5 Catalysts for Connection

I came across an article in Psychology Today (August 2010) and completely agree with the 5 Catalysts for Connection they write about, in reference to the book CLICK (the magic of instant connections), by Ori & Rom Brafman. I, too, have found the following to be absolutely true:

5 CATALYSTS FOR CONNECTION

1) Vulnerability: Opening up to others by sharing personal information, admitting to an embarrassment, or even just expressing an opinion or emotional reaction immediately deepens the interaction. Eye contact and casual touching also help.

2) Proximity: People tend to befriend and collaborate with others they sit next to, or work alongside. Mere facial familiarity enhances judgments of a stranger’s personality. So go out there and mix it up face-to-face.

3) Resonance: Get out of your head and into the “zone.” You can reach a state of flow with another person where boundaries fade away by being present – offering undivided attention, listening actively, and responding to unspoken needs.

4) Similarity: We tend to like people who are like us, so find common ground early. Similarities can be as trivial as a shared name or birthday or interest in a sports team. Whatever your background, you immediately become an in-group of two.

5) Shared Community: Creating a well-defined frame through, say, a corporate retreat, can amplify the other click accelerants by offering a safe space. Shared adversity also strengthens bonds and can forge permanent partnerships.

Growth Goal #2: Intimacy (not the same as intensity)

Goals for Emotional Health or Maturity:

#1) Understanding, Desiring, and Pursuing, Integrity.
#2) Understanding, Desiring, and Pursuing, INTIMACY.

Growth Goal #2 towards Emotional Health, is being able to accurately define INTIMACY, in order to walk on a healthy path towards developing/maintaining intimate relationships. We must also learn to discern the difference between Intimacy & Intensity. Intensity is not required in order for intimacy to be present.

The Vacillator “Love Style”, one of the “Attachment Injury Styles” is the person who is constantly pushing you away while at the same time, pursuing you to engage. The person with this kind of love style is someone who craves connection but will often confuse intensity with intimacy, thinking they are one in the same.

We are all craving some sort of emotional connection and intimacy… Human beings were created to be social beings, not isolated ones. But it is important to know the CORRECT definition of intimacy, and what it is we are really desiring:

From Wikipedia, “Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity. As a verb, “intimate” means “to state or make known”. (Intimacy is getting to know one another at a slow pace). To sustain intimacy for any length of time requires well developed emotional and interpersonal awareness. Intimacy requires an ability to be both separate and together participants in an intimate relationship. This is called self-differentiation. It results in a connection in which there is an emotional range involving both robust conflict, and intense loyalty. Lacking the ability to differentiate one self from the other is a form of symbiosis, a state that is different from intimacy, even if feelings of closeness are similar.”

The vacillator, however, wants NO differentiation. Any feeling of being separate means they are not close and things are now “all bad” (black and white thinking). When there is no intensity in the relationship, they feel no connection or “intimacy”.

It is important to note, however, that TRUE intimacy involves self awareness and self differentiation. It is not necessarily an intense gaze, conversation, and connection, ALL the time. It requires a healthy balance of rationality/thinking, and emotion/feeling.

Other Interesting/Helpful Information in understanding Intimacy (also from wikipedia!):

“From a center of self knowledge and self differentiation, intimate behavior joins family, close friends as well as those with whom one is in love. It evolves through reciprocal self-disclosure and candour.”

“Poor skills in developing of intimacy can lead to getting too close too quickly; struggling to find the boundary and to sustain connection; being poorly skilled as a friend, rejecting self-disclosure or even rejecting friendships and those who have them.”

And on physical/ sexual intimacy:

Intimate Community

As we all work on cultivating deeper roots, ones that will withstand the winds and the storms… I don’t want us to forget about the tree that is being planted either. Let’s also look up and out. What does the tree look like? What does each branch represent?

Last night, I was reminded that one of those branches for me (another passion of mine, but related to my overall vision for optimal emotional health), is Community Health. Creating, building, growing, and sustaining, healthy communities: thriving relationships of transparency, vulnerability, growth, peace, joy, intimacy, and sacrificial love. (Side Note: I wrote about this dream community in a previous post: Operation LOV:E (A New Community).)

Sometimes I wonder if we do ever reach this “communitopia” – will we still want more? Hopefully we’ll be joyously satisfied. Because in reality, I don’t know if we’ll ever reach that divine closeness we yearn for – but I enjoy thinking about it and hoping for it.

C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy pop up into my head right now. One of the greatest books by Lewis was A Grief Observed… sharing his journey after Joy’s death.

“‘It was too perfect to last,’ so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic–as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy then He stopped it (‘None of that Here!’). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation.

But it could also mean: ‘This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it could not be prolonged.’ As if God said, ‘Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next.’ When you have learned to do quadratics and enjoy doing them you will not be set them much longer. The teacher moves you on.

For we did learn and achieve something. There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them. It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry ‘masculine’ when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them, to describe a man’s sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as ‘feminine.’ But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible. Marriage heals this. Jointly the two become fully human. ‘In the image of God He created them.’ Thus, by a paradox, this carnival of sexuality leads us out beyond our sexes.”

Lewis says, “Marriage heals the divide”, and I would include “Covenant Communities” here. Radical covenant communities will heal and reconcile the swords… pain, heartache, loneliness.

“Jointly the 2 become 1″, he says. But perhaps, together, the 3, 4, 5, 6 individuals… become fully human as well – when living in intimate, covenant communities of self-sacrificial service and love for one another.

I wonder – Is that another way of describing the goal for Restoration? Becoming fully human… “fully yourself” – the original intent of who you were created to be. No anxiety, but peace of mind. No stress, but calm and secure. Comfortable in your own skin.