How To Feel More Connected - A Solution To Loneliness By Dr. Tracey Marks

  

- Hi, I'm Dr. Tracy Marks, a psychiatrist, and I make mental health education articles. 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 tryingto 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 underthe hood a little more. These questions require introspection, the person has to take apersonal 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.