Connection and Change

In recent weeks, I’ve been talking about the ingredients of connection; the importance of listening, and how asking questions can really deepen our connection and communicate our care and interest. Well, this week, I’ve been reflecting on what happens, when connections that are important to us, change or break.

Put simply, the connections that we value are as unique as are the stories of our lives. They break, or change, for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it will be death that does it. Sometimes it will happen because of a change in life circumstances like when a friend or family member moves away or someone that you are close to at work gets a new job. Sometimes it will happen because your interests change (who doesn’t remember what it was like as a teenager when your best friend found a boyfriend?), and of course sometimes there’ll be a big rupture between partners or friends, and connections are lost. No matter the circumstances of how or why it happens, it will often leave us feeling some anxiety about what life’s going to look like as things change, and depending on the depth of the connection, there’ll often be a deal of pain and grief to contend with.

My reason for raising this point tonight, is that I think we can do better than we sometimes do, at recognising that pain and grief that we experience as things change, both for ourselves, and for those around us. Often there are relationships in our everyday lives which we think of as very important, but which go unrecognised in our community. If we take death as an example - Most of us understand that losing a parent is devastating, and we will often provide support to the person who has had the loss, at these times. When it is someone who has had the role of a parental figure who has died however, we don’t provide the same level of support, and so the pain and grief are not validated. If it is a friend who has died, the loss can feel crippling, and yet our connection is not given the same value say, as a family member’s death is. The circumstance of death will also sometimes add to our feelings of isolation. One of my clients recently for example, experienced the death of a close friend; but this death happened interstate and was someone whom her current friendship circle doesn’t know, so her grief felt a lot less recognised.

As I said above, connections also break for many reasons unrelated to death, and still our society teaches us to grade them in importance. The end of a marriage for example, seems to gain more mileage than the end of a long-term partnership, and how many times do we hear people saying to a young person who has just lived through a break-up, “Oh well, there’s plenty more out there”. It’s true, there might be, but who are we to decide on how heartbroken someone else should be? If we then go back to the connection involved in close friendship … the loss of one of these can be truly devastating. When you think about it, friends can feel like soul-mates, and like our relationships with our siblings, can be among the longest connections that we ever have. It stands to reason then that although there might be good reason for one of these friendships to end, it also might be one of the most difficult losses to live through.

So, how do we change the impact of these ideas and assumptions about what is valuable and what should be grieved, for ourselves and for others? Well firstly, I think we need to back ourselves. We know what is important to us, and who our strongest connections are with. They might not be the same as for the people around us, but that doesn’t make them any less important. So, I think we need to show ourselves some compassion and to recognise the loss, the sadness, the anxiety, the anger … whatever our emotions are, as valid. Then, where we can, we need to talk about what is happening for us, and about the value of that connection with anyone who is showing us care and concern. Whether it be with a friend or a counsellor, our feelings deserve to be acknowledged.

And for those of us who are aware of another’s struggle, instead of assuming that we know about how important a connection is for them, we need to ask. If we express curiosity, rather than assuming we know, then we’ll have the opportunity to allow the person who is experiencing the change to really feel supported. It’s another one of those situations where we need to use questions that begin with “tell me”. When we develop our understanding of how important something or someone is to those we are connected to, we are far more able to relate, and hopefully less likely to make assumptions about how they should or should not be coping.

Have a great week everyone! Take care of yourself and of each other, stay safe and above all of course, stay connected.