Listening is a Hard & Radical Thing (in which I talk about my experiences)

[untonuggan]

Confession time: when I'm depressed or upset, I read a lot of Thich Nhat Hanh and Ajahn Chah and other Buddhist teachers. I don't know if "enjoy" is the right word, but I obviously get something out of it because I keep coming back to books like Being Peace and Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung? However, I know that topics like Meditation and Buddhism are triggery for some folks, so I'm just going to add a disclaimer here that I may talk about those things here in a positive light, but I'm talking about them for me as a good thing and I'm not saying you have to rush out and join a Buddhist Monastery or something, or even adopt this as a general practice in your everyday life. If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. Brains are different things.

Now that's out of the way, here's a quote from one of the piles of books about Buddhism about listening I thought is relevant to yesterday's post about my boundaries (note: not everyone's boundaries) and the listening/advice line:

In everyday life, deep listening, attentive listening, is a meditation. If you know the practice of mindful breathing, if you wish to maintain calm and living compassion within you, then deep listening will be possible.

Through the practice of walking meditation, through mindful breathing, we can cultivate calm, we can cultivate awareness, and we can cultivate compassion -- and that way we will be able to sit there and listen to the other. The other suffers as long as [she] is in need of someone to listen to [her]; and you -- you are [a] person who can do it....

If we love someone we should train in being able to listen. By listening with calm and understanding, we can ease the suffering of another person.

Hanh, Thich Nhat, True Love, Shambhala Publications (2004) 36-37.

 

 

When I read this quote the first time, and several others like it, I got *very uncomfortable*. My desire and urge, upon hearing that someone has a problem - particularly a problem that I Know Something About - is to rush in and Fix Things. Because surely there are things that can be fixed, yes? And fixing things makes things better, which means the person wouldn't have a problem anymore, which means that then Ta Da! I would both be a wonderful problem-solver person and also there would be no more problems that I would have to listen to.

That realization, along with a couple of advice/sympathy comments from friends and having them set rather firm boundaries, helped me reexamine some of my own decisions about whether nor not I was going to offer advice unasked for. (True confessions: I still do sometimes. It just slips out. More often this is face-to-face when I don't have a moment to think before I hit "post" or "send", but sometimes, Dear Dreamwidth, lizcommotion is just not perfect and that is okay too.)

You know what? In our society, it is frelling hard work and radical to just sit and listen to someone who is upset and not try to fix it. To not suggest a yoga class for depression (how many times have I heard this zomg?) or some magazine article in Vogue for a chronic health problem. Or even - and this one is the toughest - to not offer what is actually probably really actually good advice because I might have a degree in something or actual expertise, because someone is not ready to hear it.

It is really hard to sit with someone's suffering. To just offer love and compassion and understanding instead of solutions, whether real or imagined. But you know what? My friends and family are pretty frelling awesome. This is a thing I can do. So I offer it, however imperfectly, with an open heart.

Comments

[ofearthandstars]

What a beautiful post. I think I have been practicing in the last few months how to pause and really listen. I deal with a certain level of in-head distractedness that frequently invades my conversations (and other work), and I found that I was often trying to come up with answers and advice when I should have been... absorbing. Sometimes, it really just is about hearing and listening and letting those words and emotions bubble to the surface.

(FWIW, I have shelves of Buddhist books that I read, not so much because I am a practicing Buddhist and/or that I meditate regularly, but Buddhism has helped me to grope with a lot of the struggles in my life.)

[untonuggan]

Glad you liked the post!

I have trouble with the in-head distraction as well. It's like suddenly, "Wait, did I leave the kettle on???"

(Makes total sense to me.)

[zcat_abroad]

Oh, that's so me! I get distracted by the first thing that passes...

[untonuggan]

Sorry, what?

;)

[jelazakazone]

Like you, when I hear/see a problem, I am often rushing in to offer solutions (ESPECIALLY WITH MY KIDS). The irony here is that I have actual honest to god training NOT TO DO THAT. When I was a LLL leader (peer-to-peer breastfeeding counseling) we were told NOT to give advice. Ever. We were to empathize, build a connection, and offer information. I find it much easier to do with people I'm not emotionally wrapped up.

DH has been hounding me that I am parenting all wrong (he may not actually be doing this, but this is my perception). I think I need to start the day with the mantra that I am not going to give advice. To anyone. Unless they put my feet to the fire:D

Thank you for this. I think you are right, we are so acculturated to goals and solutions, we forget that the path is just as important (didn't you say something about that when we were chatting?).

Lovely post.

Oh, and with regards to replies, if spoons are low, know that I do not keep track of who replies to what. Feel free to never reply if you don't have the energy or desire. Unless I am expecting an answer about getting together, which is usually through email, not DW comments. <3

[untonuggan]

This is a lovely response, thank you. :D

[brigid]

It's interesting that you mention parenting. I know that I, as a parent, try to lead my kid (4 yo) to solutions rather than provide solutions. IT. IS. SO. HARD. It's WAAAAAY easier to do things FOR him, to just TELL HIM, to just FIX HIM. But he needs to learn how to think for himself and learn etc. So I bite my tongue a lot. So... you're not the only parent trying not to give kid advice. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

[jelazakazone]

*high fives you* Thanks. I think a lot of us struggle with this or there wouldn't be an entire industry built up around it:D

If you are interested, my husband is a big fan of Jane Nelsen's Positive Discipline.

It's good to get in the mindset now. My kids are 8 and 11.

[syntaxofthings]

(like) (no brain for comment)

[untonuggan]

*hugs*

Triggers: bullying, abuse!

[shanaqui]

Being the daughter of an autistic-spectrum engineer and a work-consumed doctor, you can imagine how easy I find this kind of listening. "Problems must have solutions or why talk about them?" might be our family motto (if it wasn't "crow not, croak not"). And people have tended to value me for that problem-solving nature, in my life. That and the fact that a secret is a secret, with me, and the only person who gets to know about a secret I'm told other than me is my other half (which I make sure is understood before anyone tells me a secret). I have maybe three friends who've stuck with me through my human inability to offer a solution for everything -- the rest have peeled off. And the three is counting a fairly recent friend, so who knows if she'll stick with me, but I think I trust her.

So... for me, it's not just hard work or radical not to offer advice. It goes against every survival instinct I have, it's written on my goddamn bones. It's "sun, don't shine" and "water, don't be wet". It actively triggers me into a panic attack when I don't know what to say, because it means I'm not of use and I'll be discarded. And probably laughed at for bothering to date because didn't I know I was being used?

(Or, if it's my parents demanding solutions, I won't be abandoned or laughed at -- I'll be hit and told I'm a useless fucking waste of space.)

So I loved reading your post and I am making a mental note to read True Love. And... I respectfully request that when I offer unsolicited advice, as I'm sure I do and will and probably won't even know I'm doing because my brain will try to couch it in ways that won't sound like advice, please tell me I am doing it. Not necessarily right away, when I've upset you, obviously. Not necessarily in detail. Just "Unsolicited advice, back off" as a reply to whatever comment works. I don't want to hurt you.

And if you can, do it with love, because my god am I screwed up. *wry smile*

(This is not just directed at you, of course; methinks I should make a post about this while the topic's floating around and it's on my mind.)

Re: Triggers: bullying, abuse!

[untonuggan]

♥

Thank you so much for your response. I am really glad that you honored me enough to share this, and I will do my best to remember that this is floating around in your headspace when we're interacting.

And because I don't want to hurt you -- on your journal space, do you prefer the radical listening approach, the advice approach, or something else entirely? If you don't have a strict preference that is all good, but I figure since we're doing the listening-equivalent of checking gender pronouns it wouldn't hurt to ask...

*very very gentle hugs, with much appreciation*

Re: Triggers: bullying, abuse!

[shanaqui]

♥

I'm not sure. Thank you for asking, though. I think generally advice is okay; if I really don't want it, I'll say.

*hugs back*

Re: Triggers: bullying, abuse!

[untonuggan]

Good to know. If you do feel offended by advice, just please let me know, and we'll work it out. Because healthy boundaries make good relationships.

Thank you, again, for your response. *gentle hugs*

Re: Triggers: bullying, abuse!

[jelazakazone]

I have another friend who has voiced similar thoughts/feelings to me. That she feels her only worth in a friendship is what she can do for someone. That notion is equally radical to me. And shocking.

Not sure if I'm making any sense here, but I was so struck by your comment, I had to say something. Yay for awareness. It's the first step:D

[eruanna]

I like this. I've been on both sides of this. Good things to keep in mind.

[untonuggan]

Yeah, it's...tricky to navigate, on any side, I think. Because people come from such different backgrounds and have such different ways of communicating? So yes.

[spaceoperadiva]

Thanks. I shall meditate on this. :)

[untonuggan]

:)

[alee_grrl]

This post is wonderful, as are many of the comments and discussions in the threads above. What really resonated with me was the idea of learning to articulate your needs and boundaries and communicate them to your friends and be open to them communicating their own needs and boundaries back. The compassion and understanding flowing around this post is amazing. :)

[untonuggan]

Thank you for articulating so beautifully what I feel about the wonderful conversation that has come up around this topic.

[staranise]

Daniel Siegel does a lot of linking up of mindfulness and biopsychology. He explains that mindfulness and mindful attunement is so hard because, when we truly perceive another person's emotional state, it activates the parts of the brain associated with that state in our own heads; if you see someone in pain and empathize with them, you feel that pain too. And in an effort to ease your own pain, you try to fix the other person's. (Recent demonstration: Rats find altruism tastier than chocolate)

As a therapist, one of the hardest and best skills I'm developing is the ability to open up attunement both ways, so the client can see that I'm empathizing with them, and begin resonating back; so if they can experience me experiencing that emotion but being able to tolerate it, they can begin to tolerate it in themselves. It's about to be my no. 1 concern, since I'm working with kids as young as 3, who have very little ability to talk about their emotions--they might not ever be aware that we're doing more than playing, but we're counting on the actual physical experience of empathic attunement to regulate and repair their brains' emotional regulation systems. Which, in my mind, is wild: having an empathetic adult who can validate and contain the child's emotions heals their brains. No advice necessary.

But even with all that training, I struggle a lot to be empathetic to my friends. It's tiring and hard and itchy and hurts sometimes. It's a lot of why I've been so hermity lately; I feel so agitated to begin with that opening up to anyone else agitates me more, because I expect to have to be the person doing the empathizing and reaching out (thanks for that, trauma!). It's really weird and hard in new ways to not run my normal self-censoring subroutines that make sure I'm talking about things that are interesting and relevant, or that I'm displaying the right social signals, because I'm too tired to run them, and to try reaching out to people anyway. I have a lot of experience with that failing utterly, which is really discouraging. I'm still surprised every time friends reach out and catch me.

[shehasathree]

I've had this sitting open in a tab since you posted it.
I relate.