LIFE | SELF IMPROVEMENT | EDUCATION
How I learned to listen. I mean really listen
Have you ever met someone who knows how to listen? I mean really listen?
The kind of person who listens to you as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist anymore? The kind of person who sees into your very soul and draws out your deepest, darkest secrets, but doesn’t dismiss or disapprove, criticize or castigate?
I’ve met one person like that in my life.
And she taught me that everyone can learn to listen like her.
If you read my last story, you know that I like to listen. As a bartender, I learned how to get customers to open up. (Alcohol helped.) In journalism school, I learned how to ask questions. (Put a microphone in front of anyone and they’ll feel compelled to answer.) But it wasn’t until I studied counselling that I learned how to really listen.
After quitting my career, I enrolled in a counselling program at a community college. The instructor of the introductory course was a woman with flaming red hair and piercing blue eyes. I’ll call her Sarah. Sarah was soft-spoken and tilted her head when she talked, and when she looked at you, she really looked at you.
One class, she asked for a volunteer to demonstrate some of the skills we were learning. I put my hand up. She had me sit in a chair facing her and aimed those eyes at me. Clear, blue, deep as the ocean. She asked me a question (I can’t remember what) and I answered. Somewhat sarcastically, as usual. She tilted her head, and the ocean in her eyes surged, tsunami-like.
“You’ve never felt like you belonged, have you?” she said.
It took all of my self-control not to burst into tears right then and there.
One question. She’d asked me one question. And just like that, she knew my deepest, darkest secret.
What Sarah taught us changed how I listened forever. But to give credit where credit was due, the techniques she taught us weren’t hers. (Though she was very, very good at employing them.)
The techniques were invented by the father of modern psychology. No, not Sigmund Freud, but an intelligent, compassionate, and humble man named Carl Rogers.
Rogers developed a method called client-centred therapy, because, well, that’s exactly what it was. As opposed to psychologists like Freud who considered themselves the experts on the patient, Rogers realized there was nobody who knew more about the patient… than the patient. He published his method in a book called Client-Centered Therapy in 1951, and it caused a revolution in the way psychologists treat people.
For client-centred therapy to work, the therapist needs to exhibit three qualities:
1. Congruence
The therapist must be their genuine self. This allows the client to interact with the therapist as they truly are.
2. Unconditional positive regard
The therapist must truly care for the client and remain non-judgmental, which means the therapist must consider the client as separate from their actions.
3. Empathy
The therapist must understand what the client is feeling, and be able to feel as if they were the client — while remaining aware of their separateness.
Sarah taught us the skills we’d need to build those qualities in ourselves.
And as the course progressed, and I learned those skills, I began to understand how she saw into my soul.
So how’d she do it?
1. Attending
Sarah’s eyes were focused on me. Her arms and legs were uncrossed, and she was leaning slightly towards me. She was giving me her full, undivided attention.
2. Silence
After she asked her question, she fell quiet. While I spoke, she didn’t make a sound. And after I’d answered, she let the silence linger to see if I had anything more to say.
3. Reflecting and paraphrasing
By attending to me and remaining silent, Sarah showed that she was truly listening to me. And when she took what I said, put it into her own words (paraphrasing), and said it back to me (reflecting), it showed me that she understood exactly what I was saying.
4. Using questions
But what she said wasn’t a statement. It was a question and, importantly, it wasn’t a leading question. She wasn’t pretending to be an expert on me. She was asking me (the real expert on me) if her understanding of what I said was correct. Which it was. Exactly.
That was it. That’s all it took to cause my carefully constructed facade to crumble. She’d seen me. And she didn’t judge me or downplay my emotions or offer unwanted advice.
She’d listened to me — truly listened — and put my worst fear into words.
And suddenly, it didn’t seem so scary any more.
Who do you know who really knows how to listen? I’d love to read about them. Share in the comments or tag me in your own story!
