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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.)

♥

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*

♥

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*

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*

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

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

Triggers: bullying, abuse!

Re: Triggers: bullying, abuse!

Re: Triggers: bullying, abuse!

Re: Triggers: bullying, abuse!

Re: Triggers: bullying, abuse!