I was recently teaching a week with poet and author Mark Nepo on friendship. I took pages of notes and had dozens of ideas and inspirations about the practice of friendship from Mark’s deep soulful teachings. One thing in particular I wanted to share that caught my attention. At one point Mark started to talk about the idea of ‘relational energy.’
This reminded me of a couple of bits of research I had read on Israeli Judges and a study by Ben-Gurion University and Columbia University, showing that fatigue negatively influenced the rulings of judges sitting on parole hearings. I began to wonder if there was similar research for friendship. Did we have, as Mark suggested, some kind of finite reserve of relational energy?
Reading around I found the idea of a concept known as the ‘social battery.’ Apparently, we all fall along an introversion / extroversion spectrum. But despite extroverts being seemingly more able to socialize without cost, ultimately we all find social time draining. Friending takes energy. Expending energy is tiring.
How we expend our friending energy is important. As Mark said ‘social media is like a virtual colosseum designed to drain us.’ If we expend relational energy, we need to do so in a way that makes a relational connection or we don’t get the return on our energetic investment.
It turns out there are a number of drains for our social battery. The work I found on the theme of social battery seemed to be more anecdotal than research based. A useful metaphor for people to understand how they were feeling. Some medical journals referred to the term but across articles there was a surprising consensus about what drains our social batteries… Obviously, if you are stressed or depressed, your reserves are likely to be much leaner. Neurodiversity also impacts how difficult or stressful socializing can be for people.
When she was younger, one of my family members literally had to count the words people said to her to ensure their sentences used an even number of words. If their sentences weren’t even, she would have to add a word to even them out. This made conversation an exhausting exercise for her in counting rather than listening. She didn’t like being around people.
But also who we hang out with can be draining. Intense people. Can be very draining. Negativity. Draining. Feeling socially excluded is similarly draining. I spend whole weeks facilitating groups. All week long, holding people, their energies, listening to them intently. Initially I found the experience so utterly exhausting that I needed to hide away for two days after a teaching week to recover myself. Big groups are draining. Social media, the crazy news cycle, work stressors – especially power imbalances at work and at home have all been identified as drains.
As I think about how I friend, I have seen times when my social battery gets completely wiped out. I am pretty extroverted and often don’t anticipate this. But when I drain I find it hard to engage. It turns out there are a number of common recharge strategies for our social batteries. Playing, listening to music, being in nature, being creative. Essentially we recharge our social batteries by being in an awe state, getting into our bodies. Here is something interesting. Being with our friends recharges our social battery as well.
I have a sense that mindset once again is a critical factor when it comes to our friending energy and our social battery. In my experience, my own mindset going into an event, a gathering or even a conversation determines how quickly I get run down. How aware are you of your own social battery size? Are you able to quickly recognize the drains and do you have a stock of practices to recharge yourself?
-Jeff
Jeff Hamaoui is a co-founder and partner of MEA and Regen Communities, an entrepreneur, sage, wit, and poet. He’s developing a book and thought leadership on the topic of adult friendship.