Deep Conversations Are Number One for Your Mental Health
We are missing something.
Believe it or not, we were keeping our distance before the pandemic as well.
I’d wager a bet that one of the most common types of articles found here goes along the lines of ‘things I learned from my twenties’ or ‘what I wish I’d known in my twenties.
Being slap bang in the middle of them, or fading catastrophically into the latter stages, there is one thing I picked up that will make me break my ‘no self-help articles’ vow of chastity:
The importance and value of deep conversations.
The study I have based this article on focused on the benefits of meaningful conversations between strangers. But, I think the lessons are not necessarily being applied to those much closer either.
It is a way to alleviate suffering.
I’m going to presume that — even if little else he comes out with takes your fancy — you agree with Jordan Peterson’s assertion that life is suffering.
As a student mental health nurse, I have naturally become somewhat fixated on the suffering of others and the ways it could be alleviated.
Deeper conversations, according to this study can lead to greater connections.
Disconnection is an issue that affects all contemporary folk and not just the mentally ill.
Disconnection is the modern malaise.
Disconnection is — I trust I don’t have to clarify, but I will — that feeling you get during those fleeting times in our busy world where you are alone with your thoughts and profoundly dissatisfied.
Disconnection is the feeling you have before you embark on a social media doom scroll. And the feeling you have after it, having achieved nothing.
Disconnection is looking forward to staying in on a Friday but when the time comes you just can’t sit with yourself.
And, surprisingly, disconnection can also be the feeling you have after engaging in small talk with a friend and you come away feeling nothing much — your soul dressing up, going out for dinner, but not being fed.
Connection, by contrast, is a good feeling — the treehouse you need to build.
The root of all meaning.
And deeper conversations are your hammer and tongs.
Avoiding real talk leads to a need for labels.
Ever the outlier, silence is often my response to small talk — and it’s not beneficial. Yet, if something gripped me more, I doubt this would be the case.
Maybe, just maybe, those we label as introverts would be less so if we didn’t have to hear about your eighteen-day success streak on wordle — Although that may be an animating topic in its own right.
Or how frustrating it was to spend your morning in gridlocked traffic — I get it.
Or, the weather — this one never fails to disappoint because nobody can control it, yet we persist in berating or celebrating it daily.
None of the above are problems in themselves. The issue arises when the same topic is broached on an excruciatingly frequent basis.
Introversion and extroversion are terms that get bandied around a lot. They exist on a continuum, a long one, too long for one to be pigeon-holed into a category when we could be more accepting of nuance.
My feeling is that through a recalibration of societal conversations — just injecting a couple of deeper ones from time to time — we would not be proclaiming as many introverts.
But bare with me, the problem isn’t entirely small talk, it’s a complete lack of real talk.
Fear of awkwardness is keeping us from something life-enriching.
One of the main barriers to deeper conversations is a fear of awkwardness — so says the aforementioned study. But we hardly needed a study to know that, did we?
If it was possible to rip apart my psyche and find, just one, tiny, iota of emotional intelligence, it would probably be my ability to sense this awkwardness.
How? Because it’s there, it’s obvious, and, it’s just beneath the surface.
That’s not to say I am any better at moving past it.
We hover and shimmy around anything too deep — not, surprisingly, out of fear of causing offense, but of the prospect that a feeling of awkwardness will engulf the entire table in a cloud of very, very uncomfortable vibes.
‘How is your cousin? Are they getting better?’ — this is often as far as most will enquire of someone’s ill cousin, who is dying of cancer. Regardless of the response.
But, if enquiring about someone about to croak is still too much — even after this fine article — you can just go a ‘lil’ deeper with some of these questions below that I took the liberty of compiling so you don't have to:
- What’s the hardest thing you've ever been through?
- If you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today?
- How do you think others would describe you?
- What is missing from your life?
and, a less awkward one:
- If you could live anywhere, where? and why?
I think it goes without saying that you might want to exchange pleasantries before ‘diving in’. That should help you from coming on, you know, a little too strong.
Another top tip — since the mood is taking me — would be to ask why questions and keep following up with why. This will unearth people’s values and by extension, their passions. And isn’t that what is fundamentally lacking with small talk?
I am still waiting for the day I become passionate about the weather.
It’s also about perceptions.
If you know that you are speaking with somebody caring and interested, people are more comfortable with deeper conversations.
However, most people overestimate apathy levels in others. What we need to realize is that it is extremely rare that you are conversing with Michael Carleone-type characters on a daily basis.
And even if you are, how likely is it that he will pull a gun on you for enquiring about what he loves about his job?
People will surprise you if you let them and that means taking the initiative. Use one of the prompts above and see if you collapse with awkwardness or not.
Disclaimer
I am reasonably sure that this inhibition is common across the board and not just to males. However, as I don’t possess the necessary biological package to develop an insight into the female psyche, I can’t say this for certain.
Let me add one final presumption to the word salad I am now balls-deep in:
Women are better at this.
And men must do better.
I don't sit around too often pondering where emotions and crying and tears fit into the male lexicon. But when I do, I quickly realize the answer is not much.
I imagine that deeper conversations will lead to the above from time to time — but hey! not every time, and remember, I thought we have settled the awkwardness issue above, haven’t we?
I’m pretty sure deeper doesn’t mean more awkward. What if it meant more fulfilling?
Back to men. Disconnection is one of the main contributors to violence against women. Therefore, it is imperative that we use this readily available tool to help stop it.
To sum up.
The problem, then, is not a lack of interest in having more meaningful conversations. It’s the misguided pessimism about how these interactions will play out. — fastcompany.com
Please don’t now think of me as some kind of esteemed pariah or prophet when it comes to such wisdom. In fact, I do worse than that; often failing, in the absence of deeper topics, to even manage a smidgen of small talk.
And yet, baby steps.
Because I have had the audacity to write this article in the first place, in 2022, I hereby resolve to engineer at least two deeper conversations. And, as you have soldiered this far, will you do the same?
