How are you? ... really (update)

This piece over at Richard Cohen is exactly the kind of blog-post that gets me thinking.

For starters it happens so seldom: People asking me how I am, really. I mean mostly people just say, "How are you?" and social skills training has taught me over the years that they are pretty much only emotionally prepared to hear the response, "Fine."

Yesterday evening my nephew called me up to ask if I had been feeling sad all day. I was so surprised with his question that I literally sat down. "Why do you ask?" I said quietly. He replied that he had read through the brevity of my e-mail replies to him during the day and thought that perhaps I was sad. We talked for a long time about our lives and when I hung up the phone I realized how grateful I was to him for knowing me so well and caring enough to find out. If he would have called up and said, "So how are you?" I most probably would have replied, "Oh, just fine, thanks, and you?" Instead, I was able to tell him that I was sad because of a confidential family matter, Mar-Mar's death, thoughts that perhaps the Lyme disease was still niggling at me, anxiety about the new job, and frustration that the sabbatical was drawing to a close. He listened. He is so good at that. We discovered today from one of his clients that he is probably good at listening because his Hebrew name has in its root the meaning: to listen or hear.

I asked T. this morning what he thought about an old friend contacting him after a long time with an e-mail one-liner: “So how are you really?”

T's reply was immediate: "I would think he was in trouble and needed me to ask him that question actually."

For me, I would love it (and do) if a friend would add "really" to the asking of how I am. You see, I don't believe anyone is at all interested in me. My nephew knows this about me. Once when I stayed overnight with him and his family he came to me when I was politely retiring to my room to keep out of their way after dinner, and said, "I wish you wouldn't try and make yourself invisible like this. Come out and be with us." And so, when someone, anyone, asks me how I am, not only do I usually just reply, "Fine," but often forget that I have any news to tell at all. For example, one of the things I have consistently had to work on in therapy is allowing myself to stay for the full fifty minutes or hour that I am paying for. After awhile I become uncomfortable and sure that I must be boring the therapist with all my senseless chatter, and sometimes I get up, say, "Well, that's enough now," and walk out thinking he or she can't stand hearing me another moment. It was a day of celebration for me when I was able to talk with Bob and not even notice that I had gone over my 50 minute session by two minutes!

I need the help, Richard, and so if an old friend would write that one-liner to me: I would feel warm and safe inside, overwhelmed with gratitude that they took the trouble and time to notice me and care enough to want to know, I would smile wide and deep, and tell them all they wanted to know about me.

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Updates:

Richard takes the subject for another "fast lap" here and asks, Wassup?

Mark Daniels wrote about it here.

This morning I received an e-mail in response to this post. It meant a lot to me that someone was willing to share themselves so openly with me. I was given permission to post their response, so I do so, here:

Recently each time I read your blog I cry.  It is the recognition that someone else feels like I do deep down and I  have been trying [to] ignore. I have been trying to ignore much lately.  The many conflicted feelings of anger and love, of compassion for and anger against. Some growing paranoia and much fear, that being in London is all about just now.

For the first time in a long time I wish we could go back to July 7^th and re write history. I am so filled with fears and anxieties that I cannot write now. I feel often quite hopeless. I listen with despair to my [spouse] speak about [their] experiences of living in a Muslim country.  [she/he] sees everything right now in terms of us and them. I feel despair, are we really so polarized? When [she/he] says as [she/he] has many times in the past few weeks, “I came to live here to get away from this,” I think of the Israeli woman and the Afghani man, both refugees from their countries, who came here to feel they could live freely and without fear, both killed in the July 7 bombings.

Though I was somehow consoled that you described how difficult it is for you to stay with an entire counseling session. Mine is the full hour! And I thought of how sometimes I can fill that hour, and other times I want to go. But of course that is my attempt to get away from how I recognize in myself that feeling that nobody is interested in me.

How are you really?  Maybe it is a question that never occurred to me to ask you because in your blog you say how you are, with much honesty about your feelings and about your vulnerability. An honesty that I envy as much as I admire. Because it is often so difficult to say how I really am without having to go to that place which is fearful for me. So thank you for helping me to touch what is fearful.

Comments

[Mark Daniels]

Another good post, Tamar.

I suppose someone could read my response to Richard's original excellent post and think that I disdained the question, "How are you really?" entirely.

Not so. There just seems to be a potential fundamental difference between on the one hand, a person sending that one-sentence question in an email to someone with whom there has been little or no contact for a long time and on the other hand, the sort of thoughtful telephone call made by your nephew.

Furthermore, I've experienced more than a few people who use that question or ones like it as a means of showing themselves insightful and wise rather than to really express concern for others or a desire for deep, meaningful relationships with them.

Does that make sense?

I love your blog and hope that you stick with it for as long as it brings joy and fulfillment to you.

Mark

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Thank you, Tamar, for taking my baton and running another fast lap with it. T.'s response to the one-line email is very much what mine was: the sender is saying, "I'm not really doing that well myself. Please get in touch."

Your own response -- feeling warm and safe -- is so loving and admirable that it's a little beyond me. Or put it this way: the sender and I have enjoyed a long friendship that's been full of mixed feelings and mixed messages. In that context, it wouldn't seem to me that the question was a pure expression of caring concern. Especially when the message is a response to signs that things are going well for me.

It's hard to discuss this without revealing more details than I want to about the person involved, etc. The context is very important. It's because of lack of context, I think, that Mark overemphasized the shallow nature of the question "How are you?" When asked by this friend, the question takes on depths.

But this part of Mark's comment seems very perceptive: "I've experienced more than a few people who use that question or ones like it as a means of showing themselves insightful and wise rather than to really express concern for others or a desire for deep, meaningful relationships with them."

[Tamar]

Yes I agree, Richard. The context of a communication like that is crucial in understanding or knowing what the sender or friend was intending. I ran another lap with your post because it struck a chord in me, reminding me how I often forget to tell people how I am for the reasons mentioned above. For example I remember being amazed when observing people close to me who were shocked or astounded when I separated from my husband. They had never known anything was wrong because all I ever said was, "Oh, just fine, thanks."

Mark,
I didn't think you replied at Richard's site with disdain at all. The whole conversation got me thinking and self-absorbedly navel-gazing again about my in and out of confidence self. That's where I agree with you about Richard's "excellent" posts. He always gets me thinking. Thanks so much for your kind words about my blog. Very much appreciated.

[adriana bliss]

Very interesting post, Tamar. A wonderful connecting piece to RLC's entry. I think the interpretations by everyone who commented all have validity. In the end, I suppose the "real" meaning of the "really" notation depends on the person, the context, the tone. For me, I've heard the phrase before and I've always taken it as "getting caught." In other words, I'm being told that the show I'm putting on isn't working, that the jig is up, that they don't believe me. And I've usually been a little...offended maybe. Perhaps my interpretation is more in line with Mark's take.

[Tamar]

When I read your comment, Adriana, as well as Richard's saying that "it's a little beyond me," I realize that I probably sound a little naive. But of course, as you say, it's all about the context, tone and relationship one has with the person. Interesting that you feel caught!

[Jean]

Warmest hugs and deepest comprehension to you, Tamar, and to my fellow Londoner who emailed you.

[Tamar]

Jean, Thank you.

[adriana bliss]

I don't think you're naive, perhaps some of us out there are just more cynical than you! Also, there's the matter of guilt...indeed I feel caught because generally speaking, to people who might ask, I have been hiding the truth of my well-being.

[Tamar]

Ah yes, and then we all have the choice not to tell what we don't want to or to whom we want to - or not - and when.