Withdrawal. Rituals, Pastiming
Berne suggested that least emotionally intense way of spending our time is in withdrawal. Time alone. Time without others present. Being alone is less emotionally risky but can also be lonely and isolating
What does the idea spending time alone bring up for you?
For me it conjures long lazy days where I can do as I please, walk in the sunshine, sit reading books and eating nourishing food, no pressure of work or expectation. Spending time apart from others, time when I withdraw from the world is life giving for me and something which is increasingly difficult to do in our very interconnected world. My reasons for loving withdrawal are grounded in the realities of my life. I spend a lot of my time with people and that time is often very structured. I am neurodiverse and it’s important for me to spend time in an environment that is set up for me, to recharge.
I can derive a lot of pleasure from being on my own but that is not true for everyone. We all need something different. In a different phase of my life spending a day alone would have left me bored, lonely and under stimulated. It would have been a horrible prospect.
Sometimes withdrawal is forced upon us. Long term illness, mental health challenges or major life transitions can force us into a period of withdrawal and leave us feeling isolated, forgotten and unimportant. Research shows us that long term loss of meaningful connection with others is damaging to our health and well-being because we are hard wired from birth to connect with each other.
And then there is social media…where does this sit on the continuum of withdrawal and connection? Arguably in different places for different people.
With slightly greater social contact, small everyday rituals of greeting provide us with social contact.
‘Hi! How are you?’
‘Fine thanks!’
If you live in Britain this may well be followed up with
‘Hasn’t the weather been wonderful recently’
The everyday rituals of life, those small interactions with others that politely acknowledge our existence in the world to the people we casually encounter and the people we are close to.
If we pay attention then we might notice a pattern in what we do. How do you greet the people who live in your house with you in the morning? Or when you come back from being out for a time? How about if you have been away for a few days is it different then? Is that different to greeting someone in the street or post office queue?
In comparison to withdrawal there is a slight increase in relational risk. We are sending a small part of us out there that wishes to connect and hoping for a response…this always comes with the risk that there will not be one or that the response is not the one we were hoping for.
Our culture within our family and our wider culture is an important influence on how we conduct these small rituals of recognition There are unspoken rules about how we do this which not everyone is good at navigating.
For example. I like to walk in the Cumbrian fells. When we encounter someone on the path, we smile and nod and say hi, maybe even stop and pass the time for a while. But if I was walking down a street in a city or in a city park I would not. How did I learn this? How do I know? I used to live in Sheffield. I still miss being greeted on the bus with a friendly smile and a conversation. When I get on the tube in London, my experience is very different, people would be embarrassed for me if I tried to strike up a conversation, look away, look at the floor, retreat to the safety of a screen and away from the mild threat of a conversation with a stranger.
And then there is passing the time with others.
The conversation in the post office queue develops. It is now a coffee date.
The dinner party. The mother and toddler group. A lot of conversations at work can be at this level. Football, diet, exercise, where we have been or are going on holiday. Small ways of finding commonality and points of connection that are more than a greeting but still not terribly risky emotionally.
I often see this as the bridge between knowing someone and not, the mechanism by which we slowly come to know one another better. We are giving more of ourselves than a polite acknowledgment and are maybe open to moving into something with more and deeper connection, but it will be OK if the relational contact stays where it is. There is a safe out.
If rituals and pastiming are a bridge to deeper connection with others, what happens if we struggle with them, making it difficult to find a way in to connect with others?
And we can struggle with this in a number of ways.
What is an acceptable pastiming topic? How do I know when we are moving from passing the time to a deeper level of connection? How much of us is too much or not enough for this level of interaction?
The chance of minor rupture is bigger. If I greet someone on the tube who looks away I am momentarily embarrassed and I will never likely see that person again, so no harm done. If I say something inappropriate or unwelcome over lunch at work, that is going to need repairing, maybe a more awkward conversation to clear the air.
If intimacy has been unsafe, pastiming can be an important starting point for building connection with others.
However, with it’s unclear rules and low levels of reward, pastiming can also be a huge challenge for people with Autism or ADHD meaning it is harder then to cross the bridge into deeper connection.