Stop Processing Your Relationships Through Pixels
What Happens When Conflict Has No Sensory Anchor
How many of your most charged conversations are happening on a screen?
How often are you discussing things that matter to you via text, email, or social media?
And how is that communication strategy impacting your relationships?
Your felt sense of safety?
Belonging?
Last year, I reposted another person’s social media post that I thought was well written. The only thing I wrote on that share was: “well written.” Unfortunately, because the content itself was high-voltage, a handful of my social media connections made assumptions about what “well written” meant. They were triggered—meaning was made.
I, in turn, felt misunderstood and reacted defensively. And off to the races we were—in a heap of hurt, blame, and disconnection.
It was a messy and painful lesson. Not because we disagreed—but because none of us were actually in the room with each other.
It was a reminder for me that while conflict and healthy discourse can enrich relationships and facilitate integrated perspectives, broaching controversial topics online—especially in high-conflict, algorithm-controlled platforms like Facebook—is, at best, a lost cause.
On screen, identity becomes entangled while curiosity is sacrificed: the objective is to be right and certain. In Relational Life Therapy (RLT) we know that certainty is the enemy of relational expansion.
Social media spaces feed off division, disconnection, and dehumanization—a stark contrast to my personal values of intimacy, responsibility, and a spiritual belief in Oneness.
The ability to participate in deep debate and controversial learning while holding care for another is a relational skill that requires curiosity, connectedness, and courage.
Passionate discourse that preserves relationality recognizes that I am not my opinions or beliefs, and neither is the other.
Differing perspectives are a requirement for relational expansion. If my opinions and beliefs mimicked everyone else’s, then instead of creative evolution, I would exist in a stagnant echo chamber of plain ol’ sameness.
Over the years, I’ve participated in passionate living-room debates covering a range of controversial subjects—without losing respect for the human on the other side of the conversation. We meet each other, as Africa Brooke says in The Third Perspective,
“in the space where we can hold opposing truths without collapsing into identity.”
I believe the reason that this is possible is because we are experiencing each other through our senses.
Rowing Out Our Differences
I can recall a four-hour canoe trip that began with: “I got the COVID shot.”
My heart sank hearing those five words, because that was not a choice I could get behind.
And so, with deep love and respect for each other, we rowed it out. With each paddle, we debated—both holding each other’s reasoning respectfully, seeking to understand, without needing to convince. We had an expansive conversation of hearts and minds, because we didn’t make the conflict about our identities.
We were two humans, paddling
up the Indian Arm
hearing the salt water churn
beneath oars, the wind
whispering the truth of experience
from mouth to ears, turning to face
each other, lighted
eyes, with the sun’s rays
warming our skin, holding
a shared presence, even though
I don’t agree with you.
We harnessed human presence—via all of our senses—to explore polarization while remaining connected.
We met in the space between, where both perspectives exist, without it meaning something about us or our friendship.
Terry Real, who brought RLT to the world, says that you can either be right or you can be connected. But you can’t be both.
Despite vastly differing opinions—be it on this particular canoe ride or various living-room debates—my personal experience has been a strengthening of connection through conflict.
The catch? The situation needs the senses.
Situations Are Not Relational Connections.
Words on a screen are nothing more than a situation. They are not present-moment connection.
When there is a lack of:
seeing (I can see you),
hearing (I can hear you),
feeling (I can touch you),
then…
you are not engaging with another; you are engaging with your imagination.
If this is true—if texting, emailing, and social media comments are but a collusion with your own imagination, what does this say about your connectedness, your sense of authentic belonging?
Texting, emails, social media posts–even articles like this one–are not relationship.
They are not connection.
They are simply words—a situation.
A situation is what is, before our imaginations run wild with it.
Every situation is neutral, for the briefest of moments, before being eroticized by imagination.
We take a text, and with the power of our imagination, we make it more.
Our protective parts that manage our lives eroticize what is by adding story to situation.
And after story, comes feelings; feelings move us.
In the situation of a text, I slam eros into it to make it come alive.
To make it about me.
So that I can do something with it.
The stories and feelings I project onto words on a screen are all make-believe.
When we read words—just like when we read a fiction novel—we require the use of our imagination to fill in what is absent.
So what is absent in the situation of a social media thread, email, or a text message? And what’s significant about this absence?
The Three Missing Channels
VISUAL
When I can’t see them, I make-believe what the writer looks like, as I read their words.
What are they doing?
What is their body language like?
What facial expressions are they making?
Are they crossing their arms, puffing out their chest, pacing back and forth, rolling their eyes?
When you read a social media comment, notice how quickly your nervous system decides who the other person is—without ever seeing them.
AUDITORIAL
When I can’t hear them, I make-believe what the writer sounds like as I read their words.
What tone of voice are they using?
How loud are they speaking?
Are they being sarcastic, playful, practical, direct, argumentative, curious?
Polyvagal Theory shows us that tone (prosody) carries safety or threat faster than words ever could. When tone is absent, the nervous system doesn’t relax—it guesses.
SENSUAL
When I can’t feel them, I make-believe what the writer feels like as I read their words.
Are they gently holding my hand?
Offering a touch of compassion?
Punching me in the gut?
What does your body feel when you read certain messages—before you even know what you think?
Imagination To The Rescue?
In the absence of vital sensory information, I employ my imagination because my primal being needs to assess my safety.
Curiosity, calm, compassion - these essential qualities of our Wise Adult Self (the One within who cares about relationality) - require enough information to keep ourselves regulated and to sustain connectedness.
Text communication removes the very data that makes it possible for our Wise Adult to stay present to the conversation.
When there is an absence of vital information, I must make it up. Missing information is not safe. I must complete the story.
How do I make it up?
By accessing the stories, beliefs, and experiences from my memory.
And we all know how reliable memory is! Every time you remember a memory, it alters.
Why?
Because you are using your imagination for recall. And as time passes and you accumulate more experiences—evolving your subjective beliefs and stories—you apply the impact of time experienced onto the memory.
Each recall is a re-write, not a retrieval. Memory is updated with present-day emotion and meaning every time it’s accessed.
“The brain does not erase emotional learning—it revises it.” — Bruce Ecker
How many of your current arguments are actually with a memory—not the person in front of you?
Even now, as you read the words I’ve typed, notice how you are imagining me.
What do I look like? Sound like? Feel like to you?
What are you making up about who I am in relation to you?
What past relationship might your nervous system think you’re in right now?
Perhaps you are reinforcing your previous impression of me, projecting your own fears or pains onto me, or gathering proof about why I am wrong or right so that you can decide where to place yourself in relation to me—so you know what to do.
In Relational Life Therapy, this is the moment where being right has the potential to replace being connected.
In the absence of certain sensory input, our nervous systems might interpret the situation as dangerous, prompting our adaptive child parts to take the lead. And our adaptive child parts care less about connection than they do about keeping us safe.
Text is the perfect habitat for this anti-relational shift.
You cannot build connection sans sensory contact.
Nor can you process pain, be understood, or experience authentic belonging, if you are projecting your imagination onto pixelated situations.
So if you’re feeling disconnected or stuck and you want a different relational outcome, you must be willing to choose a different relational behavior.
If your heart is longing for real connection—get off the texts and social media comments and into the homes of the people you love. And at the very least, send a voice message.
Your voice carries the love that text will never touch—the sacred place between You and I, where presence and real connection resides.