If you care about someone, show them – and put your phone away

IA few years ago I was sitting in a cafe for work when an exhausted looking man and his toddler son walked in. A “One cappuccino and one babyccino please” later, they were sitting at the table next to mine. The boy was a bit snotty and whiny, and I could tell his father was working hard to entertain him, to give him the time and attention he needed. And then I saw the moment when that time and attention ran out. The man lost focus, his hand dropping to his pocket, his tired eyes sliding down to the screen as he pulled out his phone…

And then I saw the scream. I saw it before I heard it, because the very loud scream was preceded by a terrifying silent scream (my own child also screams very powerfully, so I recognize this in retrospect). The father at this point realized that the game was over, put his phone back in his pocket and, defeated, carried his child out of the cafe on one arm, while he steered the empty stroller with his other hand.

Almost everything worth having requires time and attention, and if we want to build a better life, we need to receive more and give more. Of course, we need to spend more time and attention on our loved ones—really talking to each other and listening to each other instead of having conversations while staring at a screen. And of course, we need to spend more time and attention on the things we love to do, whether it’s walking in nature or reading or being creative or playing—a game or an instrument. The problem is that we know we can do these things, but we struggle to do them because we can’t seem to give ourselves—particularly our minds—the time and attention we deserve.

I see it all the time as a psychodynamic psychotherapist: patients experiencing my time, attention and respect, realizing for the first time what they have been denying themselves. Ironically, I often get criticism, especially from people who have not had therapy, that one of the limitations is the time it takes.

Our minds are not microwave meals. If people have suffered their entire lives, if they have carried in their minds and bodies memories of childhood abuse, or if they have spent decades running from anxiety or depression that struck in adolescence, or if they have repeated dysfunctional relationship patterns throughout their adult lives, or if they are stuck, or if they feel burdened at bedtime and want to cry before they open their eyes in the morning, or if they are struggling with adulthood—each of them, each of us, deserves the time and attention necessary to build a better life.

Yes, it can be difficult for many people to find the time, especially those with caring responsibilities and an inadequate support network. Nevertheless, the time this therapy takes is not a limitation; it is one of the most important, truthful, and beautiful things about it.

As a patient in psychoanalysis, I’ve become aware of the extent to which I’ve denied myself this time and attention—and I’m not alone. Many of us go out of our way to distract ourselves with things that don’t really matter, spending our money and time on attention-grabbing devices we carry in our pockets, reading attention-sapping social media “feeds” that are anything but nourishing. We attack and undermine our own ability to pay attention, we waste our own time. Sometimes I use an app called SelfControl to block my access to social media so I can focus on writing; of course, I’m not exercising self-control at all—I’m outsourcing it to this app.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, most recently as a mother who sometimes finds myself looking at my own cell phone more than I’d like. I think I’ve come to understand a little bit about why, like the father in that story, we sometimes fail to give consistent, sustained attention to our loved ones and ourselves. Are you ready?

Because it’s really hard.

It is difficult and painful to really connect with the vulnerable, hungry, needy parts of our children—and even more so with these parts of ourselves. It is emotionally demanding to try to understand and stay with this experience, to allow these feelings to be in our minds, perhaps even to feel overwhelmed by them for a while, to give them a voice and try to put them into words as best we can.

Even though I met this father and child more than a decade ago, even though I never spoke to them, they remain in my mind: a tired, distracted parent, trying his best but always fighting the desire to drift away and turn away from his crying, needy baby on the brink of the abyss, utterly enraged as he watched his father’s time and attention run out. The memory has surfaced from time to time, though I never really asked why until I started writing this column.

But now I see this man and boy inside me. Maybe we all have both the father and the boy in this story, the part that desperately wants time and attention, and the part that can only take so much, that desperately wants to get away.

I can recognize these parts of myself as a patient in psychoanalysis, lying on my psychoanalyst’s couch, nourished by the attention and time she gives me, trying to see and tolerate my own needs, dealing with them one moment and looking away the next.

I’m not there yet. I still catch myself ignoring my own vulnerability by burying myself in my phone at night, scrolling away my feelings. But at least now I know that’s what I’m doing. And this experience has been crucial in developing my own ability to give this kind of precious attention to my patients. It’s hard work, the development of a discipline and an emotional capacity, and it matters. Because without time and attention, all those other things that enhance life and mental health can grow: the ability to listen, to care, to try to understand.