Over the past decade, my work has consisted of bringing people together in spaces where everyone gets a chance to share, and many chances to listen. I am a strong believer that listening is an important component to healing and connecting. Listening isn’t just about hearing people, it's about being present with someone, creating vulnerability, putting our own agenda to the side, and not making it about ourselves. Listening is about acknowledging that someone is going through something, even if it’s uncomfortable.
We listen to obtain info, to understand, for enjoyment, and to learn. And holding space is powerful for both the holder and the receiver. It invites connection, compassion, trust and empathy. But holding space for someone without the intent to listen is more harmful than helpful. We are responsible for being honest if we’re unable to make space at that moment.
“Holding space for someone without the intent to listen is more harmful than helpful.”
There are ways to effectively hold space for people, as we do for ourselves, but we shouldn’t compromise our own space to give someone else space. If we feel stressed, anxious, reactive, or like we don’t have bandwidth–we are responsible to own it. When we make physical space for someone to confide in us but can’t be present in that moment, it makes the person feel unsafe and doesn’t encourage them to want to share with us in the future.
5 Basic Ingredients for Listening:
Don’t multitask listening. Face the person and hold eye contact.
When we’re talking to someone and they’re scanning the room, studying their computer screen, or gazing out of the window, it can be very distracting. We feel safer to share when someone is giving us their undivided attention and so the number one step: put phones away when listening.
Be non-judgmental, in both thoughts and response.
It’s key to listen without judging the person that’s speaking and not mentally criticizing what they’re saying. If what they say alarms us, we can go ahead and be alarmed but it’s important to not say to ourselves, “well, that's stupid”. As soon as we indulge in that type of listening, we’ve compromised our effectiveness as a listener.
Stay open-minded and willing to learn.
Listen without jumping to conclusions. Remember the speaker is using language that expresses their thoughts and feelings and we don’t know what their thoughts and feelings are. The only way we’re going to understand their thoughts and feelings is by actively listening.
Block out distractions.
This is really important. Block out the sounds out of the window or even own running thoughts and feelings as we listen. Put that long to-do list that’s waiting to the side for now.
Don’t finish other people’s thoughts.
Don’t be a sentence grabber. There are times where we can’t slow our mental pace so we’ll speed up that person by finishing their sentence and interrupting them. What happens is we end up following our own train of thought and not the person we’re listening to.
Nobody deserves tough love.
“Tough love is a mask for not being able to hold space, not knowing what to say, and for lacking empathy.”
I grew up in a family where tough love was our way of loving one another but today, we have more tools than our parents did. Tough love isn’t real and nobody needs it. It’s a mask for not being able to hold space, not knowing what to say, and for lacking empathy. As I grew older, I started embodying these traits and in fact, the more I loved someone, the tougher I would be on them. It’s damaging and harmful. We need to recognize that we don’t know where someone's mental status is and it can be very negatively impactful to them to “suck it up”. Be mindful of when these tough love characteristics that we have learned come up and remember: it's not actually a form of love, it's quite opposite to that.
Avoid saying things like:
“Get over it.”
“Get it together.”
“You should have…”
“You shouldn’t have…”
So, what are some supportive sayings that we can say that are helpful? How can we show support without fixing it, minimizing it, or having to put a silver lining on anything? Oftentimes, when people share, they don’t want the silver lining. They want us to understand how tough what they’re going through is.
Try saying things like:
“This really sucks, doesn’t it?”
“It makes so much sense to feel how you feel.”
“I totally hear you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you for feeling this way.”
“I see how hard you’re trying.”
“What else feels important to share about this?”
“Tell me more about what it’s like for you.”
“I can’t fix it but I can be with you in it.”
“I’m here.”
When listening, our goals are to remind our loved ones that they aren’t alone without taking on the responsibility of changing the situation. How do we show care without demanding that once we listen, they’re supposed to feel “better” or different by the end of the conversation? The goal is to be with them in their sorrow or joy and not expect for them to change how they feel.
Don’t focus on saying the right thing.
It’s not always about saying the right thing. It’s about just being with the person. Listening is about being, not doing. It’s about centering the experience of the person in front of us and compassionately being with them in it. Feel curious, pay attention, and release the need for control. That creates more presence, which creates more connection, which then creates a feeling greater than any saying or “right” phrase that we try to memorize. Be conscious, be attentive, be empathetic. That will make it feel right.
Our job as a listener.
People don’t need or want to be fixed. People want to feel heard or seen. Our job is to be there for the person and make space to listen to them. Our job as a listener is not to take away their pain or fix their problem. Our job as the listener is to support their intuition, knowledge, and wisdom—and trust that they can take care of themselves and their needs. Our job is to be mindful of our responses and defenses while listening.
“People don’t need or want to be fixed. People want to feel heard and seen.”
How can I make space for others and myself?
Holding space provides such a deep honor and respect to that person, and being able to hold space for ourselves while we hold them isn’t as easy as it may sound. We need to engage in radical acceptance and put all parts of that person and ourselves in containers. This includes refraining from fixing anything, observing without judgment and not taking on that person’s pain.
Listening is enough.
Since 2015, I have held space for people in different types of cultures across the world, and what I’ve found is that listening is enough. While it's natural for us to want to fix something and give people our opinion, when we create vulnerable spaces where we listen, we find that people become stronger from simply being heard and having their experience validated. Listening can even help someone in the midst of a mental health crisis.
My favorite way of check and balancing if I’m doing the right thing as a listener includes asking myself these questions:
What do others say to me that makes me feel good?
What do others say to me that makes me feel bad?
What kind of phrases have comforted me?
When do I feel like I’m being heard?
When do I feel safe to share?
Who holds this space for me?
When we start thinking of these things and start visualizing the people who make this space for us, we can mimic what they’ve done and pass it along to others. Think: when have I shared and felt affirmed?
Tips on how to be a good listener:
Self-awareness: Understanding our own style of communication.
Good communication requires a high level of self-awareness. Listening has a lot more to do with us than the other person.
Mindfulness: Practice focusing so we can be active listening, not just agreeing.
Be aware that listening can give others the impression that we agree with them even if we don't, so it's important to avoid seeming to simply agree with someone. How many times have we been in a situation where we’re telling someone something and they’re nodding and we feel like they’re with us to then realize they’re not even listening? Actively listen and don’t just agree with the person to just get through the moment.
Ask questions: If we don’t understand them, we can clarify instead of assuming what they're saying.
If we find that we’re responding emotionally to something someone says, we can feel free to ask for more info. Don’t sit with the assumptions. We can say “I may not be understanding you correctly and I find myself taking this personally. What I thought you said was this thing, is that what you meant?”. It gives space for the person who’s sharing to clarify what they mean vs. us sitting in our own assumption and then that domino effecting into us getting into our feelings and not listening to anything they’re saying.
Listening is about being present with someone.
If we're unable to be present, we can own it–there’s nothing wrong with not showing up for someone but there is harm to showing up and being in our own emotions, defenses, and stories—and then not be able to give that space. Ultimately, listening is a muscle and the more we listen, the more we’re able to listen. And the more we hold space, the more space we’re able to hold.