COMMUNICATION LEVELS - FROM FORMALITY TO INTIMITY

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

We meet, communicate … Some kind of relationship is improving and becoming long-term and stable. Some of them fall apart. There are relationships that eventually turn into an empty formality, although they are maintained. And there are those when we would very much like to preserve them or even transfer them to another level - but for some reason it does not work out …

In some relationships, we can do a lot of stupid things and make a lot of mistakes - but they hold on, and they are still glad to each other. And somewhere there was no madness at all. And they are dying … There are friends with whom I have not seen for a year or two or three, but when you meet them, it is as if the conversation ended yesterday. And there are people with whom you start a conversation every time, as if an eternity has passed since the last moment. Here we can talk about some levels at which communication unfolds.

The wonderful psychotherapist D. Bujenthal, talking about the establishment of trusting relationships, drew just such a simple diagram.

In the very center, he placed intimacy - that kind of communication to which, consciously or unconsciously, almost all of us strive. Sometimes we manage to catch this moment of intimacy, which quickly disappears in the daily hustle and bustle. Some have never felt truly intimate communication. D. Bujenthal explained that this happens because in order to achieve a feeling of intimacy in communication with another person, you need to overcome 4 more levels, or circles of communication.

1. Formal communication

This type of communication, which we use when we meet, when we want to impress a person with our social characteristics (for example, "head of the department of management of the department of departmental relationships"). Two people meet and communicate with two masks, two social images. According to D. Bujenthal, the key sign of the formal level of communication is that a person seeks to completely control himself, so God forbid not to blurt out too much or to be in a stupid situation. Many people are familiar with the awkwardness of newly formed companies. For example, four strangers met in a compartment of a carriage - and throughout the entire journey they did not exchange ten words with each other. They actually communicate anyway, but non-verbally and formally …

- Hello. My name is Anna.

- Me - Victor. What do you do?

- I am the deputy director of sales at the firm..

- O! And I am … a loader.

2. Maintaining contact

This is also a rather restrained communication, and we conduct it with people whom we see constantly, but on private issues. It is inconvenient to pass by a friend and not say "Hello, how are you!" We are less concerned with our image here than at the formal level, but the relationship is still impersonal. Ritual phrases ("Well, it's hot today!", "How are you?" and there is no desire for them. "Likes" or ratings on social networks - from the same opera.

- Hi Andrew! How are you?

- Fine! How is the family?

- Great, I sent the children to the camp.

- Ah, a happy man! Come on! See you sometime.

This "see you sometime" does not mean at all that we are really going to see each other. It simply denotes the importance of one interlocutor to another. Even if in many respects it is symbolic. It does not pretend to be at a higher level of maintaining contact.

3. Standard communication

"Standard is a word that means ordinary or expected." Standard communication is a balance between caring for your own image and being involved in expressing your own feelings and understanding the other person. As a matter of fact, it is at this level that we communicate with most of our friends and acquaintances, with relatives. We know what to expect from them, we have common jokes and topics of conversation. If suddenly someone from our environment suddenly begins to behave outside the box, then we will most likely be alarmed. “You are somehow different today” - that is, it does not correspond to the usual, expected …

However, there is one catch in standard communication. The fact is that, like the first two types of communication, it does not imply true depth. Personal problems will be discussed in the same way as a host of others - as usual, between times. Advice and consolation will be given, which sometimes are already set on edge. “Yes, everything is fine,” “pull yourself together,” “whatever is being done, everything is for the better,” “the night will pass, a clear morning will come,” “life has now black and now white stripes,” and so on. Sometimes these words are enough, but when the soul is really hard, they will rather annoy - like everything standard and clichéd in non-standard situations. Just as in a truly loving relationship, standard can be harmful.

The standard level of communication is somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, it allows you to feel belonging to other people, to avoid feelings of loneliness, but, on the other hand, an overabundance of such communication leads to a feeling of "loneliness in the crowd", when a person says that "there are many acquaintances, but no friends." This phrase expresses the desire for intimate, as close communication as possible. However, intimacy is difficult to achieve, because in order to move to an intimate level of communication, you inevitably need to go through another circle - the circle of "critical" or "crisis" communication.

4. The crisis level of communication

A crisis is any situation of major changes, and it does not matter - for the better or for the worse. Critical communication is communication, after which both my perception of another person and myself change. After that, I will not be able to perceive the person as before. This is where the threat lies - since it is not clear whether the process will go for the better or for the worse … The most striking example of a critical level is a declaration of love, when you are not at all sure of mutual feelings. Since this means crossing the line: you will not communicate as before. The young man and the girl were friends, and now the young man began to feel far from friendly feelings for the girl. But for the time being, he preserves the appearance that "there is nothing like that", that "we are just friends." Those. it is still held at the level of the standard communication style adopted in their relationship. “And if I confess, and there will be no reciprocity?” … Of course, after that, you can continue to pretend that “we are just friends,” but this will be an illusion maintained in order to preserve the relationship. And communication may not even become standard - but “maintaining contact”.

Any frank conversation, when it comes to genuine feelings, when the masks are removed and there is a talk about something that was not spoken about directly, which was avoided to be mentioned - this is a form of crisis communication. He and she can play the roles of friends, husband and wife, a couple in love, while experiencing completely different feelings. An unspoken feeling, a significant figure in this relationship, will still put a lot of tension in their relationship until it is manifested. The severity of the situation is that no one can guarantee what the result will be. Clarity is what we strive for, but it can be destructive clarity.

Most examples of the crisis level can be found in the relationship between men and women. Talk about treason; making decisions about divorce; marriage proposal; pregnancy news and so on. But you can give other examples: a conversation with the boss, followed by dismissal; a crisis of faith and a change in previous, established views; disappointment in a person, or vice versa, gaining faith in him. If we take a scandal and a quarrel, then they may not necessarily be at a crisis level. If scandals are familiar to a family and do not in any way affect the perception of each other, then this is part of everyday, standard communication. Compare an ordinary everyday quarrel with smashing dishes and subsequent violent sex with the state of the father, who found out that his son was a drug addict, and that his wife, knowing this, hid this information from him and even helped his son (out of "pity") with money and etc. This is the real crisis level: it is also the collapsed trust in the son and wife; a crisis of faith in oneself as a father; destruction of the usual and actually illusory picture of family well-being (expressed in the phrase "normal family").

But only by overcoming the crisis level, we can for the first time establish a truly intimate relationship with another person. At a time of crisis, we are not at all concerned with our own image; we express our true feelings and emotions, which are often seriously at odds with the image that has developed in ourselves and in our loved ones. Intimacy is possible precisely with genuine emotions. The crisis opens up access to them.

It is not necessary to present the crisis level of communication as necessarily a catastrophic experience, the destruction of all foundations. But the awkwardness, shame, fear, excitement, embarrassment experienced when talking about things that are truly important to yourself, also indicate a crisis level of communication. You present yourself without a mask, without protective armor.

5. Intimate level of communication

Intimacy is not equal to sexuality, this word means the possibility of maximum openness, frankness and emotionality. Sex can be both formal (prostitution), and a means of maintaining contact ("marital duty"), and a standard form of communication (regular, routine sex), and crisis (sexual abuse; first sexual contact with an emotionally significant person). Sex becomes intimate only when intimacy is established between people outside the bed. The frequent confusion of sexual experiences and intimacy leads to the fact that when passion leaves, then completely strangers find themselves next to each other. According to one man, "After casual sex, I often feel awkward and try to either leave myself, or somehow get rid of a completely alien woman who seemed to be the most desirable and close an hour ago."

Intimacy is sometimes expressed in the fact that we can be quietly silent together. It is not painful to search for topics of conversation, or to feel alienated from each other, if we are silent. And just to feel the presence of a loved one nearby is enough.

Intimacy can only be mutual. It always assumes vulnerability, because revealing himself to another, a person abandons his usual social masks and roles. It is impossible to communicate on an intimate level if one person is ready for self-disclosure and the other is not. This other will close, be afraid of someone else's frankness. And it's hard to blame him for that. Intimacy cannot be maintained all the time - it is too much emotional stress. But, once having experienced intimacy with another person, we, returning to the standard level of communication, can return to it again, and already - without a crisis, since mutual perception has already been changed. The memory of the intimacy once experienced with this person can lead to the fact that, having met after a long time, sometimes even years, we can say "hello" to each other like old friends who have not parted for a long time …