- Hi, I'm Dr. Tracy Marks,
a psychiatrist, and I make mental health education videos.
Today, I'm talking about
how to develop a deeper connection with people.
And this is something
that is very important during this pandemic
when we have less physical contact with people.
Not only do we have less contact,
but the contact is the mechanism
by which we spread the disease.
And this sends the subliminal message
that people are scary and should be avoided.
This messaging creates emotional barriers between us.
These emotional barriers result in shallow connections.
Feeling disconnected breeds loneliness,
and you can be lonely
even if you're crammed in a house full of people.
So how do you feel more connected?
One way is by stepping up the quality
of your conversation with others.
Through the right kind of conversation
you can build closeness and intimacy
that doesn't require face-to-face interactions,
as long as you can talk,
listen and respond to someone else,
you can build intimacy.
So here's how you can do this,
go through the exercise
of having a conversation dinner with someone.
It's gonna be a three-course meal of questions,
and you can do this with one person you already know
or someone you're trying to get to know better.
You could also do this on a Zoom party
where people are taking turns answering the questions.
You want to create a menu of talking points
that go beyond small talk.
You can create your own menu
by searching online for conversation menu,
but here are some examples.
For the first course you could start with,
"What's been the highlight of your week?
"What are you enjoying about your life?
"What are you looking forward to?"
You could just pick one of those questions to start with,
or ask multiple,
but notice these questions are light fare,
ice breaker type questions
because they mostly address surface level observations.
If I tell you about the highlight of my week,
I'm recalling something that happened,
but depending on how comfortable I am with self disclosure,
I have the option to add my editorial opinion
about that thing that happened.
So let's say my highlight was
finishing this 1,000-piece puzzle that I was working on.
If you're doing this in a large setting,
you may not have time to ask follow-up questions,
but if it's one-on-one
and the person gives you only one detail,
like finishing the puzzle with no commentary,
you could ask a follow-up question to get them to elaborate,
like, "When did you start working on it?
"Is that a usual amount of time that it takes you?"
Creating intimacy and connectedness
requires being curious about the other person.
That curiosity helps pull them out of their shell
if they're in one,
and gets them to give you more details.
Life is a lot of details
and the richer the detail, the better the story.
So another aspect of being curious and gathering details
is following up on details.
At a later point, if you ask me,
"Have you gotten started on another puzzle?
"How many pieces this time?"
I would feel a warm fuzzy that you remembered
and knew something about me that not everyone knows
because no one else has asked,
and that can make me feel more connected to you,
and my positive response to you
can make you feel more connected to me.
Okay, so if you didn't get full
from the appetizer questions,
you can move on to the main course.
For the main course, you could ask,
"What are some goals that you're working toward right now?
"What's a personal challenge that you're facing right now?
"Have you realized some interesting insights
"about yourself lately?"
Notice with these questions,
you're looking under the hood a little more.
These questions require introspection,
the person has to take a personal inventory of their life,
their aspirations, values, or disappointments,
and then share those things with you.
Some people may still
drip out small bits of information at a time,
for example, let's say,
"My personal challenge
"is that I wish I had more time,"
that answer is still very vague
and it doesn't tell you very much,
time for what, what was going on
to even make me reach that conclusion?
Did I run out of time for something that I really wanted?
So even with these more probing questions,
you still need to listen with curiosity.
Can you picture what the person is saying?
If you can't imagine in your mind
what their story looks like,
ask more questions.
If you have room for dessert,
you can ask these questions?
"What's the most interesting thing
"that you've read or learned about lately?
"Is there a skill or area
"that you'd like to learn more about in the future?
"What's something new that you could do in the future?"
These are going back to the more lighter weight questions
where the answers don't necessarily touch on something
emotional or sensitive.
Now, keep in mind,
the purpose of these questions
is to get to know someone on a deeper level
in a way that feels safe and comfortable,
it's not to psychoanalyze someone.
I say this because when I searched for conversation menu,
I saw some questions like,
"How do you feel your parents failed you as a child?"
That's a really heavy question to ask someone,
and it takes a certain kind of pre-existing relationship
for the person to feel comfortable
emotionally undressing in this way.
It also stirs up negative feelings
that need to be processed,
so unless it's a person who already has been in therapy,
or spent time thinking through this,
asking that kind of question
is like kicking the hornet's nest and walking away.
Now, this is not to say
you should never ask that kind of question.
If it's someone you're really close to,
then at least you'll be around for follow-up discussion.
Feeling disconnected from people
is not just a problem created by COVID,
many people with chronic relationship problems
can feel this way.
Here's an example,
Mike has only had a couple of semi-serious relationships
where he felt like he wanted to marry the person,
each woman broke it off with him
because he came on too strong and was too needy.
One of his ex-girlfriends
said that after two years of dating Mike,
she felt like she didn't really know who he was,
then all of a sudden,
he starts moving quickly to get married,
and that scared her away
because she thought, "Who is this guy?"
She had no idea that he felt that strongly
about the relationship.
Mike said, "I don't know why she would say that
"because I always told her that I loved her."
Mike thought that she didn't feel like she knew him
because he was always working,
but it wasn't his work schedule
that made her feel disconnected,
it was the fact that Mike
wasn't very revealing about himself.
Mike said, "We talked a lot,
"I don't know what the problem was.
"I didn't keep secrets from her."
No, Mike didn't keep secrets,
but his inability to go beneath the surface
with his self-disclosure
made her feel like he was a stranger of sorts.
But here's the thing, Mike felt he did go deep.
He told her all about his family problems
and how his mother was more into his sister than him,
and how his father made him feel like a failure.
So Mike could talk about these really deep issues,
like going all the way to the center of the Earth
and neglecting the trip there.
For him, the trip there would be things like
talking about his goals,
his stance on current issues and things,
and his girlfriend didn't feel like
she really knew those things about him,
and worse yet, she felt like he didn't know
those things about her
because he was way too preoccupied
with his mother issues to take an interest in her,
he wasn't curious about her.
So deepening your back and forth conversations with others
also helps with your relationships in general.
If you grew up believing
that children were seen and not heard,
you may have trouble spontaneously talking about yourself,
you may not be aware that people see you
as a person who's hard to get to know,
so try this conversation dinner.
You can turn it into a virtual party,
you can do it with people in your household.
I think for the best effect
it needs to be visual or verbal conversation
and not a text exchange.
A lot of emotion is lost in written messages,
either by text or email.
So that's it,
stay well, see you next time.