Text Messaging and its Poverty to Convey Whole Messages

Text messaging, also know as SMS-ing, has revolutionised the social world in useful and not-so-useful ways. 

On the one hand, texting is a form of telepathy, allowing the owner of a mobile/cell phone to instant influence on the thoughts of someone who may be as close as the next room, or someone as far away as a different continent. It allows us to plan our social lives, notify us of important matters in a very short space of time and to spread information quickly and efficiently.  However, texting is not suitable for sharing emotional information, or communicating who we truly are, in most cases. 

This is because communication is a multilayered process which is partly dependent on a relationship.  Most people understand communication using a conduit model.  To explain, they see communication as a simple coding and decoding process, equated with information exchange.  Often, the relationship between two people is negated in this process.  And everyone knows that relationships are complex things.  When we communicate we are not only exchanging information and thoughts.  We also communicate emotional information which is conveyed through voice, gesture and facial expression.  These elements add to our communication attempts In ways that conveys a deeper level of information.  

Unfortunately, the nature of texting does not allow for easy and efficient communication of emotions and nuances of feeling.  Although it is very suited to conveying thoughts but it is not very good at conveying unconscious elements, which may accompany our thoughts.  When we speak our voices can be monotonous or we could have a smiling voice, gentle voice, angry voice, a doubtful voice or a worried voice.  Although smiley use may convey part of this information, they are very blunt instruments when it comes to expressing how we feel about what we think.  There are some obvious consequences to this problem.

Firstly, sometimes people say things in a humorous way meaning to say a joke, but a joke may fall flat when the emotions of the voice and in the face and gesture are unexpressed.  People use jokes when emotions are charged to deflate a difficult interaction.  But jokes can seem sarcastic and lead to further charging.  Therefore, arguments and disagreements can be poorly conducted using the medium of text. The use of a smiley allows us to convey part of our conscious feelings but do not facilitate the unconscious thoughts and processes available in face-to-face communication.  Accordingly, communication can fall flat.  I know some people who have broken relationships because of this problem.  It is always better to communicate face-to-face.  Texts ate better used to convey factual information or very basic conversation.  Certainly, lovers should only use texting to convey place time and date information.  Even the use of "xxx" or "❤" can be misconstrued and loaded, because these symbols arrive cold onto the receiver's screen, unaccompanied by the nuances of the unconscious mind that modulate them and make them truly meaningful.

Then there is the problem of time. Admittedly it is mostly a thrill to receive a text.  I love receiving them.  The problem is, people send texts during a break or when they have free time to people who might be on the go, or engaged in a task that requires their full attention; or they may be asleep; or their phone has discharged; or  they may be working out; or engaged in any number of activities.  That means they cannot reply immediately, and that timing mismatch could cause the sender to worry that they may have been dismissed.  That is because silence carries no information, and the sender is then uncertain as to the cause of a non response and may then engage in negative story-telling to themselves in the absence of feedback.

Related to this, is the issue of intrusiveness.  Most people, especially introverts, need time to recover from social interactions, and this has always been achieved by saying "good-bye", "catch ya later", "until we meet again".  Pauses between friends and lovers allow for each to recover, experience their own lives, and subsequently have news to share when they next encounter each other.  It also allows sensitivity to each to be reset and for missing and longing to be activated.  However, texting could interfere with this process and create a sort of familiarity which could, in some cases, lead to contempt.  We all need some privacy, now and again.

And of course, never forget the ever-present danger of sending a text to the wrong person!  Examples are legion on the net, and some can be quite funny!

I have a hierarchy of communication media starting with the most effective to the least effective:

(A)  Face-to-face

(B)  video-conferencing

(C) telephone

(D) Letter writing on paper

(E) E-mail

(F)  Texting/SMS 

Interestingly, the media towards the top of the list require more commitment and energy than  those towards the bottom.  When communicating with another person or persons, it is always important to consider which of the communication media is best suited and most efficient to convey your message clearly and effectively.  

Finally,  I would ask you to seriously consider if it is worth the trouble arguing or settling disputes in the medium of text.  

A critique of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), is a type of psychotherapy in which the therapist helps the client to idientify their distorted thoughts, evaluate how these thoughts impact on the individual's life, and then helps the individual make changes to their behaviours by challenging their thought patterns.  This is a laudable goal and is a method of psychotherapy that has proven success and for this reason, medical insurance is likely to cover it as part of a medical plan.  Being a skeptic myself, I believe that medical insurances would cover this kind of therapy because it is usually completed in about ten sessions.  People's behaviours change, and they seem to cope better with their lives.  This stands in opposition to other forms of psychotherapy which take much longer.  For example, integrative psychotherapy might involve years of therapy, as might psychodynamic psychotherapy and many of the more traditional forms of therapy.  This isn't good news for health insurers, because it does not satisfy their needs for quick, medical types of treatments for problems such as depression, anxiety, phobias and various types of neuroses.  It kind of fits into a neat model of healing in which a specific cause has a specific effect on the individual; and if this cause can be identified and rooted out, then a cure can be found.  This presupposes a very mechanistic understanding of the human mind.  Don't get me wrong, I am not against CBT at all.  In fact, it has helped me a great deal at times. But I am nearly certain that it is actually the positive relationship between the therapist and the client that actually promotes healing; or at least allows the client to actually take the content of the therapy half-way seriously.
What I find fascinating about psychotherapy in general is that there are hundreds of flavours of it, and when they do efficacy studies on these hundreds of therapies, they all seem to work, regardless of the model of intervention.  It is astounding that they all seem to have a positive impact on the individual who attends for them.  Yet each therapy will inevitably doggedly insists that its own particular theory  or brand of approach is the causative agent in the healing process.  But if you look at what is common to all these verbal psychotherapies, you will see that it is in fact a relationship with a sanctioned healer.  In order to heal, people need a positive relationship with someone.  And in my opinion, that means the following:
(a) someone who will give the individual their full attention
(b) someone who provide the client with positive social signals (such as listening)
(c) someone who will validate the client's experience of suffering, the client's thoughts, the client's feelings
(d) someone who expresses belief in the client's goodness

and does all of these things in a manner which is believable to the client.   This is strengthened if the therapist has a high social ranking, such as a title like Dr. or Prof.

Although I do believe that working with irrational thoughts with a client may be useful, the therapist/clinician is invariably telling the client: "there is something wrong in your thinking; you need to think in this correct, rational way."  I don't think this is really possible unless underlying relational issues are tackled.  If the therapist is stern, non-emotional and acts as a teacher, giving these rational thoughts to the client, they will not be taken up.  If the therapist has the qualities I have mentioned above, then the client might pay attention to the method and get better, regardless of the new thought patterns.