Suggestions on How to Be a Better
Listener
Remember that listening to either a child, teen or adult helps them feel heard, understood, important, valued, respected and cared about. And remember that the best listeners focus on feelings, not "facts". |
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Will you please just listen? When I ask you to listen and you start giving advice, you have not done what I have asked. When I ask you to listen and you start telling me why I shouldn't feel the way I do, you are invalidating my feelings. When I ask you to listen and you start trying to solve my problem, I feel underestimated and disempowered. When I ask you to listen and you start telling me what I need to do I feel offended, pressured and controlled. When I ask you to listen, it does not mean I am helpless. I may be faltering, depressed or discouraged, but I am not helpless. When I ask you to listen and you do things which I can, and need to do for myself, you hurt my self-esteem. But when you accept the way I feel, then I don't need to spend time and energy trying to defend myself or convince you, and I can focus on figuring out why I feel the way I feel, what I need and what to do about it. And when I do that, I don't need advice, just empathy, understanding, caring, support, trust and encouragement. Please remember that what you might think are "irrational feelings" always make sense if you take time to listen and understand me. |
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Quote by Keith Pearson
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Importance of Listening It has been said that 90% of "behavior problems" come from young people wanting adults to listen to them. One study reported that the number one request from suicidal teenagers was for adults to listen to them. I have worked with depressed teenagers and I agree with this 100%. The medical power of listening has also been proven by various studies. We all feel better when we feel listened to. And we feel even better when we feel understood. In order to be understood, we must be listened to. Often it is more important to us to feel heard, empathized with, understood and cared about than it is to actually get what we said we wanted. On the other hand, feeling ignored and misunderstood is literally painful whether we are six or sixty. As with other emotional needs, the need to be heard is a survival need. We are all interdependent. In other words, many of our basic needs depend on the cooperation of others. But first we must know and communicate our needs. For example, if we are a passenger in a car and we feel unsafe, we must communicate our feelings. If the driver ignores us, our lives may literally be threatened. If we are not heard, we cannot communicate our needs. It is understandable, then, that we feel frustrated or worse when we do not feel heard. By developing our own listening skills, we can model them to others. They in turn will becfsome better listeners and we will feel heard, understood and respected. |
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| Letter about Listening from Norway Hi Mr. Hein Your site made me really find a lot of times in my past where I did these things. Now I try to focus on how not to do that anymore. Keep up the good work... The world really need this, it would be a much better place if we all would really listen and try to understand each other. Just last night I was about to leave from a girl's place and I said on the way out : "I feel sad" (This girl I like, but she is not interested in a relationship with me.). And the only reply I got was: "Don't be sad". After I felt even worse, because
she didn't accept my feelings. I just wanted to let you
know I read your article "Thanks for listening"
and I understand. Hope to see a lot more articles from
you: |
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An Example of a Great Listener Here is what one member of our teen chat support group said about another member:
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Not
Listening Leads To Violence Not listening can lead to violence. This can be on a one-to-one basis or group to group. If a country does not listen to people who feel passionately about something, these people may see violence as their only option. These people who were not listened to may then be called "terrorists." Likewise, on a very large scale, when the government does not listen to the people, the people may eventually revolt with violence. Right now in the USA there is a growing group of people who want to feel and be less controlled by the government. They want to be "sovereign citizens." Here is what one of them said in an interview with 60 Minutes:
I feel sad about this, and I don't support violence. But I also feel understanding about why someone would come to a point in life where they would say and believe this. I believe if people are listened to, cared about, taken seriously, empathized with, understood and respected, violence can always be prevented. P. Hein |
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| Listening vs. Obeying P. Hein This week I heard several people talking about people who "won't listen." In all three cases it was someone who was talking about someone younger. First it was a university psychology student talking about her younger brother. She said he is "ADHD." I asked her what she meant by that and she said, "He won't listen." When I asked her to explain further she said, "You tell him not to do something and he does it anyhow." In a playfully provoking tone, I asked her why she thought he should listen to her. She smiled defensively and looked away as she realized she didn't have a good answer. The best she could come up with was, "Because I am his older sister." I said, "So...?" She laughed, and I left it at that. I wonder, though, what she would say had we continued the conversation. I am really curious why different people think others "should" listen to them. Two days later I had a conversation with someone whose parents are from Samoa. She told me that in the Samoan culture you are taught to "respect your elders." She said at the dinner table young people usually don't talk; only the "elders" talk, and young people are expected to listen quietly without making a contribution to the discussion. She said she was never asked her opinion about anything and her feelings were not considered important to her parents. She said it is a primitive society. She also said women are not treated with respect there, and for those reasons she would not want to raise her children in a place like that. Talking to her helped me understand why some people think others "should" listen to them. It seems this is largely just custom, culture and tradition. I wonder what a society would be like if it were the cultural norm to listen to those people we commonly call children, teenagers and students... and then take what they say seriously. Later in the week, I saw how a primary school teacher used the word "listen." At the time, she was frustrated because she was getting behind in her lesson plan. She was also starting to feel out of control. She had just come back from gathering up two boys who did not return to the class after the lunch break bell had been rung. She was nearly dragging one, Abdul, by the hand, while lecturing to him most of the way. When she got back to class she tried to get 18 people, ages 5 and 6, to sit on the floor -- where she wanted and how she wanted -- in preparation for her reading a story about a father taking his son fishing. Her attempts at controlling these 18 people took her a lot of time and she was getting more and more stressed and further behind in her lesson plan. As she read she would stop frequently to give orders to the people on the floor. She would say things like, "Put that down." "Sit up properly." "Eyes up here." "Move over here by me." "Go sit in the back by yourself." "Don't walk through the group! I wanted you to walk around the outside!" After directing several such instructions towards Abdul, she snapped at him, saying, "Abdul, Stand up! You are not listening to me! The next time I have to speak to you, you are going to be sent out of the room. Do you understand that? Look at me! Do you understand that?!" I think what she actually meant was that he was not obeying her by sitting quietly and motionless, with his eyes on her while she tried to read the story. I could understand why Abdul was not looking at her because the story was not interesting to him. She tried to make it more interesting by exaggerating her voice as she read, but I think this might have only made it more obvious to him and others that the story was not very important or relevant to them in its own right. As I looked around the room in fact, I would say only about half the people were interested in the story, which explained why so many of them were looking elsewhere and finding other things to do. During the story telling, I noticed something else. There was a boy named Jesse who the teacher said was "ADHD." The way she said it was as if she were branding him for life as a problem child. I paid close attention to Jesse and we immediately connected. I saw myself in him and have little doubt that if I were in school now I would also be labeled as "ADHD". One of the most fascinating things I witnessed while watching Jesse was when the teacher asked, "Have any of you gone fishing with your fathers?" At this point Jesse looked like he was not paying any attention at all. He had been crawling all around, not keeping his eyes on the teacher for more than a few seconds after each time she commanded him to. But when she asked the question, "Have any of you gone fishing with your fathers?", Jesse was one of the first, if not the very first, to shoot up his hand and say, "I have." His ability to listen when not appearing to -- what I might call his multi-tasking ability -- was shown again when she was handing out writing books. At this point Jesse was literally crawling under one of the tables, but as soon as he heard his name called, he came out and went to get his book. Another example of how someone used the word "listen" was just last night. I was talking to an 18 year old student from Holland. She was considering studying psychology. She said there are some students who "won't listen" to the teachers when the teacher tells them to be quiet. All of this made me realize there is a difference between listening and obeying. As with the difference between respect and obedience, however, one is often used mistakenly in place of the other. I suppose this is because people like teachers and psychology students don't want to admit that they really just want someone to obey them. I may be guilty of this myself, so I will try to be more aware of this important distinction! As "adults" we tend to use the word "listen" differently depending on the situation. When we truly want someone to listen to us, rather than obey us -- and this person is someone we consider an equal, a friend or someone we are seeking help from -- we often mean we want them to listen in a caring way without judging us or telling us what to do, much as is described in this site. This strikes me as very ironic. A person in a position of authority often tells other people what to do. But at the same time, if they really want someone to listen to them, they probably don't want that person to tell them what to do! They just want to be listened to. Beyond this they probably would like to feel understood and empathized with. We don't usually feel any of these things when someone expects us to just obey them. I can just imagine a police chief, an army officer or a high school director going into a therapist and the therapist saying, "I told you what to do last week, didn't I? And you didn't listen, did you? Look at me when I am talking to you!" The client then says "But I am paying you to listen to me, not to tell me what to do! No one ever listens to me, even when I pay them to!!" P. Hein Written from New Zealand around 2000 |
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| (1) Source m.cbsnews.com/searchfullstory.rbml?&query=Sovereign+citizen&catid=20062666 |
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