Patriotism isn’t the only old-fashioned pursuit in a high-growth period during recent weeks. Heart-felt conversation is another chart-topper.
“I have noticed more intimate self-disclosures in ordinary chats,” said Dan McAdams, a professor of psychology and human development at Northwestern University. “People are opening up to each other about the most personal things.”
In this time of uncertainty, psychologists and counselors urge us to spend quiet time with family and friends. The simple act of hugging children and other loved ones has a healing power. Research can confirm it–studies at the University of Miami Touch Research Institute are a place to start–but who doesn’t know that by instinct?
Talking and listening represent another uplifting strategy not to be underestimated. Words are less important than involvement. We all know when we are not really listening to a partner or friend. Now is not the time for multitasking, or thinking about what you plan to say next rather than hearing what a person is saying. Don’t interrupt, listen. “You don’t want to be finishing sentences for people, especially your [school-age] children,” said McAdams, whose two teenage daughters are high school students. “Let everybody speak and have a voice.”
It’s not as much about the words we exchange as the healing potential of connecting, said Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, an associate professor at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine and a pioneer in this country’s mind-body medicine movement. She wrote a best-selling book, “Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal” (Riverhead Books, $12.95), and routinely observes in her medical practice how conversations can change lives and health for the better.
“Grief is how the heart heals,” Remen said. “Grieving is a healing process; most people don’t realize that.”
Absolutely. Too many Americans are more familiar with stuffing down the grief.
“What is so powerful is the entire nation is grieving at once,” Remen said. “People are grieving [about strangers] in ways they only do with family members.”
Remen described this scenario of how people grieve a family member: “A person might be walking around, taking care of business, and suddenly the grief comes out of nowhere. They start crying. I have seen that happen several times in recent days, at the grocery store, on the street, in cars.”
Some of our grief is prompted from TV and other media reports. That is not all bad, McAdams said.
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“This is a different kind of TV watching,” he said. “It’s not escapism. People are tuning in or reading to get facts and witness history. Listening and viewing has its own intimacy in this case. You don’t have to talk about it.”
Remen said media coverage can help the healing because “telling the story over and over” is part of the grieving process.
“If you tell the story enough, eventually you make a bridge between the world that was and the world that is,” Remen said. “Things become real. You can cross over.”
Remen said talking with family members is good advice, but people, even spouses, move at different paces when grieving and healing. It doesn’t mean your marriage or family life is out of sync. Sometimes friends can support us in ways that spouses or family members can’t.
“The grieving will require different amounts of time for different people,” Remen said. “Talk to people who feel the same way you do [about the world situation]. That’s important. You will find some people have gone into denial. They will tend to cut you off or change the subject.”
Listening attentively and without judgment to a person’s fears can be extremely healing, Remen said.
“You can feel fear by listening rather than jumping to reassure the person,” Remen said. “It lessens the person’s fears much more effectively.”
The skeptics or cynics among us might doubt the staying power of any newfound intimacy among family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers or would-be strangers. They might say the same about patriotism. Remen rejects both arguments.
“People are more connected,” said Remen, who found herself uncharacteristically humming “America the Beautiful” at the grocery store recently. “We are not taking the American dream for granted like an inheritance. We are healing some of the loneliness and isolation that are the hidden wounds of this culture.
“Every time something like that happens and opens up our hearts, it is easier for it to happen again.”
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