The Lost Art of Listening (4 page)

or indifference.

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THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

Whom you choose to tell what says something about your relation-

ship to yourself—and to the other people in your life. Your presentation

of self involves pride and shame—and whom you choose to share them

with. With whom do you feel safe to cry? To complain? To rage? To brag?

To confess something truly shameful?

A good listener is a witness, not a judge of your experience.

As soon as you’re able to say what’s on your mind—and be heard

and acknowledged—you are unburdened. It’s like having an ache suddenly

relieved. If this completion comes quickly, as it often does in day-to-day

conversations, you may hardly be aware of your need for understanding.

But the disappointment you feel when you’re not heard and the tension

you feel waiting and hoping to be heard are signs of how important being

listened to is. There are times when all that can be thought must be spo-

ken and heard, communicated and shared, when ignorance and silence are

pain, and to speak is to try to alleviate that pain.

“Guess What!”

Remember the last time something really wonderful happened to you. Do

you remember waiting to tell someone? Whom did you choose and how

did it work out?

Being Heard Means Being Taken Seriously

The need to be heard, which is something we ordinarily take for granted,

turns out to be one of the most powerful motives in human nature. Being

listened to is the medium through which we discover ourselves as under-

standable and acceptable—or not. We care about the people who listen to

us. We may even love them. But, for a time at least, we use them.

When we’re activated by the need for appreciation, we relate to

others as
selfobjects
, psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut’s telling expression for a

responsive other, someone we relate to not as an independent person with

his or her own agenda but as someone-there-for-us.1

1Heinz Kohut,
The Analysis of the Self
(New York: International Universities Press, 1971).

Why Listening Is So Important
19

Perhaps the idea of using listeners as selfobjects reminds you of those

bores who are always talking about themselves and don’t seem to care

about what you have to say. When they listen, their hearts aren’t in it.

They’re only waiting to change the subject back to themselves.

This lack of appreciation can be especially painful when it occurs

between us and our parents. It’s maddening when they can’t seem to let us

be people in our own right, individuals with legitimate ideas and aspira-

tions. Watching our parents listen to other people right in front of us can

be especially aggravating. Why don’t they show
us
a little of that atten-

tion? Here’s the writer Harold Brodkey in
The Runaway Soul
dramatizing

this irritating experience through the conversation of a young woman and

her boyfriend. The boyfriend speaks first:

“Does your dad ever listen, or does he just do monologues?”

“He just does monologues. Doesn’t he let you talk?”

“Only if I insist on it. Then we do alternate monologues.”

“Well, that’s it, then. He talks to you more than he does to me now.”

Of course the woman’s father talks to her boyfriend more than he does

to her. The boyfriend is a fresh audience, new blood.

The people who hurt us most are invariably the ones with whom we

think we have a special relationship, who make us feel that our atten-

tion and understanding are particularly important to them—until we see

how easily they shift their interest to someone else. Right in the middle

of confiding in us, they’ll catch someone else’s eye and break off to talk

to that person. We discover that what we thought was an understanding

shared only with us is something they’ve told a dozen people. So much for

our special status as confidants! What’s so hurtful about these promiscuous

“intimates” isn’t that they use us, but that they rob us of the feeling that

we’re important to them, that we’re special.

Although none of us likes to see (especially in ourselves) the kind of

blatant narcissism that disregards the feelings of others, the truth is, much

of the time we’re all hopelessly absorbed with ourselves. The subject of nar-

cissism turns out to be crucial in exploring the art of listening. I mention

it here only to note that one aspect of our need for other people is entirely

selfish. Being listened to maintains our narcissistic equilibrium—or, to put

it more simply, it helps us feel good about ourselves.

20
THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

When Roxanne and her parents finished unloading the car, she felt a

sinking sensation and was conscious for the first time of all the things she

didn’t have. Anxiously she watched as the other students and their families

trooped into the dormitory, loaded down with beautiful pillows and down

comforters, iPods and DVDs, straightening rods, laptops, tennis rackets,

and lacrosse sticks. Roxanne had never even seen a lacrosse stick. By the

time her parents drove off, leaving her standing alone in front of South

Hall, her excitement about starting college had given way to dread.

Roxanne never did get over her sense of isolation that first year.

Everyone else seemed to make friends so easily. Not her. She called home

a lot and tried to tell her parents how awful it was. But they said “Don’t

worry, honey; everybody’s a little lonesome at first,” and “You should make

more friends,” and “Maybe you just have to study a little harder.” If only

it were that easy!

Reassuring someone isn’t the same as listening.

By the first of December Roxanne was skipping classes, missing meals,

and crying herself to sleep. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she made

an appointment at the counseling center.

Roxanne was surprised when the therapist said to call her Noreen.

She wasn’t used to that kind of openness in adults. Noreen turned out to

be the most sympathetic person Roxanne had ever met. She didn’t tell

Roxanne what to do or analyze her feelings; she just listened. For Rox-

anne, it was a new experience.

With Noreen’s help, Roxanne was able to get through that first year

and the three years that followed. Noreen helped her discover that her

feelings of insecurity stemmed from never feeling really loved by her par-

ents. Roxanne had always thought they were pretty good parents, but she

could see now that they never actually knew her very well. Her father was

always busy, and her mother never really took her seriously as a person.

Eventually Noreen convinced Roxanne that she would never be free

of her anger—and vulnerability to depression—until she worked things

out with her parents. When Roxanne agreed, Noreen suggested that she

get in touch with me for a few family therapy sessions.

Roxanne and her parents arrived separately for our first meeting, and

although they were all smiling, the three of them seemed as wary as cats

Why Listening Is So Important
21

circling a snake. I had suggested to Roxanne over the phone that we go

slow in this first meeting, that she try not to unload the full weight of her

anger on her parents but rather search for some common ground. But that

wasn’t the truth about what she was feeling, and the truth was what she

was after. She started in on her father. When she was little, she’d loved

him, she said, but as she got older she increasingly saw him as ridiculous

and irrelevant. (He worked hard, had a crew cut, voted Republican, and

was a patriot. Almost nothing in his life caused him second thoughts.)

After listening to his daughter’s ungenerous assessment, Roxanne’s father

said, “So that’s how you see me?” and then retreated into silence, his own

brand of armor.

Then Roxanne turned to her mother. She called her “shallow,”

“phony,” and—the cruelest thing a child can say to a mother—“interested

only in yourself.” Roxanne’s mother tried to listen but couldn’t. “That’s

not true!” she protested. “Why do you have to exaggerate everything?”

This only infuriated Roxanne more, and the two of them lashed back and

forth at each other with increasingly shrill voices.

I tried to calm them down but wasn’t very successful. Roxanne was

hell-bent on communicating—not talking, that old- fashioned process of

give-and-take, but communicating—that important development where

one insistent family member imparts some critical information to the oth-

ers, confronting them with “the truth” whether they want to hear it or not.

Roxanne’s mother left the session in tears.

The following week I met with Roxanne alone. She was sorry the

meeting hadn’t gone better but was glad to have gotten her feelings out.

She thought her mother had shown herself to be the unaccepting person

Roxanne knew her to be. They weren’t on speaking terms, and that was

just fine with Roxanne.

Six months later, much to my surprise, Roxanne called to say that she

and her parents wanted to come for another meeting. This time the con-

versation was friendly but superficial. Roxanne complimented her mother

on her shoes and asked about her younger sister. Her mother asked Rox-

anne how she was doing. Had she gotten over all that bitterness? Rox-

anne, feeling once again patronized and dismissed, tried to avoid reacting

but couldn’t. Furiously, she accused her mother of not really being inter-

ested in how she was feeling and caring only about polite formalities. My

heart sank. But this time Roxanne’s mother didn’t react angrily or cut her

daughter off. She didn’t say much, but she didn’t interrupt to defend her-

22
THE YEARNING TO BE UNDERSTOOD

self either. What enabled her to listen to her daughter’s angry accusations

this time? I don’t know. But she did.

One of a mother’s heaviest burdens is being the target of her children’s

primitive swings between need and rage. The rage is directed at the hand

that rocks the cradle no matter how loving its care. It’s part of breaking

away. Roxanne’s mother seemed to sense this, seemed to remember that

her daughter was still a little girl in some ways.

Roxanne seemed to expect retaliation from her mother. But when it

wasn’t forthcoming, she calmed down considerably. She had wanted, it

seemed, only to be heard.

After that, Roxanne’s relationship with her family changed dramati-

cally. Previously limited to monologues or muteness, they entered into

dialogue. Roxanne phoned and wrote. She shared confidences with her

mother. Not always, of course, and not always successfully, but Roxanne

had become more open to her mother as a person, rather than perceiving

her simply as a mother, who was somehow supposed to make everything

right. She, in turn, became less a child and more a young woman, ready

for life on her own.

Roxanne’s unfulfilled need to be listened to had cut her off from other

people and filled her with resentment. Unburdening herself was like break-

ing down a wall that had kept her from feeling connected to other people.

That her feelings were somewhat infantile says only that they were a long

time unspoken. Talking to Noreen, who didn’t have a stake in defending

herself, helped Roxanne find her voice.

That second meeting with Roxanne and her parents had produced

one of those moments that happen once in a while in families, when some-

one says something and everything shifts. Only it wasn’t what Roxanne

said that caused the shift; she’d said it all before. It was that her mother put

aside her own claims to being right and just listened.

When we learn to hear the unspoken feelings beneath someone’s

anger or impatience, we discover the power to release the bitterness that

keeps people apart. With a little effort, we can hear the hurt behind expres-

sions of hostility, the resentment behind avoidance, and the vulnerability

that makes people afraid to speak or truly listen. When we understand the

healing power of listening, we can even begin to listen to things that make

us uncomfortable.

Why Listening Is So Important
23

Being heard means being taken seriously. It satisfies our need for self-

expression and our need to feel connected to others. The receptive listener

allows us to express what we think and feel. Being heard and acknowl-

edged helps us clarify both the thoughts and the feelings, in the process

firming our sense of ourselves. By affirming that we are understandable,

the listener helps confirm our common humanity. Not being listened to

makes us feel ignored and unappreciated, cut off and alone. The need to be

known, to have our experience understood and accepted by someone who

listens, is food and drink to the human heart.

Without a sufficient amount of sympathetic understanding in our

lives, we’re haunted by an amorphous unease that leaves us anxious and

lonely. Such feelings are hard to tolerate, and so we seek solace in passive