Only Connect
Frances Simpson
As a young person reading E.M.Forster’s Howard’s End, I was struck by its epigraph: “Only Connect”, with its implied moral directive to be in connection with the self and others above all else. As a way of being, it seemed to make sense to me, and has probably led to my current choice of professions – as a teacher and a psychotherapist. In light of the pandemic and the impact that this has had on our lives and work, I wanted to explore the concepts of connection and disconnection in the current climate of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
It is a widely held truism that the power of human connection is fundamental to survival, from our earliest attachments onwards. As we know from attachment theory, the child develops behaviours that will keep them in contact with the caregiver as a means to survive; the outcome of this impacts the individual’s way of being in the world for the rest of their life. Where the caregiver was unable to provide the secure base required for the child to feel safe in the world, the child develops fears around connection that can lead to anxious or avoidant behaviours. With this awareness, the missive “Only Connect” becomes less self-evident. How do I connect to others safely when my experiences of connection have been unpredictable and even frightening?
For those of us who work with helping people, this paradox is at the heart of the work. For the individual who has cut off from themselves and others there is a desperate need for connection in order to heal. But how to trust that connection when their earliest experiences have been of pain in connection? To be self-reliant and distrusting of others made absolute sense to the child that was not supported by caring adults, and this creative adjustment needs to be honoured. So many of us have needed to make such creative adjustments in order to mitigate against the fear of relational contact, a fact that has only been emphasised during the last year during the Covid-19 pandemic.
One element of the pandemic has been its role in creating a sense of disconnection from others. As we were placed into lockdowns, which isolated us from our friends, families, colleagues; the rising anxieties around contact for fear of spreading the virus – all of these contributed to a decrease in connection with others. For many people, this will have reinforced earlier issues around connection. The individual who has worked towards an earned secure attachment in adulthood, following an insecurely attached childhood, becomes disconnected and regressed in the absence of these supportive connections. For individuals with a lack of object constancy, the need to hold people in mind when it is not possible to see them increases the sense of isolation and disconnect.
For many of us the use of videoconferencing software such as Zoom and Teams has provided an alternative means of connection, allowing us to create virtual spaces for connection. Like many therapists, I have tried to create a virtual space for the client to feel safe enough to connect and stay in relational contact. Whilst this has been an invaluable tool in the absence of face to face contact, I am left wondering about the paradoxical nature of a virtual perceived ‘shared space’ whilst possibly being in reality all alone. Does this psychologically exacerbate the sense of being alone, isolated and fundamentally disconnected for some people?
Connection is essential to our wellbeing, and for many of us it is not always easy. Throughout the pandemic, our opportunities for connection have been significantly reduced, and this has had a detrimental effect on the wellbeing of so many. Our work now is to place connectivity at the heart of all that we do, both as a means of helping those who have experienced the disconnectedness of the pandemic and as a means of addressing the issues that arise as a result of not feeling connected to the self or others. In light of the current climate, Forster’s words have never been more poignant: “Only Connect”. Never have we needed it more.
