The Overlooked Strength that Builds Better Relationships

If you’ve ever had to talk with a person you’ve met for the first time, chances are, you begin with a question. Maybe the question is about how they know your mutual acquaintance, or how they came to the event you both find yourselves. Maybe (if it’s a date) the question is about their adventures in dating so far.

If the person is a good storyteller, you may lean in and hang onto their every word. At some point, you hope (maybe) that the person will be interested in your answer too. With any luck, the reciprocal questions, answers, and responses keep flowing, and you may have yourselves (fingers crossed!) good chemistry.

Asking questions and listening carefully are social skills. Body language (and the ability to read it) can also tell us if someone is ready to engage. Gathering information like this helps us in our interactions — and the driver behind this interest is curiosity.

Unfortunately, we don’t all get to keep, develop or express that strength, depending on our life experiences. And how often we practice curiosity may tell us something about the stress we’re unconsciously feeling.

Difficult Interactions and Ships in the Night

In my work, I often evaluate the communication style and content that I observe between family members. The concerning cases involve families where communication is one-directional, wholly critical, or completely absent.

I live in a conservative, hierarchical society where children’s responses and questions to adults are often seen as “talking back”, being “difficult”, or “making excuses”. This attitude sadly kills children’s natural curiosity as well as their first instinctive attempts to engage others or ask for help.

These individuals learn, overtly or covertly, that their voices and questions are unwelcome. They may even be told that they’re being rude or troubling others. These children’s parents may think they’re teaching their children manners, but what many of these children learn instead is to shut down curiosity and protect themselves from other people.

When a child’s curiosity and voice are often shushed, mocked, or corrected, what that child may learn is to stop all meaningful communication.

Whenever I meet a “ships in the night” family (psychotherapist Patrick Teahan’s moniker for families that barely interact), I can’t help but wonder if parents of such families ever learned to ask questions and have two-way conversations with their children.

Patterns of Connection vs Patterns of Protection

Humans are social animals and need other people, even if in limited amounts. Unfortunately, some of us may have learned that safety can only be felt when we’re alone (usually after too many negative interactions).

But isolation without end also turns out to put your body into survival mode, as described in this Medium piece, Your Body Thinks Loneliness is a Death Sentence, by Kristie Leong, M.D.

We need safe social connections for the body to feel safe and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn lets us experience the “rest and digest” state and long-term ease, relaxation, and physical health. Without enough rest and safety, our immune system functions are affected, and as someone who’s lived with autoimmune issues since my teens, I can attest that dealing with that sucks.

The current loneliness epidemic has us facing the hard facts: We need social connections for our well-being. But this is hardly easy for those of us who are neurodivergent or who have experienced complex trauma (and the big subset who are both). Our experiences will have taught our nervous systems to prepare for rejection in new social experiences.

Unfortunately, self-protective behavior sits opposite connecting behavior. An activated amygdala, triggered by feeling unsafe, can have us (especially those with relational trauma) behaving as if other people are mortal threats.

We need a bridge to connect with other people again.

I believe curiosity is a good start.

The Challenges of Stress, Anxiety, and Survival Mode

I occasionally meet parents and partners who express zero curiosity in their loved ones’ favorite things. And sometimes I meet parents who speak disparagingly about their child’s interests.

As Gen X, I have trouble grokking Gen A’s attraction to brainrot content, but I’m happy at their enjoyment and that they also know to occasionally touch grass.

Showing curiosity and non-judgmental regard does not demand that I have to like the same things. I show curiosity because I really do want to know what makes another person “tick”.

In a way, curiosity is a way to get us out of our own heads and into another person’s.

This can be hard when stress and anxiety can put us into a state of tunnel vision. This phenomenon has been studied: Our peripheral vision and auditory senses (ie. listening capacity) become constricted due to stress and anxiety. In survival mode, we pay less attention to the environment, and even people, if our sense of danger deems them irrelevant.

Shutting off tunnel vision may involve self-regulation exercises such as breathing, but also, as this page suggests:

We can also try to activate our conscious mind. Tunnel vision is largely due to the emotional brain taking over, so to unblock the senses sometimes we just have to force ourselves to scan the environment. We must ask ourselves with curiosity, not fear: What am I missing? This will help us expand our visual field.

Curiosity gets us to engage our prefrontal cortex again. It is activating the problem-solving, thinking mind.

Nurturing Curiosity

You’re probably already curious, if you’re reading this story. But you might know people who don’t seem to have a curious bone in their body. What’s going on with them? Do they have tunnel vision all the time?

In my practice, I’ve observed that adults (and even a few children) who exhibit the injunction (an unconscious internal command) of “Don’t Be a Child” or “Don’t Look Stupid” learn to kill their own spontaneity and curiosity.

Or, to use the Internal Family Systems therapy model, their inner Managers may have learned that inquiry only invites reprimand. Some individuals may go even further and act as if they know everything and thus be above reproach and shame. They are habitually on guard — in self-protection mode.

Rekindling curiosity in these individuals may not be easy, but I model curiosity by asking them reflective and reflexive questions. Or, when clients and I hit upon an unfamiliar topic, I may go “Let’s find out right now!” and look things up to deepen our discussion.

There’s a joy in discovering new things, or discovering that someone else shares a common interest, or that someone knows a topic well that you’ve been meaning to learn more about. That’s part of connection again.

Whatever information turns up, non-judgmental enthusiasm and openness will invite more sharing and inquiry.

With or without therapy, re-igniting curiosity may include going down internet rabbit holes, visiting the library, and/or finding online or in-person discussion groups for your interests. Humans are social animals; we learn best from other people.

Knowing you’re around “your own kind” and welcomed while you’re still learning just feels good. And extending that grace to others and getting curious about their inner workings without judgment can only bring us better connection.

Janet works as a full-time therapist. She writes and paints in her free time.