I was thinking about this while standing in line at the grocery store today... The clerk would ask each person how they were. I was wondering how she would react if I actually told her how I was. We have a pat answer every time anyone asks the question. "Fine." "Good." " Doing well."
Most of the time it's a lie, so why even go there? The person asking the question doesn't really want a truthful answer anyway.
If I say: " life sucks right now and I can hardly get out of bed." How do you think they're going to react? Probably just with a little nervous laugh and ignore the reality.
Years ago there was a book called "What do you say after you say 'Hello?'" by psychologist Eric Berne.
Using transactional analysis (
Transactional analysis - Wikipedia ) , he explained patterns in interpersonal communications as being sets of ritualized interactions.
The greeting exchange is a socially agreed-upon ritual...that is, a set of rules...to provide any more than a word or two in response to a stranger or acquaintance is to violate the socially-agreed format.
The more intimate the participants are, the more information one can provide without violating the transactional rules...
to quote wikipedia:
Overview
TA (Transactional Analysis) is not only post-
Freudian, but, according to its founder's wishes, consciously extra-Freudian. That is to say that, while it has its roots in
psychoanalysis, since Berne was a psychoanalytically-trained
psychiatrist, it was designed as a dissenting branch of psychoanalysis in that it put its emphasis on transactional rather than "psycho-" analysis.
With its focus on transactions, TA shifted the attention from internal psychological dynamics to the dynamics contained in people's
interactions. Rather than believing that increasing awareness of the contents of unconsciously held ideas was the therapeutic path, TA concentrated on the content of people's interactions with each other. Changing these interactions was TA's path to solving emotional problems.
TA also differs from Freudian analysis in explaining that an individual's final emotional state is the result of
inner dialogue between different parts of the psyche, as opposed to the Freudian hypothesis that imagery is the overriding determinant of inner emotional state. (For example, depression may be due to ongoing critical verbal messages from the inner Parent to the inner Child.) Berne believed that it is relatively easy to identify these inner dialogues and that the ability to do so is parentally suppressed in early childhood.
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