One of those days when meetings and social plans come together, you’ve met for lunch after work, and then you have another commitment and there’s no time to spend at home; There are those who just want to disappear and remain silent. To name this feeling of exhaustion, the term “social battery” has been appearing on social networks for some time.
“When we talk about the ‘social battery’ we are referring, metaphorically, to the energy we have available to interact with others. Just like the physical battery, the idea in this case is that it is ‘charged’ and ‘discharged’ depending on our experiences, our context, our mood, the type of interactions and the moment of life, among other factors,” explains Luz María Peña, health psychologist at the Center for Psychology, who explains that the disease can in no way be diagnosed clinically.
“We can notice that our social battery is low when we feel saturated with social stimuli, for example when it is difficult to maintain conversations, we feel more irritable or disconnected or we simply feel alone,” Peña explains. He explains: “This does not necessarily mean that we have a problem or that there is something wrong with us, but rather it is a signal from our body that tells us that we need space to recover or rebalance our social and personal demands.”
Interactions that have the opposite effect
The expert points out that we can also experience it in the opposite way: “There are interactions that can recharge the battery, especially when we feel comfortable, understood or safe. In these cases, social contact can be useful. We want to continue talking, share more and prolong the interaction.” “Ultimately, it’s not just how much we socialize, but also how we do it and with whom we do it,” says the psychologist.
While it’s true that introverted people tend to spend more energy on social interactions, Peña emphasizes that this concept goes beyond a personality trait. “The context, the emotional state, the demands of the environment or the type of interactions influence us much more than we think,” he explains. “Even a very social person can notice his battery being drained if he is experiencing a moment of overload in any area of his life: work, family, social, individual, etc.”
Therefore, instead of talking about personalities, the expert recommends “thinking about the contexts that can be considered more energizing or depleting, depending on the quality of interaction and other influencing factors.”
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