Wherever there’s pain, there’s an opportunity to listen
I wrote the column that was supposed to run today last week.
It was about how listening is powerful, and as I’ve been working on interpersonal listening, it’s made me reflect on ways to simultaneously grow more adept at listening within.
I hope that article will run soon, but for now I’d like to switch gears. There’s more to say about listening to each other.
I don’t have all the answers on this, let me get that out from the start. But I have spent recent months studying the art of listening. I’ve been reading and practicing, and have been increasingly aware of its power to disarm and even heal.
As a white woman, I see the need for a lot of things to happen right now. It all seems to start with listening.
The heart of quality listening, I’ve discovered, is looking past strong words and reactiveness (which are basic human nature when we feel unheard), and focusing on the feelings and needs at the crux of what another person says. Sometimes a speaker is very clear on those things, sometimes not. Either way, a good listener helps pinpoint and call out the speaker’s precise feelings and unmet needs.
The process involves putting one’s agenda and perspectives aside to dig and discover. The listener asks questions and repeats some things back. The intention is to get super clear on the speaker’s emotions: what they are, and why they’re there.
I think we often don’t recognize even within ourselves how much we deeply long for that information to be witnessed. But once it is — once another person stops arguing, justifying, changing the subject, being dismissive; once someone genuinely hears us — things shift. There’s a major release. We don’t need to shout anymore. Tension fades. Connections are created and doors open.
From what I’ve seen in my own work on this, if those shifts haven’t happened yet, the listening isn’t done. And the bigger the issue is, the more there is to hear. In our homes, on our streets and within our systems — it’s all the same.
Wherever there’s pain, there’s an opportunity to listen. It’s not necessarily easy, but it’s a pathway to things getting better. It can help.