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Could You Go a Week Without Asking People, "How Are You?"

What counts as real contact?

Kathleen Smith

Feb 24

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Two young elephants greeting each other. Source: Shutterstock

Friendly reminder that the paperback version of my book True to You drops March 5th! Get yourself to a real bookstore to grab a copy, or think about which friend would love it the most and order them one. See news below on how to get the bonus journal. - K

I laugh at myself when I begin a therapy session by asking a client, “How are you?” Because it pressures people to give a perfunctory answer before we spend the next hour engaging in un-perfunctory conversation.

I wonder if I could go a day without asking anyone, “How are you?” or “How’s it going?” Could I go a week? To invite people, including myself, into real contact? Even if it feels weird.

What could you ask instead? Here are five examples.

Have you had any interesting challenges lately?

I often ask clients, “What would your husband say is his biggest challenge right now? Your mother? Your boss?” How well a person can answer this question about another’s thinking gives you a picture of the kind of contact that is happening in the relationship.

What do you want me to know about what’s going on with you?

This is one of the most neutral questions there is. It’s not trying to drag information out of anybody. It challenges the individual to think about what’s important to them. It keeps the line open in a relationship. For example, a parent could ask their kid, “What do you want me to know about your day?” This is so much less tension-producing than, “Did you have a good day?”

Have you gone on any deep dives lately?

People love being asked about their niche interests. It’s permission to be weird and not be judged. Other versions of this could be, “What’s your most recent Internet rabbit hole?” Or my favorite, for the uber-online friend—“What is the weirdest subreddit you lurk on?” (I’ll tell you mine if you ask me in real life.)

What have you been thinking about today?

What I appreciate about this question is that it’s not focused on feelings. Not that feelings are bad, but perfunctory questions create the expectation that people say they’re fine when they’re not. Which is more about managing your emotions. It’s an invitation to go in any direction.

Don’t start with a question. Answer one of the first four yourself.

Doing your own little weird gesture can be an invitation to the other. I could start a conversation with a friend by saying, “I just taught myself how to solve a Rubik’s cube. Have you been engaging in any unmarketable hobbies lately?”

There’s no harm in asking someone how they’re doing. But pay attention to what’s an invitation to real contact, or what’s as routine as paying the parking meter or locking the front door. Relationships are living things, and we can treat them as such.

One of the reasons people like going to therapy is that they are treated like their thinking, and their challenges, are interesting. Because they are! You don’t need to be a therapist to your partner, or your friends, or the other parents in the school pick-up line. But you can be someone who is handing out invitations for real contact.

Some people will be weirded out. But for most, it is pure oxygen to move past the perfunctory, and towards what Bowen theory calls a person-to-person relationship.

What’s the question you ask when you want to move past, “How’s it going?” and have some real contact in a relationship? I’d love to read some other examples.

Questions for you:

What are the questions you ask people that don’t invite real answers?
Where do you want to try having some real contact?
When do you give people perfunctory answers? What’s something you want people to know about yourself instead?

Similar posts:

There’s a whole chapter on moving past small talk in my book, True to You.
De-Clumping Our Relationships
Connecting Without Anxiously Monitoring (paid subscribers)

News from Kathleen

Reading: After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul. Lots of interesting thinking about what can happen in an organization after the founder dies.

Watching: How to Get to Heaven From Belfast. (From Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee. I am here for all middle-aged Millennial content.) Trying to get through the the new Bridgerton season, but it just makes me want to reread better series. Would love to see Lisa Kleypas’s The Wallflowers or Evie Dunmore’s Oxford suffragettes turned into television.

I went to see Chinese Republicans from the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York last weekend, and it was INCREDIBLE. Go see it if you can.

**BONUS JOURNAL FOR TRUE TO YOU paperback! I’ve created a digital bonus journal to accompany the paperback launch of True to You (March 5). Email me a copy of your receipt and I’ll send it to you.

Email me if you want me to speak to your group or are interested in doing family systems work with me.

Buy my books True to You and Everything Isn’t Terrible for more in-depth stories of people working on their relationships and themselves. If you love them, consider giving them a review on Amazon so other folks can find them. If you haven’t gotten the free digital workbooks for them, email me.