Connectedness

by Maureen R. Johnston, MFT
(Originally appeared in my newsletter Sense and Psychotherapy, Fall 1999)

We lead fast-paced, stimulus-packed, activity-filled lives. We work hard. We play hard. We network. We multitask. Yet, amidst all the energy and commotion, all the interaction, all the facts and data constantly flying at us, a common complaint amongst my clients and friends is that they feel "out of touch". Instead of seeing richness and variety, they feel chaos and overload. Something is missing, something that could resolve some of the chaos, and make sense of things. While I don't believe there's a single "Answer" to this predicament, I do believe that we can achieve a sense of meaningful wholeness in our lives. We can't just jump directly at it though. Instead, I believe that we can get closer to that elusive, transcendent something if we focus on very practical ways of enhancing our sense of connectedness to the world around us.

I'm constantly learning of new ways people have been able to achieve this sense of practical connection, but I think I'm more often struck by how so many of us find it in similar sorts of ways. Religious community can provide us with a personal connection to others following a similar path. Political and social causes can offer a sense of satisfaction through working jointly toward a common goal. Loyalty toward, and identification with, a school, a job, or even a group of fellow hobbyists can offer a shared space where we experience a sense of common interest. Even normal, simple activities like walking the dog or cleaning the yard can provide us with the opportunity to connect with ourselves and our surroundings.

Fortunately, the same jumble of relationships and activities that leaves us overwhelmed can be the key to our "salvation." It's a matter of what kind of meaning we attach to them. Many of us get caught up in the numbers game, how many friends, how many parties, how many hobbies, without ever getting truly involved in anything. Yet, without that involvement, there's no real personal connection, and without that feeling of connection we never get the sense that our lives are anything more than a mixed bag of bits and pieces. The real challenge is to find the relationships and activities that have personal meaning for us. It's through the truly meaningful connections we make to the world around us that we can achieve that sense of something larger than ourselves.

One of the beauties of all these different forms of connection is how they build on and support one another. Our lives are a web of connections of varying strengths and lengths, continually forming and reforming over time. Often, I find that it's not so much a matter of people finding new relationships and activities as reexamining their current ones and discovering them anew. I feel that a large part of my role as a therapist is to help my clients undertake this journey. Along the way we try to determine which links are worth nurturing, and which are better left behind. They're often pleasantly surprised to find a richness and clarity permeating even the most routine corners of their lives. Even if they never end up discovering "The Answer", the process of connecting, or reconnecting, to the world around them can be a revelation in itself.

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