Hello and welcome to Kintsugi Psychotherapy Practice.
This week I share my reflections on how technology has dramatically reshaped the way we relate while our human need for contact is still wired for a prehistoric world where survival depended on community and belonging.
A few weeks ago I wrote about conditional love and how early messages about worth can shape the way we relate.
This week, I sat with the question that floated through my therapy room in one way or another.
Will you love me if I am me?
The messages received early in life shape how we carry and ask this question in our relationships.
Thus, if you have grown up in a household where no matter what you did and how much effort you put in, you were never up to the required standard, you may end up thinking that you are never good enough.
Then, the focus of the question shifts onto the other, their needs to fulfil, their demands to meet.
You may begin shaping yourself to fit what you think the other requires in order to be loved. Often disappearing into their identity and abandoning yourself in the process.
What if you grew up in a place where emotions were not spoken about? Where there was no modelling of dialogue, bridging differences or staying when the going got tough?
Where there was no differentiation and to be loved you had to be just as you were told? Where individuality was a distant dream…
The conclusion may become: there is no reason to stay where I am not loved as I am.
Another possible scenario could be that you grew up in an environment where you just never knew what you were going to find each day.
One day hot.
One day cold.
Another nothing at all…
The survival adaptation could become like a dance of contact and withdrawal where you approach and then hide, unable to decide what you want. Because you really crave contact and contact is also the scariest thing that exists…
So then the question is not just
Will you love me if I am me?
But, will I?
Our attachment patterns did not evolve in a world of unread messages, blue ticks and disappearing conversations.
Yet this is the relational landscape many of us now inhabit.
Often I see a group of people sitting in a café, bar or restaurant and all the phones are on the table.
I often wonder how present we can truly be with one another when we are invisibly tethered to a small device on the table, offering the illusion of constant connection to the wider world.
Technology amplifies these learned relational patterns.
On the one hand, people-pleasers can become enslaved to it, feeling they must always be available to be loved and accepted.
While becoming consumed by constantly scanning for hidden meanings and dangers in messages.
Dreading silences…
Obsessing over two blue ticks…
Those who hold on fiercely to their independence will delay their responses or even ghost people rather than contemplate the scary prospect of having a challenging conversation.
The unsettling thing about digital communication is that the person disappears behind the screen.
Relationships risk becoming tokenistic.
We lose our sense of where we stand with the other, and sometimes even with ourselves.
Technology can make emotional distance and bypassing difficult feelings easier.
Being always “together” and instantly apart has never been easier.
Living in the fantasy that worth and connection can be measured by followers, likes or friends in the digital cloud, while we have never felt more alone.
As I question the use of technology, I cannot help but notice the other side of the same coin.
It also opens possibilities for connection at a scale that would not have been possible before.
As a therapist working in a hybrid way, I have witnessed the possibilities of building relationships and meaningful connections in a different medium with clients who live miles away from me and sometimes even in a different country.
Together, we negotiate the rules of engagement in our shared container and slowly learn to connect and relate through the screen.
Being present with each other in this way requires a heavier reliance on words, which sometimes can get in the way of a more intimate contact.
However, a lot can be achieved in this container.
And I have technology to thank for this.
And yet.
At this stage of my life, I also notice a growing longing for community, for contact and for meaningful relationships.
In person.
So, in a world where the digital lens amplifies our relational hopes and fears
What does healthy contact look like?
Firstly, let me say that I am mindful that for some, digital contact is a lifeline, as their circumstances do not allow them otherwise.
So, healthy contact is not related to where it takes place but more to how it does.
For example:
Is the speed of someone’s response a testament to how much they care?
Is there a healthy amount of contact to keep a relationship afloat?
When push comes to shove, do we face the music and have a hard conversation or do we hide behind the screen to end things?
Personally, I have forgotten the amount of times that I may have started typing a response and left it mid-sentence because I got side tracked. Regardless of how much I cared for the person I was writing to.
Other times, I have experienced that sitting in the unknown and staying with the silence has brought invaluable insights.
The most valuable learning for me thus far is that naming things out loud to the other can change things dramatically and dismantle old patterns and beliefs.
Healing can come in those moments when relational wounds are healed within a relationship. If we tolerate that sometimes, being seen, and loved, requires tolerating uncertainty.
Both in ourselves.
And in others.
So, I’d like to end this post with an invitation for us all.
As each of us searches for contact in ways that allow us to keep being ourselves…
How about we also remain open to contacting others in the same way?
Through openness, dialogue and a willingness to see the other, and ourselves, more clearly.
Marta Carbajo is a UKCP accredited Gestalt psychotherapist working with individuals and groups in London and online. You can learn more about her work at Kintsugi Mind.