Bridges & Boundaries: Relational Wellbeing
A Man Crossing the Bridge, Kōno Bairei (1844-1895).
“One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.”
The Value of Others
The etymology of the English word “value” comes from the Old French valoir meaning “worth, price, moral worth; standing, reputation,” which comes from the Latin valere meaning “be strong, be well; be of value, be worth.” [1]
In her 650-page treatise on aging (The Coming of Age, 1970), French existentialist and feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir sought to elevate the lives of those no longer viewed as contributing members of society, i.e., those of an age who had ceased to contribute to commercial productivity. In denouncing Western prejudice and discrimination against seniors and elders, she called for the recognition of the value and worth of all human existence regardless of earning potential.
Recognizing and celebrating the value and worth in another creates a bridge to understanding another’s human condition. It also makes it much more difficult to engage in acts of neglect, abuse, and violence. When we recognize ourselves in others, we are able to come together in a shared acknowledgement of existential concerns: Meaninglessness, freedom, isolation, and death anxiety. What follows is compassion, caring, connectivity, empathy, respect, and dignity—the foundation of relational wellbeing.
Relational Wellbeing
Relational wellbeing is the ability to navigate interactions with other humans through the establishment of understanding, reliance, trust, and intimacy. Being vulnerable with others signifies your ability to risk rejection, share and fulfill needs, and engage in respectful conflict when they are not met.
Relationships spread across family (parents, siblings, spouses/partners, children, grandparents, etc.); work (co-workers, bosses, supervisors, contractors, consultants, clients, patients, etc.); friends (school, college, sports, arts, etc.); and community (neighborhoods, spiritual / religious, collectives, groups, volunteerism, etc.).
In our post-modern 21st century world—comprised of social media influencers, climate crises, online gaming, work-from-home opportunities, live coverage of wars being waged, artificial intelligence, and indelible impacts of the global coronavirus pandemic, to name but a few—humanity’s relational wellness has been threatened.
And the threats are real.
This year, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued the report, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. [2] Startling data are disclosed in the report’s Overview:
The lack of social connection poses a significant risk for individual health and longevity. Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29% respectively. More broadly, lacking social connection can increase the risk for premature death as much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. In addition, poor or insufficient social connection is associated with increased risk of disease, including a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke. Furthermore, it is associated with increased risk for anxiety, depression, and dementia. Additionally, the lack of social connection may increase susceptibility to viruses and respiratory illness (p. 8).
The importance of social connection to our physical and emotional health is evident and raises many questions:
How can we cultivate compassionate connections with other living beings?
How can we engage with others in loving, meaningful ways?
Impersonal Familiarity: Loving-Kindness
Through Loving-Kindness
In her insightful work, Love Between Equals, Jungian analyst, Zen Buddhist, and founder of Dialogue Therapy for Couples, Polly Young-Eisendrath, describes impersonal familiarity:
We all find a greater ease and pleasure with someone we know less personally because we don’t take our differences so personally (p. 40).
Impersonal familiarity occurs between people who engage with one another through loving-kindness (metta), “a Buddhist practice for cultivating compassion for ourselves and others through directing loving, friendly phrases and goodwill.” [3]
We can engage in this practice through meditation and in sharing human experiences (e.g., a tai chi class, a concert, an art exhibit, standing in line at the grocer.) I like to imagine it as the act of recognizing each other’s humanity and sharing an invisible embrace for our human condition, which includes both suffering and happiness. While we feel a loving-kindness towards people in this sphere of relational engagement, the relationships are non-confrontational.
Annual Seat Holders
When I think of impersonal familiarity, I think of a friend who invited me to attend the NYC ballet with her. She and her mother had attended the ballet as season ticket holders since she was a little girl. When her mother died, she inherited the annual seats and began inviting friends to attend performances with her. I was grateful to be chosen.
We settled into our seats, and my friend began a brief conversation with the man sitting to her right. They shared excitement over the evening’s choreographer, the upcoming season, the week’s wretched weather, and concluded with “Enjoy the performance!”
Later, over a glass of wine, my friend described their shared story of 30 years: He and his wife (deceased) were her mother’s age; they had sat together for decades and enjoyed exchanging pleasantries with each other during each season. When I asked where they lived, she didn’t know. When I asked if they had children, she shrugged. When I attempted a third inquiry, she noted, “I probably don’t know,” released a small giggle, and took a sip of wine. It’s a layer of comfortability that we, as humans, find amongst people who are part of our life’s fabric but who also pose not existential threat. As Young-Eisendrath noted:
We warmly acknowledge our common humanity. This kind of familiarity feels good. Usually, it lacks competition and judgment. We don’t take on each other’s personal problems, but we support one another in a warm atmosphere of well-wishing. (p. 39)
Personal Familiarity
In contrast to impersonal familiarity, personal familiarity comes with the blessing and burden of knowledge, recognition, and judgment. Knowing about another touches upon our own interests, insecurities, and self-awareness. Recognition of another includes bearing witness to another’s life as it unfolds—the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful. Judgment portends the expression of very real human feeling of comparisons of taste, and habits, styles, and needs.
Let’s go back to the ballet.
As compared to the impersonal familiarity of annual seat holders, the relational connectivity between dancers in the NYC ballet is personal familiarity. With their minds, bodies, and creative souls, they know each other intimately, expose their vulnerabilities, witness each other’s struggles, provide support, and vie for power.
Personal familiarity demands a level of commitment and acceptance and enables us to engage with others in loving, meaningful ways. But it is not without discomfort at times. We cannot help but compare ourselves to those we know personally. We can appreciate and even celebrate our differences while also growing weary or irritated by one’s demands.
Safe as Our Genuine Self
How, one may ask, can humans come to appreciate or celebrate differences in loving and meaningful ways? As noted, relationships are based on feelings of mutuality, trust, and security. These feelings provide blueprints for how we love, negotiate, compromise, and problem-solve. Like a dance, they guide us on how we respond to another’s moves. But we’re not just dancing with another. How we dance harkens back to early attachment relationships with primary caregivers—relational strokes and feedback loops can be positive and negative. How you connect as an adult with family, friends, co-workers, and partners can be traced to these early attachments.
Understanding one’s attachment style and dance helps understand from whence we came and to where we wish to grow. Do you lean toward being an Island? Does your partner lean toward being a Wave? Or are you the Rock-steady one? With answers to these questions comes a better understanding of one’s Genuine Self and the ability to feel safe establishing health boundaries.
In the forward to Boundaries and Relationships: Knowing, Protecting, and Enjoying the Self (2010), John Amodeo, PhD explained:
By protecting our genuine, authentic self, boundaries help us feel freer and safer to be our Genuine Self—to express our real feelings, wants and viewpoints. We can affirm our inner world while granting others the right to have their feelings, thoughts, needs and viewpoints, which might be different from our own. Through healthy boundaries, we ask to be treated with respect, while extending respect to others.
Boundaries protect us. But they don’t keep us distant and separate from people. Just the opposite. They provide foundation for sound, health intimacy. A relationship requires two people who are relating to each other. Lacking awareness of our inner world, we remain enmeshed, not intimate. We fuse with the other’s universe of feelings, wants and desires. Losing sight of our own inner life, we may later feel resentful because we have not been true to ourselves. We have not taken time to notice what we really want. This dis-serves not only ourselves, but others as well. When we have delayed setting boundaries, we may establish them later with a vengeance. This may escalate conflict or lead to betrayal or abandonment. (p. xviii - xix)
Encore! Encore! Relational Wellbeing Benefits
Psychotherapy helps clients engage in meaningful relationships with self and others. What we know about the benefits of relational wellbeing and social connectedness illuminates the importance of developing and fostering such connections of impersonal and personal familiarity. They include:
Increased feelings of connectedness & belonging
Receive unconditional support
Improve social skills
Improve partner intimacy
Foster resilience
Improved mood
Boost immune system
Validation of feelings.
Which of your bridges and boundaries could benefit from reflection and cultivating?
Drop me an email, and let’s see if we could work together.
Notes
[1] Online Etymology Dictionary.
[3] Metta Meditation: A Complete Guide to Loving-Kindness. Lion’s Roar: Buddhist Wisdom for Our Time.
[4] Amodeo, J. [Forward] in Whitfield, Charles, L. (2010). Boundaries and Relationships: Knowing, Protecting, and Enjoying the Self. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc.
