The Lost Art of Listening (18 page)

do for a reason—you’ll know something about the way they were treated

by their parents.

One reason we carry sensitivities from home around with us rather

than resolving them is that most of us leave home somewhere in the

transition from adolescence to mature adulthood. In the busy time of our

twenties, when we’re making a start on love and work, we respond to our

assumption that we can’t really talk to our parents by distancing ourselves

from them. But then, often somewhere in our thirties, we decide to close

the gap and rebuild our relationship with our parents, this time on a more

mature footing.

People who decide to work on their relationship with their parents

often go at it with certain unfortunate expectations. They imagine them-

selves righting ancient wrongs like avenging angels, or waking sleeping

intimacy, as though family ties, cherished, strained, or severed, could be

refashioned overnight. The truth is, when you go home, you’re more like

one of nature’s humbler creatures, and you have to keep your wits about

you to avoid getting stuck on the family’s emotional flypaper.

Peggy and her parents agreed on many things—the value of hard

work, the need to build something for the future, the importance of family.

But agreement is something children and parents can always overcome,

and Peggy and her parents managed to get into shouting matches on just

about every visit. Most visits would start off well. Love and news would

carry them through the first couple of days, but the inevitable blowup was

like a ticking time bomb, set for three days and waiting to go off.

Peggy couldn’t stop wishing her parents were different. She loved

them, and they loved her; she just wished they would grow up. Her mother

was loud and abrasive, eager for company but always complaining, never

How Hidden Assumptions Prejudice Listening
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a kind word to say about anybody. Her father was quieter, self- possessed,

cool, some would say aloof. He showed his love by offering advice, whether

you wanted it or not, and by repairing things around the house, whether

they needed it or not. Peggy found him impossible to talk to. When she

tried to tell him what was going on in her life, he never really listened.

Unlike some people, who acknowledge the turmoil they feel on family

visits but don’t recognize their own contribution, Peggy was willing to look

at her part in the conflict with her parents. First she figured out what it was

that her parents did that made her reactive. Her mother assumed the right

to criticize anything and anyone, but her meanest comments were reserved

for family members who acted independently. When Peggy’s sister-in-law

decided to start her own business, her mother said, “Who does she think

she is!” She was totally unsupportive when Peggy’s cousin got a divorce,

even though it had been a disastrous marriage. And when another cousin

decided to move out of her parents’ house (she wasn’t getting married),

Peggy’s mother said, “There’s only one reason a twenty-year-old woman

gets her own apartment, and I don’t happen to approve of that!”

Next Peggy learned to see how her mother’s negativism and intru-

siveness triggered anxiety and rage in her. The fact that she’d learned to

expect it made her hypersensitive. The minute her mother started in on

someone, Peggy got upset, anxious, and angry at the same time. She felt

she was being pressured to join her mother in mean- spiritedness, and if she

resisted she felt as though she herself were under attack. She usually held

her tongue, but the effort to repress her impulse to protest only put her

anger under pressure, which eventually led to an eruption. The longer she

held back, the more her rage would build. When she finally did blow up,

her mother would get hurt and withdraw, leaving Peggy feeling helpless

and despicable at the same time.

Peggy also began to see that although she rebelled against her moth-

er’s criticisms, she had incorporated her mother’s habit of assuming respon-

sibility for other people’s feelings and reactions. Whereas her mother was

critical and controlling, Peggy was benignly controlling— worrying exces-

sively about her own children, always doing things for other people. The

blurred boundaries between self and loved ones were the same for mother

and daughter—only their way of showing it was different. The “nicer” and

more “helpful” Peggy was, the more she expected there to be no walls

between her and those she cared for. She felt guilty for not doing enough

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THE REAL REASONS PEOPLE DON’T LISTEN

and repressed her anger for not getting enough. Eventually, when her chil-

dren or her friends or her husband did something that made her feel shut

out, she’d erupt in anger, just as she’d done with her mother. These scenes

never changed anything. As you may have discovered, venting anger

isn’t the same as voicing feelings in a way that makes them heard. When

she first consulted me about the relationship with her mother, Peggy said

that she had tried everything. Her “everything” ran the gamut from A

to C, appeasement to confrontation. The alternative, calmly stating her

own point of view, never occurred to her, because by the time she finally

responded to her mother’s criticism she was too angry to be in control.

The word for unrestrained emotionalism is
childish.
The place where

we learn (or don’t learn) restraint is in our families. But it isn’t in child-

hood that we overcome childishness; that isn’t in the cards. As young

children, we looked up to our parents. (But then we were short and looked

up to everything.) Later, if they said something to incite or provoke us, we

either absorbed it or cried. It was as teenagers that we began to see through

our parents, stopped putting up with the exasperating things they said, and

started fighting back.

Most teenagers become so reactive to their parents that they flare up

at the least hint of indignity, like kindling struck by lightning. (If you’ve

ever had a teenager in captivity, you know what I mean.) If adolescence is

a time for becoming your own person, late adolescence is a time for trans-

forming relationships with parents from a childish basis to an adult one.

Unfortunately, most of us leave home in the midst of that transformation.

Distance affords us the illusion that we’re grown up, but for most of us

who left home at eighteen or so, our relationships with our parents remain

frozen in adolescent patterns.

Only one thing robs Superman of his powers: kryptonite, a piece of

his home planet. A surprising number of adult men and women are simi-

larly rendered helpless by even a brief visit with their parents. Superman

becomes mortal in contact with kryptonite; mortals become teenagers in

contact with their parents. We revert to childish roles when we get anx-

ious because we never fully learn to resist parental provocation.

Our parents may be the most important unfinished

business of our lives.

How Hidden Assumptions Prejudice Listening
105

Our Divided Selves

We don’t easily face our own shortcomings, and it’s painful to confront

our failures to listen. When we do, it’s natural to get discouraged: “I’m a

lousy listener,” “I’m selfish,” “I’m too controlling.” Instead of thinking of

ourselves in such global, negative terms, it’s possible to realize that only a

part of ourselves is having trouble listening. Using a little imagination to

personify our parts as subpersonalities (residues of early object relations)

may lead us to their source.4

Take, for example, a husband who finds himself shutting his ears when

his wife tries to tell him that she needs more from him. With a little intro-

spection, he might discover a part of him that feels like a little boy who

expects to be reprimanded by his mother. The little boy doesn’t want to

hear it; his mother’s criticism makes him feel scolded and controlled; he

wants to be left alone. The husband can calm down his “little boy part” by

realizing—really getting it—that his wife isn’t his mother. She’s not trying

to control him. Even if she sounds critical, what she’s trying to express is her

loneliness and her need for him. It’s not we who are afraid to listen; it’s those

fearful parts of us that, once triggered, reduce us to childish insecurity.

Some of our subpersonalities manifest themselves in warring inner

voices that fuel those painful and tedious arguments we have with our-

selves. The rival voices are normally apparent only when we’re in con-

flict—facing a difficult decision or torn between two choices. This is when

it’s wise to remember that calm fosters unity; conflict fractures it. The next

time you find yourself caught up in internal debate, consider the possibil-

ity that the thoughts and feelings on either side of the argument aren’t

just situational. Maybe those competing voices have a lot to say. Maybe

they’ve been saying similar things to you all your life, and maybe they’ve

been fighting those same other voices that they’re fighting now. We usually

4According to Henry A. Murray, “A personality is a full congress of orators and pressure

groups, of children, demagogues, Machiavellis . . . Caesars and Christs. . . . ”; “What Should

Psychologists Do about Psychoanalysis?,”
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
, 1940,

35
, 160–161.

Eric Berne’s transactional analysis personified Freud’s superego, ego, and id as parent,

adult, and child.
Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy
(New York: Grove Press, 1961).

In literature we find Pirandello’s
Six Characters in Search of an Author
and Stevenson’s

tortured Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Although many people have used the metaphor of subpersonalities, I have found the

internal family systems model of Richard Schwartz particularly useful. Richard Schwartz,

Internal Family Systems Therapy
(New York: Guilford Press, 1995).

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THE REAL REASONS PEOPLE DON’T LISTEN

listen to one part, the one that represents the overdeveloped parts of our

personalities. Here’s an example:

Once or twice a year Richard takes time off from teaching at the uni-

versity to spend a week by himself at a friend’s house on Cape Cod. He

likes to get away to spend some concentrated time writing and unwinding.

But each time he goes he gets into a debate with himself about whether

to spend most of his time working or relaxing. One voice says that he

should concentrate on working because that’s the most important thing.

The other voice counters that he’s always working and that this is his only

chance to enjoy himself. Each time the debate is the same, and always

quite frustrating. He really wants to do both, get a lot of work done and

spend a few whole days swimming and fishing. But even though the debate

is always hard fought, the voice that tells him to work always wins.

The people who know us can usually predict our choices, even if we

still agonize over them. In Richard’s case, the voice that says work always

wins over the one that says play. His wife could tell you that. And she’s

learned, after much trial and error, that the only way for her and the chil-

dren to get the attention of the part of Richard that likes to play is to

reassure the part that worries about getting enough work done. She knows,

for example, that he won’t be able to relax on a family vacation unless he

brings along some work to do in the morning. And if she tries to get him

to visit her parents for the weekend, she always helps him find a little time

to get some work done. She’s not just thoughtful; she’s smart.

Asking for Advice

A good opportunity to learn more about the opposing voices inside you is

the next time you find it necessary to ask someone’s advice. The need to

ask is a sign that contending voices have nearly equal claim on your atten-

tion. What is the nature of those voices? Does the question of whether

or not to go to an unimportant meeting symbolize a debate between the

dutiful child and the rebellious one? And if you ask someone’s advice,

aren’t you aware of what he or she will say? And do you sometimes seek

out the right person to give you the answer that part of you really wants

to hear?

How Hidden Assumptions Prejudice Listening
107

What does all this have to do with listening? Whenever someone asks

your advice or shrinks from you or gets impatient with you, it’s worthwhile

to think about what parts of the person might be at war with each other. It

may be useful to remember these conflicting voices when you’re tempted

to give obvious advice— telling people to stop drinking so much, start

exercising, do their homework, or quit smoking—rather than listening for

what they really want from you. Can you tell these people anything they

don’t already know? If not, how about trying to appreciate where they’re at