Routine: The Silent Killer
By: Michael Cross, LPC
The school year is in full swing and families are well into well-structured days and routine. This tends to make our lives run a lot more smoothly. Let’s face it, humans need structure and we like routine. We work and sometimes perform better with routine and our bodies even adapt and function more naturally with routine. Structure and routine are necessary in a lot of ways. However, “routine” can lead to us operating on autopilot during school year, can also be a “silent killer” in some ways, for relationships.
Did you know that you are more likely to get into car accident within a five-mile radius of your house than in, let’s say, Dallas’s or Los Angeles’s rush-hour traffic! “How can that be?”, you might ask. It is because of the “autopilot” mode we get into when we are too familiar with our surroundings. We literally check out, are unaware, and drop our attention. Have you ever pulled into your driveway and scared yourself because you couldn’t remember driving the last 3 miles home? Exactly! Your mind went into autopilot and you were thinking of other things and not consciously focused on the vehicles, signs, or roads around you. Now think of being on a major city highway during rush-hour traffic, how heightened is your awareness? How tightly are you gripping the wheel? Right, you are on high alert of everything around you so as not to create or get into a major accident.
So, let’s apply this to relationship with our spouses and children. Have you ever gotten back from a vacation or a small get away and thought, “Wow, I really feel like I connected with my spouse/family on that trip!” Well of course you did! You were in an unfamiliar place with no set routines. Because of that, you were more aware of the people you were with and easily engaged them. At home, especially during the school year, the routines are so concrete that you might not even notice your spouse or your kids coming in the door, much less actually hear their response when you routinely ask, “How was your day?”, as you routinely sit on the sofa with your favorite show on and looking at social media on your phone. Is it is sounding familiar yet? Am I making my point? Routines cause us to subconsciously check out of reality. We function on “low-power” mode and are not really aware of, much less engaged with the ones we love. Therefore, our relationships and intimacy begin to suffer.
Is there anything we can do to prevent suffering in our relationships due to the autopilot mode of routines? Here are some helpful tips to try. First, identify the routines. Start by making an hour by hour log of your day, every day, for a week. Write down where you are, what you are doing, even what words or phrases you say to members of your family at certain times (e.g. like when you/they leave in the morning, come home in the evening, or when going to bed). Find the patterns in your life (e.g. like where and when do you sit down to eat, look at your phone, watch tv, read a book, etc..). Ask your spouse and your kids to do the same. Once identified, try to break the routines by intentionally doing something different like implementing interactive family activities, having dinner at the kitchen table, rearranging the furniture, or even redecorating (our brains make associations with specific stimuli, for example: bed means “sleep”, couch means “veg”, tv means “don’t’ talk to me”, and so on)! To conclude, identify and break the destructive routines that ruin our relationships, be more intentional with your structure at home, find new and creative ways to bring awareness and keep things fresh, try new words and phrases and even times to communicate and interact with each other. Don’t let the silent killer destroy the intimacy and connectedness you can have with the ones you love this year!
Michael Cross, MA, LPC is a clinical member at Transforming Life Counseling Center
