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Susie* sat in a chair across from me, crossed her arms, and stared at me defiantly. "I'm going to that party Saturday night. I don't care what you say." Although she was in her early twenties, she looked and sounded like a fourteen year old arguing with her mother. The only thing was, she wasn't disagreeing with her mother or with me. She was arguing with herself.
She had started that day's therapy session telling me that she was confused and upset about her weekend plans. "There's this party that my friends are giving," she said. "I want to go. It should be fun. But...what I really want to do is to stay home, wash my hair, give myself a manicure, and hang out in my sweats and read or watch a movie."
I said that it sounded like she wanted to be able to both—to go to the party and to stay home at the same time. I also said that what she had just said, that what she really wanted to do was stay home, made me wonder if there was a little more weight on that side of the argument. That's when she told me that she was going to the party no matter what I wanted her to do.
Susie has FOMO—fear of missing out. This is the fear that if you don't go to a party or some other social event, you'll miss out on something really important. British newspaper columnist Rosie Boycott calls it a "thoroughly modern malaise." She explains, "Faced with endless options and possibilities, we torment ourselves with the thought that every time we choose one thing over another, we're turning down a myriad other possibilities, shutting the door on what might be something better." She, like many others, blames the problem on technology. And maybe it's true— without the internet, we wouldn't know about everything that we could be doing, if only we had more hours in a day, more days in a week...
However, even though the name is new, the concept is not. Many psychological and emotional difficulties have been explained as an inability to make choices. Long before the internet could even be imagined, Freud hypothesized that obsessional disorders were the result of a person's inability to bear the feeling that once they made a choice all other possibilities were closed to them. And the sudden upsurge in anorexia among teenaged girls in the late 1970's and early 80's was laid by some theorists at the door of the feminist movement. Overwhelmed by all of the new opportunities available to them, it was said, these girls chose to starve themselves into perpetual childhood.
But Susie, like many people with FOMO, was neither obsessional nor suffering from an eating disorder. So where did her fear of missing out something important come from? Why couldn't she stay home and veg out on a Saturday night if that's what she really wanted to do?
According to evolutionary psychologists, we humans are social animals. We need companionship, but we need more than other warm bodies. One of the interesting findings of neuropsychiatry and psychoanalysis in recent years is that we have specific connection needs. For one thing, we crave a sense that other people see us. Peter Fonagy, a major force in attachment theory, says that a child learns to know herself through seeing her reflection on the faces of her parents and caregivers. Heinz Kohut, the founder of a theory called "self psychology," says that "mirroring" is a prerequisite not only to healthy development, but to emotional well being from birth to death.
But here's an interesting part of the need to be seen by others. We want to be seen realistically! Psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin calls it "recognition." This is not about showing off (although it can certainly take that form) but it's about a need to know that someone who we respect, admire, or simply feel close to really knows who we are, and cares about us even with our less than lovable flaws. Sometimes, in fact, when we act badly without necessarily wanting or meaning to, it's the result of an unconscious desire to make sure that someone else can see something that we don't like about ourselves. But that's a subject for another post.
FOMO, then, is not so much being overwhelmed by all the things there are to do, but by a desire to have all aspects of ourselves seen and accepted by others. Susie wanted to go out and party so that she could be reflected back to herself as pretty and fun and charming. She did not want anyone to see her as, as she put it, "a slug" who just wanted to be "lazy and sloppy and cozy." But nothing's simple in our psyches. If she went out and didn't get the positive reinforcement she longed for ("I want to feel like I'm cute and sexy, and I'm afraid that's not going to happen," she said), she would end the evening feeling badly about herself. And if she stayed in, but didn't enjoy herself and no one reflected back to her that it really was good to stay home and veg out that night—she would also end up feeling badly about herself.
By seeing me as the one who didn't want her to go to the party, Susie was trying to get me to reflect that the part of her that wanted to stay home was both good and reasonable. But in the end, as she argued with me she was also talking with the different sides of herself. We spent the session looking at the pros and cons of either decision. I reminded her that it was also only one night, and that there would be other nights when, faced with the same choices, she would go in the other direction. By the end of the session, she had not yet decided. But she was feeling better. As she put it, "I can go, or not, depending on how I'm feeling. But maybe the best idea is not to do either one by myself?"
She had, in fact, found the real answer to FOMO. If what we're looking for is a mirror, and since we really aren't ever great mirrors for ourselves, then the solution is to find someone you trust to help you see yourself. Don't worry. This is not about using them—since I will guarantee you that you'll provide mirroring for them, too. In fact, just by choosing someone to share your conflicts, you've reflected to them that they're a trustworthy human being!
And here's the best news: Being able to mirror and be mirrored by someone else will very likely have far more influence on both your mental health and ultimate happiness than what you actually do tonight.
*names and identifying info have been changed
Teaser image source: http://elitelondon.blogspot.com/2011/02/partying-with-elite.html
