Continuing our series of posts on the Relationship Course Correction Menu, we now turn to listening.
Introduction
Writers at all times have always had to brush aside concerns that they have nothing new to say about a particular topic. Those insecurities are all the more pressing now that artificial intelligence is capable of dashing out coherent essays on any topic in a flash. So if you’d like to see what my competition is up to, check out this AI generated essay on the prompt ““Write a short essay about the importance of effective listening and how to do it.” The recommended strategies are all very sensible and worth practicing.
In this space, however, I’d like to explore something less technical and more psychological – the functions of listening. I am hopeful that by paying attention to these functions, you’ll be able to develop your own particular style of listening, because you’ll have a better sense of what it is you are trying to do for someone when you listen to them.
Conditions for Listening
Certainly, listening has a lot of benefits to the listener. Only by listening are you able to elicit the information you need to navigate a relationship skillfully. Listening to others makes it more likely (though by no means a certainty), that they will listen to us in turn. Listening helps us understand the other person’s path to progress, and that makes it possible for us to skillfully message our requests and feedback to improve our chances of getting our own needs met.
Nevertheless, listening is essentially a selfless act. The intent to listen is essentially receptive. The conditions for true listening are only created when we are:
Curious. We are genuinely interested in finding out about the other person’s point of view.
Open. We are willing to at least temporarily let go of our hopes and fears about what we want or don’t want the other person to say. We also need to be willing to temporarily let go of all of the things that we want to say. It’s more difficult than it sounds!
Accepting. We are willing to accept that this person’s point of view has a certain legitimacy, solely because it comes from another human being, who, like us, is facing life’s challenges and hoping for happiness.
Benevolent. We want something that is good for the other person. We may be very angry with them, but at the moment that we decide to listen to them, we have to find a way of bracketing those feelings of anger. The intent to listen is to give the other person the opportunity to express themselves, and to be understood. So no matter how mad you may be at the other person, the moment that you decide it’s worth listening to them, you do have this benevolent intent. At any rate, it’s clear that no one is going to open up and share anything with someone who doesn’t wish them well. If all you can do is angrily glare at someone and cross your arms in judgment against them, you won’t be able to create the conditions for real listening. Try practicing serenity, and then come back and try again.
With these foundational causes of effective listening in place, we can now turn our attention to the two prime functions of listening. What essentially does listening do for the other person? In my adaptation of the theory of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, I like to think about two of them: holding and mirroring.
Holding
From our earliest days we need to be held. For the infant, the holding of the central caregiving figure provides a sense of security through contact. As adults, our concerns about safety and our need for contact occur in a more abstract, symbolic realm. If we share a secret, we want to know that it won’t become fodder for gossip. So as listeners, we need to create a strong container for what people share with us. The more vulnerable or intense the material, the stronger and more reliable the container must be.
Concretely, attention to the holding function means that we’re attentive to things like the privacy of our environment, not letting ourselves be distracted by incoming calls, texts, and emails, and making strong and reliable commitments to exercise all due discretion with what we hear from the other person. Since I have been strengthening my ability to provide this holding functioning for others for quite some time, people often surprise themselves by telling me things they never intended to! Yet because I can reliably keep confidentiality and hold what they share me with great respect, they never regret it, and my reputation as a trusted confidant has grown.
Mirroring
Infants look to their central caregiving figure for an experience of attunement. When they smile, they hope to make their person smile. When they are upset, they are looking for an appropriate expression of concern and sympathy in their person. As adults, we can provide this mirroring function through strategies like paraphrasing the essence of what the other person has said, to show them that we are tracking them well. We can also subtly use our body language to reflect the person we are listening to. This is important because our emotional state and physical state are closely intertwined, and so by mirroring another person’s physical stance, we begin to evoke some of the emotions that they are experiencing. As we perform this mirroring function, the person we are listening to will spontaneously begin to explore more of the vulnerable and intense emotional content of what they are sharing with us. After long experience, I have learned that getting these emotions out into the open is absolutely essential for creating a shift in a relationship that has gotten stuck.
Conclusion
When we perform our jobs as listeners well, and play the fundamental functions of holding and mirroring for those we listen to, we create a supportive relational atmosphere in which the other person can grow and develop. Many people have had the unfortunate experience of lacking a trusted person who can hold and mirror them, and this deficit creates the conditions for a lot of dysfunction and stuckness in their personal and professional relationships. When you listen well, you are creating a corrective experience that can help them come unstuck, develop, and mature.
I am grateful to all of you who make the experiment of listening to one another, especially when there are difficulties between you. You are making the world a better place.