The Power of Listening: you don't have to fix...

Simply listening can be enough to support someone. This one often comes up in close relationships. Feelings of responsibility can rattle and pinball around between two people: parents and children, boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, close friends.

“You feeling bad makes me feel bad, so I need to fix it, or at least offer possible solutions. I can’t just sit here and watch you suffer.”

But what if you could?

Seeing someone we love in distress will always be difficult, uncomfortable, painful.

Especially if that person is your child or your parent. The natural instinct to protect is fierce. The idea that your child or your parent is feeling sad and lonely is a hard one to accept. Equally, it’s hard to reject the idea that life inevitably contains distress and discomfort and pain. There will be moments of loneliness, anxiety, anger, frustration, sadness, loss, misery. Life is a mixed lot.

Of course we can pretend that such things don’t exist. We can say that everything is fine and easy, and it’s all going great, and busy busy thanks. And maybe sometimes it is, but it’s also quite likely that sometimes it isn’t.

We can try to avoid or we can perform or mask. And if that’s our default setting, sitting with someone in a rough place is likely to be harder. It will be uncomfortable to feel powerless, to just witness suffering.

Sometimes though, just bearing witness can be what’s needed: validation through acknowledgement, just sitting with someone’s distress or frustration or anger. Allowing them to express it out loud to someone who is listening, hearing, maybe reflecting a little.

But effectively saying nothing at all in response, not saying anything in an attempt to fix or solve or be constructive. Because that’s probably not what the other person wants. In that moment, lost in a confusing thought pattern loop, they just want someone to hear them, someone to affirm that the place where they are is rough. That it’s difficult, and a lot of pressure.

Psychotherapists and counsellors are trained to allow silence, and carefully select moments to speak. Although in some sessions, often first sessions with a client, it can feel like we barely speak at all because so much is pouring out all over the place. And that needs to happen as a natural part of the process.

Out in the wilds of unsafe spaces, people tend to operate on default communication setting that's weighted either towards transmit or receive. That is, to readily talk and broadcast their unsolicited views, even if it's "they say it's going to be raining again tomorrow" or to be quiet, more tentative, to listen, perhaps to be curious and ask questions. The idea of passively listening can be hard because it removes an urge to influence or control that can be incredibly strong and well-established, especially if faced with a loved one in some turmoil.

It can be challenged though, even if only for a short few minutes. And it can be effective in comforting someone and offering relief. There is a true power in listening, in silence, in not doing very much at all: just giving offering full attention and acknowledging that something is stressful or anxiety-inducing, scary or unpleasant.