7 Ways You Are Not Listening

Just understand and listen, then speak from empathy

Understand their experience, not just their words or the story itself

One person’s experience of something might be different than yours

Or even after you finish saying the problem

If you ALREADY have an answer to my problem, then you weren’t listening to me, you were thinking about a solution

Problem solving is done with someone, not for them.

Answers can come when they’re asked for or maybe after listening and truly understanding the problem

Major dividing line for parents and kids

More interest in what you have to say

Sympathetic arousal, lack of patience

You might think this is conveying a message of understanding, but it’s just talking over me

If you think you know what I’m going to say, you aren’t listening to MY words, you are listening to your own thoughts about my words

As we mentioned before, this is sympathetic arousal and lack of patience

Then you are caught up in your own thoughts and state

What you have to say is more important

Again, sympathetic arousal

Another technique that might seem like “understanding” but it’s actually more like comparing

You can empathize without having experienced it yourself (regardless of whether you have a similar experience or not)

Shifts the focus away from my needs

Can be read as a cue of danger: (its a potential rupture that has a story that follows about the self or other person)

“Maybe they don’t want to hear what I have to say…”

“Maybe I’m boring…”

We can commiserate about similar experiences as a method of connecting/relating later, when I’m back in my own Safe & Social state

This was a theme with the Bad Therapy Stories.

To accept my gratitude is to HEAR me, to be connected, to feel understood

To refuse it is to negate my feelings of gratitude.

It’s a rupture. It’s a misattunement.