On Being Heard

Find a quiet place to sit comfortably. Relax your body and mind. Take a few slow, deep breaths. This is not a test. The following questions are designed to evoke your recollections of the experience of being truly heard.

Think back to such an occasion. Did that memory arise fairly easily? Or did it require considerable thought? Who was the listener? Do you have a strong visual image of where and when this hearing transpired? How did you know that you were being truly heard? What did you see? How did you feel? What emotions did you experience? What was the listener doing? What was his/her posture? What emotions did you perceive from him/her? Did the listener speak? If so, what was said? How would you describe the experience? Did it allow you greater access to your thoughts and feelings? Was it pleasant? Was it something that you wished would happen more often in your life? Do you recall having more than one such experience with the same person?

Let me give you an example from my life experience. My maternal grandmother, Ione Morgan, was a great listener. When I would visit her, she would make tea and cookies for us in her spacious 1940s kitchen. I would sit at her chrome steel and avocado green Formica kitchen table, waiting for the water to boil, the tea to brew, and the cookies to come out of the oven.

I would watch her move around the kitchen, looking forward to our forthcoming quiet time at the table. She would set out her elaborate hand-painted teacups, put out the sugar and cream, then deliver the teapot to a hand crocheted cozy with a large plate of cookies next to my seat at the table. She would pour the tea and invite me to take a cookie or two. Then, we would begin.

She would ask me a question, then sit quietly, awaiting my reply. If I didn’t have an immediate answer, we would sit in silence, each of us enjoying our tea. There was no immediacy, no agenda, no purpose, other than to be in the company of one another. This happened so often between the ages of probably four and 10 that I have no specific recollection of any particular conversation.

What I have is a sense of being seen by someone who cared for me. I was the focus of her attention. In those moments, I was all that mattered. She was always curious and never judgmental. Beyond being heard and seen, I felt held by her love and attention.

You may have found that, in considering the above questions, an elder first comes to mind. If that is the case for you, immerse yourself in the memories and feelings that are evoked. It may seem like no one other than your grandparents, uncles, aunts or parents can make you feel that certain way. But I have not found this to be the case. Such sharing can take place in other domains of your life and, although the emotional intensity of these encounters may vary, the fundamentals of being heard are the same.

Write a few notes to yourself in response to the questions above. Bathe in the experience. If, by chance, an experience does not come readily to you, consider whether you ever have been a witness to a conversation in which another is truly heard. You probably will be able to answer all the questions from a witness perspective.

I am becoming convinced that you cannot truly learn to listen, until you have felt the power of what listening has done for you.

I haven’t done any scientific polling on peoples experiences of being truly heard. Everything I have learned is anecdotal. But, there are common observations. First, being heard is not all that common a life experience. When it happens, it is often profound. As people describe their experiences to me, I see the flush of emotion in their faces. One or two appeared to be on the verge of tears. Being heard is described as more than being listened to. People express the experience as being seen, being held, or being truly connected. The words and metaphors orbit around the notion of relationship, even intimacy.

Those who have experienced being heard remark that it most often occurs with the same person, as if that person were practiced. During the experience, the listener is still, seated or standing in an open posture, calm and reflective. Those being heard describe an implicit invitation to go further, explore deeper or find my truth. There is no experience of being judged, assessed or evaluated, which makes it easier to explore your thoughts and feelings. You feel relieved of your ego. It is simply a free-flowing engagement in which everything you say is relevant and has value. When you pause, there is room for silence. No one steps in to disagree, distinguish or dissuade. The experience of being heard is like being seen for who you truly are at that moment.

Grandparents do seem to top the list of those most likely to grant the gift of allowing someone to be truly heard. That probably has been the case for millennia and also may be one of the greatest losses of our age as grandparents are distanced from their grandchildren through fragmentation of our multigenerational families. I also hear frequent references to parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins as offering the listening gift. But there are other classes as well - childhood friends, extraordinary teachers, great career mentors and empathetic colleagues. The intimacy of the content may vary, but the validating experience is very much the same. People describe the experience as empowering, healing, energizing or enriching. It is an experience that people wish to propagate in their lives, to increase in frequency, and to occur with a greater variety of people.

And there are those who have expressed to me that they are wanting for the experience. It is something that they have witnessed and, as witnesses, believe they understand, but long to know. One friend told me, “I never had anyone listen to me the way you described your grandmother listening to you. I want that.”

Lets take your exploration a few steps further. Consider each of the following domains in your life: family, career and social. For each domain, identify two categories of people - those that you believe truly hear you and those who you wish did. Try to identify two to three individuals for each of the six categories. As you consider this array, what does it tell you? Are the people that you most care about, or those that are the most important to you, hearing you? If not, what do you imagine that this means for your life? Your career? If there were something that you could do to change your circumstances, would you be willing to do it?

If I told you that you could begin to make a substantial change in your experience of being heard, simply by dedicating only five minutes a day to the enterprise, would you do it? Well take this matter up next time.