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How to be a good listener

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Re: How to be a good listener

#81

Post by red_admiral »

elevaet wrote: post #14

> 5. Don’t relate. I see this recommendation all the time, but I know I do it all the time, and personally I often _like_ it when other people do it to me. Sometimes it's nice to commiserate or share a connection on a similar experience, and maybe even learn from what the other person already went through. Does anyone else question this common piece of advice? Can't relating be useful if it's not being used to steer…

I guess this is advice specifically for if you're a therapist, or a not-really-a-therapist-but-acting-as-one such as a manager trying to support an upset employee. The distinguishing part of these conversations is they're not symmetrical - the focus is supposed to be on one person much more than the other.

(Maybe "if they're crying, don't relate" would be a more focused heuristic.)

In an everyday "you've met someone and want to get to know them better" situation, relating sounds like a good thing all round: they share something about themselves, you share back with something related about yourself.

Re: How to be a good listener

#82

Post by jodrellblank »

madhir wrote: post #10
kelseyfrog wrote: post #7

As someone who went out of their way and studied being a good listener, none of these are wrong, but I don't see it as being the best way of learning how to be a good listener. Reading about how to be a good listener can only get someone so far - watching someone demonstrate it and talking about it is the surest way to understand what it means. Specifically, Reflective listening[1], Clean language[2], and the approac…

> watching someone demonstrate it and talking about it is the surest way to understand what it means Do you happen to have links to any example videos demonstrating this or are you referring to in person examples

Dr Burns' Feeling Good Podcast has examples of listening to people, possibly not the same exact thing the parent comment means, but his T.E.A.M.S CBT therapy stands for "Testing, Empathy, ..." and Empathy is where the patient tells their problem, and the therapist has to communicate that they heard it and empathise with it. Otherwise if the therapist does a "yeah ok got that, let's move on" the patient will get stuck not wanting to move on and keep going back over what's wrong, thinking the therapist isn't properly understanding why they are there. [Happens in life elsewhere, e.g. if you complain to a company and get a generic 'sorry' and you feel like you haven't been heard and try complaining again. Whereas if you feel heard and understood, you don't need to try complaining again]. There's a ton of his podcasts and this comes up in many of them; some talking about it:

    003 on E=Empathy
    014 on The Five Secrets of Effective Communication
    066 on The Five Secrets part 2 - Disarming people (by showing that you hear them)
Some demonstrating / using / modelling it:

    029 and 030 a recording of a therapy session with Mark
    049 recording of a therapy session with Marilyn
    other 'live sessions'
Detailed Database of podcasts: https://feelinggood.com/podcast-database/

Re: How to be a good listener

#83

Post by vampiresdoexist »

I agree with “don’t relate” as a general concept, but I had to stop shortly after reading this:

“There are two reasons a person redirects the conversation/attention back to himself: (1) the person is deeply self-centered and incapable of processing information about anyone unless it relates to him. It’s likely this person is cripplingly insecure, and therefore his worry about himself has turned into his only functioning pathway to the world. Or possibly this person is a sociopath.”

I know the author goes on to state a more benign reason as the second reason.

But opening with the possibility that someone is a sociopath for over-relating is wild. I’d expect the child of a therapist would choose their words with more purpose and with their intended meaning.

Re: How to be a good listener

#85

Post by greenie_beans »

CipherThrowaway wrote: post #78
greenie_beans wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the exact opposite of my takeaway from the memoir. that book was written with intense love and i encourage anybody to read it, one of the best books to come out in a decade.

The two things we said aren't conflicting.

it appears you took the tabloid stuff and ran with it as a reason to disregard anything she says due to mental illness. at least that's how your first comment seems. including all of your comments against her in this post, you clearly have a bone to pick and i disagree with all of them. but that's all i'm gonna say about that, except, maybe you should listen to what she has to say in the article and also read the book "molly" by blake butler and have your views on love challenged.

Re: How to be a good listener

#86

Post by stared »

elevaet wrote: post #14

> 5. Don’t relate. I see this recommendation all the time, but I know I do it all the time, and personally I often _like_ it when other people do it to me. Sometimes it's nice to commiserate or share a connection on a similar experience, and maybe even learn from what the other person already went through. Does anyone else question this common piece of advice? Can't relating be useful if it's not being used to steer…

In my case, relating is what makes me felt listened and understood. I feel that by "relating" many people mean "comparing" - and this one is annoying.

At the same time, I cannot stand "it must be hard" or similar platitudes, which can be given without any context; these would not even need ChatGPT but can be generated by a simple Python script.

Re: How to be a good listener

#88

Post by sooheon »

CipherThrowaway wrote: post #64
mvkel wrote: post #21

I went through a yearlong coaching program and one of the modules was learning how to listen. Imagine a friend tells you about a situation where their dad is starting to show signs of dementia and the strain it's putting on them as a caretaker. Level 1 listening (you're focused on yourself): - "Oh my dad had dementia, too. It's awful." Level 2 listening (you're focused on them, but parroting): - "caring for a parent…

Personally, I find 2 and 3 to be creepy and robotic. 3 also feels intrusive. The conscious analysis of tone and body language is obviously important for many people to get by socially, especially for neurodiverse people or people outside the norm of the situation. However, I think it is important to avoid remarking directly on body language. You can still let these non-verbal observations guide a conversation, of cou…

Level 4 is noticing the same things as 3 but not calling attention to it so conspicuously and presumptuously.

Re: How to be a good listener

#89

Post by [deleted] »

elevaet wrote: post #14

> 5. Don’t relate. I see this recommendation all the time, but I know I do it all the time, and personally I often _like_ it when other people do it to me. Sometimes it's nice to commiserate or share a connection on a similar experience, and maybe even learn from what the other person already went through. Does anyone else question this common piece of advice? Can't relating be useful if it's not being used to steer…

[deleted]
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