Contact doors

How do you most prefer to be contacted by other people? Through thinking? Through feelings? Through actions? Conversely, which of those methods would you least like to engage with another person by?

Psychiatrist Paul Ware came up with an idea (in 1983) that each of us tends to make our main contact with other people in one of three ways: Thinking, feeling or action.

Whichever one we’re most comfortable with is what he called the ‘open door’. The next door, which he called the ‘target door’, is the area that you could make advances into – providing you felt okay with the initial contact in the open door. Finally, there is the ‘trap door’. This is the one area that we tend to avoid because we’re likely to be uncomfortable with it and out of our depth. That said, the trap door is also the contact that in time would be most beneficial for you to explore, as it is the door to greater relational depth and greater companionship.

Below are some examples of situations that may help to explain Ware’s idea further.

Susan met Barbara for the first time and felt at ease straightaway because Barbara smiled at her and made her feel welcome. Susan would not have liked to be formally introduced to the other people in the room as that act would have made her self-conscious and flustered.

Johnny met Nigel and almost at once got involved in some discussion about why ants don’t have hearts. Johnny likes people who think outside the box. What he doesn’t like is people fussing and making sure he is feeling okay.

Greig met Polly and she invited him to take a tour around the building. Greig relaxed because he doesn’t like being still for very long, nor does he like having to think about questions people ask. He just likes doing things.

Can you say which door (open, target and trap) matches which type of contact (T,F and A) for you? Would it be a worthwhile exercise to go through all the significant people in your life and work out which door matches which contact?