On being listened to
A few thoughts on the difference between being listened to and being given advice — and why, most of the time, the first is what we actually need.
There was a woman who came to me weekly. We agreed on nothing — she wanted advice, I didn’t give any; she wanted recipes, I didn’t have any. After about three months she told me, almost angry: “but you don’t do anything, I’m talking to myself.” I smiled and said “yes.”
Two weeks later she came back and told me she’d left the job she’d been in for five years. That she had known it from our first session — she just hadn’t had anywhere to hear it.
That, as far as I’ve come to understand, is what I do.
People often think that to help means to say what is to be done. I’ve arrived at a gentler, almost opposite view: to help, most of the time, means to make room. To sit in a way that lets the person across from you hear themselves.
It isn’t passivity. It’s a very active form of attention. If you’ve ever tried to listen to someone without preparing, under the table, your reply — you know how much effort it takes.
The difference is felt. When someone listens to you like this, what’s been circling in your head comes out faster. Not because the other is manipulating you. Because, at last, you have a place where you can.
I’m writing this because — still — people ask me “but what do you do, exactly?” And the short answer, which I’ve learned to give without defending myself, is this: I make room. With theta, with the cards, with silence. Depends on the day.