A True & Effective Healer Listens

The empathic listening that makes you feel seen and heard.

Series from Eyes Wide Open: How to Avoid Getting Re-Traumatized While Seeking Help on the Healing Journey.

True Listening is the presence and the skill to make people feel heard and seen. It’s one of 10 essential traits your health practitioner or facilitator of healing should possess.

These installments are part of a series, but can be read in any order.

Dear Kindred Spirit,

Do you remember the moment when you suddenly realized you were heard, when you felt like you actually took up space, and were truly seen?

Photo by Ryk Naves on Unsplash, A singing Carolina wren

I’ll never forget

She was my 8th grade English teacher. Her name was Mrs. Douglas, and she loved my writing.

I approached her desk to talk to her after class, one day. I don’t remember what about. I just remember her looking at me, intently, as I talked, as if what I was saying was too important to allow a single word slip past her. I was struck by how clear her blue eyes were, and how perfectly dark her pupil was in the sky that was her iris.

And they were looking at me.

She didn’t hurry me out the door. She wasn’t thinking about the bell that was bound to ring soon, or the students who would be entering the room. Everything around her was put on pause.

I was speaking.

When you’re used to feeling invisible, being heard or seen can make you feel like the deer trapped in headlights. It’s terrifying. Or you may feel like a withered plant in a sudden rain, for which you are grateful.

You may feel both things, simultaneously.

One thing’s for sure. You’re not likely to ever forget it.

Vacuous listening

Being able to listen, to make a person feel seen and heard, isn’t just a skill set. It’s also about presence. Mrs. Douglas was present, and her presence created the space where it was safe to speak. She honored that space by entering into it with me.  

You can be trained to look like you’re listening. You can learn the techniques of knowing the right things to say and do, how to hold your body, what verbal and physical cues to use to let a person know you’re listening, repeating back or paraphrasing what they said, and so on.

If someone employs these skills, and you feel unsatisfied with the interaction, you may feel confused. You don’t feel what you said was understood or received. Maybe it’s you, you think. Maybe you didn’t express yourself well enough.

That may or may not be true, but whether or not it is, the true listening of another doesn’t rely on your elocution. Listening begins with the listener, their attentiveness, being present, and asking for clarification, if needed, especially in a therapeutic setting. [This last sentence edited for clarification of the original short, ambiguous sentence.]

When I worked in the mental health system, we were required to attend trainings run by social workers, nurses, therapists and professors. In conversations I had had with a few of them, sometimes I felt like I was conversing with a textbook. They said the appropriate things, they nodded their heads and um-hummed in the right places, but I felt like they were listening for cues for the next appropriate thing to say, more than listening to what I was saying.  

I call this vacuous listening. These trainers were so detached there was a palpable distance between us, that even the best techniques couldn’t bridge.

Professional objectivity and healthy boundaries do not mean the space a practitioner holds for you should be a vacuum.

True listening requires moving in a little closer.

Pseudo listening

Then there’s pseudo listening, which is not listening, while wanting to appear that you are listening. Pseudo listening is bit easier on the surface to spot than vacuous listening.

Pseudo listening can also be formulaic. It’s coming to the table with a briefcase full of prescribed responses or a boho bag of notes from their latest alternative healing seminar.

Pseudo listening can look like distraction, multitasking, or impatience, and eyes that only momentarily land on you before flitting away.

Pseudo listening is listening to just enough of your story, so they can use it as a springboard to dive into what they want to say. It’s like you’re an in-the-flesh journal prompt for them to use in their processing.

Pseudo listening is speaking over you, or interrupting you, or rushing in before you have a chance to put a period at the end of your spoken sentence.

You may be used to this kind of distracted or interruptive listening from some friends, acquaintances, family, or coworkers, but it has no place in a therapeutic relationship.

There are times when a well-placed interruption is necessary. When a health practitioner or empathic listener stops you for a moment for clarification, either for themselves or for you. They may interrupt you to make you aware of an unproductive pattern, like getting caught up in ruminating or self-defeating thinking.

But these interruptions are focused on you and your well-being. Not on them.

The impact of not listening

As survivors, it can be really hard to share our story, even when we want to or are ready to. Our throats tighten, our pulse starts to race. We may sweat or stammer. We may struggle with the anxiety of saying the wrong thing, or saying the right thing but in a wrong way, or saying too much, or not enough.

We may fear being judged, or not believed, or dismissed. We may feel unsafe, anticipating punishment that will come out of nowhere, but threatens us everywhere.

Sharing our story is a big thing. It can be cathartic. But when we take that chance to speak up, and still feel unheard and unseen, it can have a shaming effect. It can send us back into silence.

Changing your trajectory, maybe your life

Being heard is so powerful, it can change the trajectory of your life. Realizing you were heard and seen can dawn on you over time or hit you, all at once, in real time. However you reach it, this realization can be the turning point where you are never the same.

Even if you go back to an environment where others make you feel invisible, there’s really no going back. You can’t un-know something that’s so life-affirming that it reaches through all the layers of self-protection, and touches you.

People in your old environment may not change toward you. You may remain invisible to them, but that you were seen by someone, who responded to you and respected you, is the beginning of you seeing yourself through more compassionate and honest eyes.

This plants the seeds to creating a whole new relationship with yourself.

And that changes everything.

What Being Heard Tells You About Yourself

Another gift, that often comes as a surprise, is other people’s reaction to what you say. These reactions can help you realize the reality behind what may have been gaslighted into a normal narrative for you.

Raised eyebrows expressing surprise, a click of the tongue, the shaking of head in disbelief or anger, the look of incredulity on their face, and simple phrases like, “Oh, my God”, or “Really?”, or “I’m sorry”, or “I’m so furious for you” can be real eye openers.

These reactions said, “This isn’t normal”.

They also said I deserved better.

And I did.

And so do you. 

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Being heard and seen is essential to healing. Whomever you work with must be able to offer you this.

What you think and feel matters. If any part of your abuse involved being dismissed or shut down in any way, you want to make sure the relationship you have with your health practitioner or facilitator of healing doesn’t replicate that dynamic.

Find someone who can genuinely receive your words and your story, and make you genuinely feel heard and seen.

Was there a person or event that made you become visible, where you felt seen and heard? How did that affect you? I’d love to hear and hold the space for your thoughts in the comments below!

From my heart to yours,

Demian Elaine’ Yumei~Silent No More