How Curiosity Can Improve Your Mental Health
Curiosity has a way of opening us up, both to ourselves and the world.
One of the main things I’ve learned in my own experiences of therapy and now as a therapist is the importance of curiosity. I hear the refrain of my counseling professors: “Be curious!” A simple command, but its effects are deep, wide, and complex.
What Do You mean?
Here’s a good way to start being curious: don’t assume you know what someone means when they describe their experience. What they mean and what you mean by a word could be entirely different.
For example, take the word “home.” For one person, “home” might conjure the image of a childhood house in a specific location with its many rooms and features. For another person who moved frequently, “home” might not be a building but a sense of belonging—the family they grew up with, a sense of safety among people who were present in constant change. For yet another, “home” might be a negative, scary, or angering image. One of my favorite bands sings, “I never thought about love when I thought about home.” Home for many was anything but welcoming, peaceful, or safe.
By understanding what someone means by a word, we gain a deeper understanding of what makes up that person’s worldview—we see with greater clarity what it’s like to “be them.”
Curiosity and David Foster Wallace
The late author David Foster Wallace portrayed a form of curiosity in a moving commencement address. In it, Wallace makes a case for compassionate living in what he calls the “boredom, routine, and petty frustration” of modern life. He puts the listener in the position of a tired, overworked, unfilled office worker stuck in rush-hour traffic and then in line at the grocery store.
These moments of fatigue and irritation tend to bring out the worst (and least curiosity) in us. In the frustration of the poorly-lit grocery store or bumper-to-bumper traffic, Wallace says it will be easy to think we know exactly what’s happening in the world. We “know” the person at the register was unpleasant because they are lazy and don’t care about their job or anyone else. The agitated customer in front of us is the biggest self-entitled jerk of all time. That crazy driver who cut us off in traffic meant it personally—directly for me because they think they are better than me. In states of exhaustion, hunger, or a general “bad mood,” we are quick to think we know exactly what’s going on in the hearts, minds, and circumstances around us. But that’s certainly not the case.
To combat this soul-killing thinking, Wallace beckons us to think in new and creative ways—or to employ curiosity. He asks us to think things like, maybe that unfriendly cashier is exhausted from working all night at a second job to earn enough money for rent. Maybe the “jerk” in front of me in line is actually insecure and scared in ways he doesn’t even know, longing for someone to think he’s “enough.” Maybe the crazy driver is getting his pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver their first child… All these hypotheticals are almost guaranteed not to be accurate, but showing curiosity reminds us that every person’s story is complex, each person experiences their own form of suffering, and that compassion is lighter on our hearts than anger.
Curiosity Leads to Understanding
When we are curious, we build out our internal experience. We learn more about what’s going on inside of us, giving us the potential to interact with it in new ways.
Let’s say I feel slighted and hurt by something a coworker said in passing. Here curiosity might ask a few questions about the other person: Did they mean what I think they meant? Are there any other ways to take what they said? Are they trying to be hurtful? Even if they are trying to be hurtful, how might that say more about them than me?
Additionally, curiosity gives us a lot of good questions to ask ourselves. Why is it that this particular comment hurt? Why can I cast aside other hurtful comments but this one sticks with me? What feelings did the comment bring up in me? How might those feelings help me understand how I view myself, right or wrong?
With some curiosity, we see the myriad of thoughts and feelings going on within us.
The Healing Effect of Curiosity
There’s something inherently therapeutic about someone else trying to understand our experience. It’s fundamental to healthy relationships. Curiosity about ourselves and others brings into focus those emotions and self-concepts in us that lurk beneath the surface. Add to this compassion, and you have the effect of being known deeply while the listener communicates, through words or just mere presence, “I am still here, and you are accepted.”
Be curious! It might just heal you and the relationships you are in.
