“I’m just not good at staying in touch”

Rather than make excuses, be honest.

Iona Curtius

Iona is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, studying how we can understand truth.

A woman holds her phone up in her hands and looks at it in a slightly vexed way.

David Suarez on Unsplash

This is an article about honesty… but we’ll get to that.

I cannot count the number of times I have heard some variation of the phrase “I’m sorry, I’m just not very good at staying in touch” or “I’m just terrible at texting, sorry”. Usually, such apologies are accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, a helpless smile, sometimes even a hint of smugness. Every time I experience such an interaction, I get a little closer to losing my patience. So, it’s probably safer for everyone if I voice my thoughts in this way, safely tucked away behind a screen.

What’s going on here? I believe it’s quite simple: dishonesty. Now, I don’t wish to unjustly accuse anyone of lying, much less assume ill intent. I’m sure everyone who has ever said that to me has believed it to be true. But, as we will see, that’s part of the problem.

Nobody is naturally ‘good at staying in touch’. Nobody is naturally ‘good’ at texting. These aren’t ‘natural’ forms of communication, or even ‘natural’ relationships. We have the opportunities now to meet and form connections with SO many more people than our forebears did. It is impossible to build, let alone maintain close friendships with everyone we meet. Relationships take work and effort, even with people we see regularly. So, what’s the problem with saying “I’m not very good at texting”? Isn’t it a normal, reasonable thing to say?

The problem is that it is used as an excuse. Just because something is hard or does not come naturally does not mean we can’t do it. We do hard things all the time, if we feel they are important and worth our effort. Doing the dishes doesn’t come naturally to me and I hate doing it. Still, I don’t invite friends over for dinner and then tell them, “Sorry, I’ve made food, but you’ll have to eat it out of the pot because I’m just not very good at doing the dishes”. I value my friends (and my health) so I do the flipping dishes. I’m not as on top of it as other people but I have found ways of helping myself to do a task I ‘naturally’ struggle with.

But back to the matter in hand: I believe that the aforementioned excuses are dishonest because finding texting hard is not actually the reason we don’t stay in touch with some people. What these phrases are hiding is “making the effort to stay in touch with you is not worth my time”. Now, obviously, most of us would never dream of saying anything quite so mean. But if we are honest with ourselves and look at our lives more closely, I do think that’s what it boils down to. Simply putting a nicer sounding lie in front of that does not make it any better.

So how do we get out of this? The answer is simple but not easy: honesty. Be honest. With yourself, above all else. Ask yourself, truly, “Why am I bad at staying in touch?” Are you trying to stay in touch with too many people at once? Is it a time management problem? Is it an attention problem? Do you simply forget someone exists if you don’t see them? It’s ok if that is the case. Just be honest about it. Once you have correctly identified what is making it hard you can decide whether you want to find ways to make those hurdles smaller, or whether you are simply going to be more honest in future. You don’t have to directly tell someone “You aren’t worth my time” (in fact, I’d strongly recommend not doing that). You can say something like “I find that maintaining (close) friendships at distance is particularly hard for me, so I focus on friends who are geographically close to me”. Or something similar. Be honest about the reason you find staying in touch hard.

If you are frustrated with how ‘bad you are at texting’, here are some ideas for how to make it easier on yourself. You might think about adding one or two of these to your routine at the beginning of this new year, perhaps.

If the problem is busyness or object permanence, set reminders and/or have ‘reply-amnesties’ where you reply to the texts from the week/fortnight/month. Some apps allow you to pin chats that are important to the top of your page, so you always see them when you open the app. Or, alternatively, you can archive those you don’t need so there’s less clutter. If the problem is the medium, texting feels impersonal, you don’t like having to be constantly ‘online’, or you live in a cave on a desert island, you can find other ways. Could you arrange (regular) calls? If you’ve recently won the lottery, you could send a letter by snail mail. Whether it’s voice notes, video updates, group calls, online board games, or Netflix watch parties, the possibilities are near endless.

One more thing: set expectations. Rather than simply telling people what you can’t do, tell them what they can expect. “Yes, I would like to stay ‘in touch’, but I prioritise the people who are geographically close to me.” “I won’t frequently reply to texts, but I do a reply amnesty every couple of weeks, so you’ll hear from me then.” If you do want to ‘be better at staying in touch’, let people know how they can help you. Maybe you struggle to initiate conversations but you’re happy to reply. Maybe you’re in a position to be able to say, “You can come visit me any time” or even “I’ll be in touch when I’m in the area and we can get together over a hot beverage or a meal.”

Just BE HONEST. Please.

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Article

Change

Psychology

27 August 2024

5 min read

Recovery came softly

A vision of grace amid an eating disorder.

From Mockingbird

Mockingbird connects the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life.

Under a tree, backlit by a sun set, two people sit in chairs outside and talk.

Harli Marten on Unsplash.

This article, by Lindsay Holifield, first appeared in Mockingbird. Published by kind permission.

I turned sixteen years old in a lavender-walled bedroom on the eating disorder unit at Texas Children’s Hospital. Surrounded by eagle-eyed nurses watching my every move and whirring machines keeping me alive, I quietly transitioned to Sweet Sixteen. The unit’s charge nurse was a gruff woman named Lupe, and despite her job, she did not particularly like children. But it was my birthday, and in an uncharacteristic act of kindness, Lupe offered me a slice of cake. She must have briefly forgotten her surroundings, because I was not a normal teenager. I was a patient on a pediatric eating disorder unit, and I broke down sobbing at the mere thought of such a high-calorie food entering my body.

This was my first birthday in a clinical treatment facility for anorexia, but it would not be the last. After receiving the initial diagnosis of anorexia nervosa as a teenager, the doctor’s pronouncement sounding like a death-knell at the time, I would admit to twenty treatment facilities on separate occasions across a period of fourteen years.

The treatment staff began to greet me knowingly when I would re-admit after only a few months out, as though I was an old friend returning from vacation. “Welcome back, Lindsay,” they would say, as they took my luggage and inserted yet another nasogastric feeding tube. Over time, I began to be labeled “chronic,” and I internalized a belief that I was one of the sufferers who was fated to live the rest of my life under the oppressive weight of this struggle.

I would have to try harder. I would have to pull myself up by my bootstraps and willpower my way into recovery. After each attempt under this approach, I would fall flat on my face.

It seemed that no matter how much motivation I mustered up, this internal drive to self-destruct would not leave me alone. I desperately wanted to wake up each day without having to submit afresh to the hellish existence of self-starvation and running till my lungs felt on the verge of collapse. But I felt chained to this destructive cycle deep into my bones, despite my best intentions.

I was often berated by various treatment providers for not having enough motivation. I didn’t necessarily want to die, but I could not find the strength within me to fight off the voice in my brain that demanded self-destruction. Doctors and mental health clinicians made it clear that if I really wanted to get better, I would have to try harder. I would have to pull myself up by my bootstraps and willpower my way into recovery. After each attempt under this approach, I would fall flat on my face. The despair of my situation began to swallow me whole: there was no way out, because I could not yell at myself enough to make myself well.

Because of the lavish softness I was shown, I began to approach myself with greater softness.

I was twenty-six years old, and I was sitting in a green folding chair in the summer on a farm in Nashville, Tennessee. The woman in the folding chair across from me is decidedly in support of my recovery, but she isn’t yelling at me or giving me a stern lecture. Instead, she is explaining with great care and tenderness how much sense my struggles make in light of my previous life experiences. “Perhaps,” she says gently, “your brain was trying to survive great pain. Perhaps you were simply trying to make the ache go away the best way you knew how.” Her compassionate words break something open within me, and I start weep like a small child. No one has ever approached me with compassion like this; they are all afraid being too soft will simply enable me to further harm my body. But they are wrong. It is precisely this compassion and sense of being witnessed that softens my armored heart.

Recovery did not come overnight, but I can unhesitatingly say that the compassion of a woman on that farm in Nashville is what radically changed the trajectory of my life. Because of the lavish softness I was shown, I began to approach myself with greater softness. The voice of condemnation quieted, and I slowly turned from self-destruction to life.

Do you not hear the gospel ringing out here? My story of recovery is simply a zoomed in image of the grander story, the beautiful truth that makes up the fabric of our existence. Admitting powerlessness to destructive forces of sin and death is important, but the condemnation of the law will not save us. It is the extravagant, one-way grace of God that resurrects the dead.

I have heard similar fears in faith communities that I continually hear in my recovery communities: if we are too extravagant with compassion, we are enabling sin and destructive behaviors. But I am a living testament that compassion is what softens hearts of stone, armored up by self-protection and attempting to earn love through behavioral perfection. I would have died many times over save for the compassion that chased me down and embraced me, and being held in such tender kindness was the only thing that could have changed my fate. I believe this for mental health, yes, but more importantly, I believe this for the rescue of all of humanity. The grace of God is the sole agent of resurrection and change.

To the surprise of those who cling tightly to rigid, white-knuckling versions of recovery, my behavioral change occurred only after I was met with a grace without strings attached. This should not be surprising to Christians, however. Here again, the gospel glaring back at us, that repentance is a response to the kindness of God. This is the God who loved us while we were dead in our sins, while we were powerless to the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Against our behavior-driven moral sensibilities, God offers us grace that is a free gift, compassion in its fullest expression, and it is the only thing that will bring renewal and healing to the inhabitants of this desperately aching world: minds, hearts, and bodies included.