Strokes.
So why do we do this? Why all the risk and reward of relating?
Research has demonstrated countless times over recent years the impact of loneliness and isolation on our wellbeing. Not spending enough time with others is demonstrably bad for us resulting in increased physical as well as psychological and emotional distress. It appears to be increasingly true that we are spending more time isolated from one another, despite our increased connectivity.
There is mounting evidence from developmental neuroscience, attachment theorists and research from many modalities that connecting with other humans is more than healthy or desirable, it is vital.
Berne suggested that if we do not get enough of what we need our spines shrivel. The term he uses for this is strokes. The word simplifies what we mean and is essentially a unit of attention or recognition and they come from everywhere.
For example. We pass an important exam. We might feel incredibly pleased and proud of ourselves and be able to give ourselves the credit and recognition for having done the work and passed the test. We might tell the others who sat the exam or did the course thus gaining more intense strokes from others for our achievement. We might then go and tell close friends and the intensity of the strokes we get for that increases. Then there is extended family and those we are intimate with and the strokes we get there are even more intense.
The example works our way up from withdrawal to intimacy (I did by pass games though). The strokes, the reward, gets more intense the closer we are to someone.
The stroke economy
Looking back on last weeks post we all need a different balance to feel ok. What we need is impacted by our personality, our neurotype, our family of origin, our culture, our age and stage of life and our lived experience. When we are not getting the strokes we need and want then, as Berne suggests, we can quickly get into trouble if we don’t take steps to adjust the balance. To do that we have to know what we need in the first place and that is not as simple as it sounds.
For example – a new mum at home with a baby. She is getting lots of intimacy strokes, the oxytocin is flowing. However she may be very deprived of recognition from others because babies are their own little world. This maybe especially true if her none maternity life was rich with social opportunity. The balance is off for a season and the transition can be hard.
Or consider the newly widowed spouse…a strange time of grief and transition where the longed for other is no longer available and yet there is a steady procession of ‘ help’. The strokes are there but they are the wrong ones.
Sometimes sharing with others feels way too vulnerable especially if we have been hurt before.
Sometimes our culture tells us that we need to step back and take up less space. And so intersectionality comes into play, some folks are silently encouraged to be several steps back.
Sometimes if we have been badly hurt or abused relating to others is filled with terror and we rightly put up the defences.
And then we need a way back, a need to redress the balance or we can quickly start to feel the impact of not getting what we need.
Stroke filters
We all need to be recognised: to connect.
What happens when someone pays you a compliment? Can you take it in, let it sink into your bones…or do you shy away, shrug it off, minimise in some way.
We all need to filter the strokes we allow to impact us. It helps us repel attention we don’t want and keep hold of our sense of being OK when others may want to impact that negatively.
Sometimes though we can filter out the ones we need, we don’t trust them, or we are not allowed them.
In our family and wider culture there are unspoken none-verbal rules about how we do this. These can limit our capacity to get the strokes we need. In recent memory girls were to be quiet and well turned out, pretty and good. Boys were to climb, to run about, to get dirty and ‘be boys’. There is nothing wrong with getting strokes for being quiet when circumstances require it – we need the unspoken ways of doing things. But a stroke filter is often and inflexible thing. What if today you don’t want to be quiet? , what if today is about excitement, joy or anger – what then do we do with the noise in us?
What if we are never allowed to be noisy and get a negative stroke when it happens?
Hopefully we have moved beyond such binary stereotypes now and future generations will get strokes for being their authentic selves – noisy or quiet. However, we are left with a legacy of a generation who were told what strokes it was ok to take in.
If this sounds like you, psychotherapy can help us untangle the cultural, social and family narratives that go to make up our stroke filters so we can build one that better suits our authentic needs.