peace. 

Everyone is welcome, and no prior knowledge is required, only your curious mind, wisdom, and life experience. 

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About the speaker:

Avigail Abarbanel is a BACP Senior Accredited psychotherapist, a clinical supervisor, trainer, and consultant. Avigail has been private practice for twenty-five years. She is qualified to work with adult individuals, relationships, families, and groups. Avigail has always been passionate about sharing her knowledge widely through her writings, her books, resources she produces, and in seminars and workshops. Avigail has been a member of the SMN and the Galileo Commission for a number of years. As a non-materialist, and as someone who believes science is an ideal that we are not yet practising properly, the SMN has been a welcoming home that regularly expands her thinking, and challenges her to see beyond what she thinks she knows.   

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