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Authors: Michael P. Nichols

The Lost Art of Listening

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The Lost Art of Listening

The Lost Art

of Listening


How Learning to Listen

Can Improve Relationships

SeCond edItIon

Michael P. nichols

tHe GUILFoRd PReSS

New York London

© 2009 Michael P. Nichols

Published by The Guilford Press

A Division of Guilford Publications, Inc.

72 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012

www.guilford.com

All rights reserved

The information in this volume is not intended as a substitute for

consultation with healthcare professionals. Each individual’s health

concerns should be evaluated by a qualified professional.

No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or

otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nichols, Michael P.

The lost art of listening : how learning to listen can improve

relationships / Michael P. Nichols. — 2nd. ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-60623-064-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-59385-986-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Listening. 2. Interpersonal relations. 3. Interpersonal

communication. I. Title.

BF323.L5N53 2009

153.6′8—dc22

2008054617

Contents

Contents

Introduction

1

Part One


The Yearning to Be Understood

1

“Did You Hear What I Said?”
:

9

Why Listening Is So Important

2

“Thanks for Listening”
:

25

How Listening Shapes Us and Connects Us to Each Other

3

“Why Don’t People Listen?”
:

42

How Communication Breaks Down

Part Two


The Real Reasons People Don’t Listen

4

“When Is It
My
Turn?”

The Heart of Listening:

73

The Struggle to Suspend Our Own Needs

5

“You Hear Only What You Want to Hear”
:

96

How Hidden Assumptions Prejudice Listening

6

“Why Do You Always Overreact?!”:

111

How Emotionality Makes Us Defensive

v

vi
Contents

Part Three


Getting Through to Each Other

7

“Take Your Time—I’m Listening”:

139

How to Let Go of Your Own Needs and Listen

8

“I Never Knew You Felt That Way”:

157

Empathy Begins with Openness

9

“I Can See This Is Really Upsetting You”:

176

How to Defuse Emotional Reactivity

Part Four


Listening in Context

10
“We Never Talk Anymore”:

205

Listening Between Intimate Partners

11
“Nobody around Here Ever Listens to Me!”:

235

How to Listen and Be Heard within the Family

12
From “Do I
Have
To?” to “That’s Not Fair!”:

252

Listening to Children and Teenagers

13
“I Knew
You’d
Understand”:

280

Being Able to Hear Friends and Colleagues

Epilogue

304

Index

309

About the Author

314

Introduction

Introduction

Introduction

Nothing hurts more than the sense that the people we care about aren’t

really listening. We never outgrow the need to have our feelings known.

That’s why a sympathetic ear is such a powerful force in human relation-

ships—and why the failure to be understood is so painful.

My ideas about listening have been sharpened by thirty-five years as

a psychoanalyst and family therapist. Refereeing arguments between inti-

mate partners, coaching parents to communicate with their children, and

struggling myself to sustain empathy as my patients faced their demons

has led me to the conclusion that much of the conflict in our lives can be

explained by one simple fact: people don’t really listen to each other.

Talking without listening is like snipping an electrical cord in half

and hoping that somehow something will light up. Most of the time, of

course, we don’t deliberately set out to break the connection. In fact, we’re

often baffled and dismayed by feeling left in the dark.

Modern culture has developed conceptions of individualism that

picture us finding our own bearings within, declaring independence from

the webs of interlocution that formed us. It’s as though when we become

finished persons we outgrow our need for attention, like training wheels.

All this is not to say that we can’t be autonomous, in the sense of being

self- directing, even original, able to think and act on our own. But we

cannot escape the human condition and become secure and satisfied with-

out conversation— conversation in a broad sense, meaning some kind of

interchange with others.

1

2
Introduction

Contemporary pressures have, regrettably, shrunk our attention spans

and impoverished the quality of listening in our lives. We live in hurried

times, when dinner is something you zap in the microwave and keeping

up with the latest books and movies means reading the reviews. That’s all

we’ve got time for. Running to and from our many obligations, we get a

lot of practice in not listening. When we’re in the car and the radio is on,

sometimes it’s interesting and we pay attention, other times we have to

concentrate on the road or we get sidetracked with a thought, and minutes

go by without our hearing a word of what was said. When we’re watching

TV and the commercials come on, half the time we don’t hear a thing.

We’re bombarded with so many images—from television, e-mail, junk

mail, the Internet, cell phones, BlackBerrys, iPods, pagers, faxes—that our

attention is fractionated. We like to think we’re good at multitasking. We

check our e-mail while talking on the phone. We look for things to buy

in catalogues while watching TV. We fool ourselves into thinking that we

can do more than one thing at a time. The truth is that we just end up

doing one thing after another poorly.

We’ve gained unparalleled access to information and lost something

very important. We’ve lost the habit of concentrating our attention. From

pop music at the gym to commercials on TV and radio, we’re bombarded

with so much noise that we’ve become experts at tuning things out. If a

television show doesn’t grab our attention in the first two minutes, we

change the channel; if we’re listening to someone who doesn’t get right to

something we’re interested in, we tune out.

In the limited time we still preserve for family and friends, conversa-

tion is often preempted by soothing and passive distractions. Too tired to

talk and listen, we settle instead for the lulling charms of electronic devices

that project pictures, make music, or bleep across display screens. Is it this

way of life that’s made us forget how to listen? Perhaps. But maybe the

modern approach to life is the effect rather than the cause of the decline of

meaningful discourse. Maybe we lead this kind of life because we’re seek-

ing some sort of solace, something to counteract the dimming of the spirit

we feel when no one is listening.

How we lost the art of listening is certainly a matter for debate. What

isn’t debatable is that the loss leaves us with an ever- widening hole in

our lives. It might take the form of a vague sense of discontent, sadness,

Introduction
3

or deprivation. We miss the consolation of lending an attentive ear and

of receiving the same in return, but we don’t know what’s wrong or how

to fix it. Over time this lack of listening impoverishes our most important

relationships. We hurt each other unnecessarily by failing to acknowledge

what the other one has to say. Whatever the arena, our hearts experience

the failure to be heard as an absence of concern.

Conflict doesn’t necessarily disappear when we acknowledge each

other’s point of view, but it’s almost certain to get worse if we don’t. So

why don’t we take time to hear each other? Because the simple art of lis-

tening isn’t so simple.

Often it’s a burden. Not, perhaps, the perfunctory attention we grant

as part of the give-and-take of everyday life. But the sustained attention

of careful listening—that takes strenuous and unselfish restraint. To listen

well we must forget ourselves and submit to the other person’s need for

attention.

While some people may be easier to listen to than others, conversa-

tions take place between two people, both of whom contribute to the out-

come. Unfortunately, when we fail to get through to each other, we have a

tendency to fall back on blaming. It’s his fault: he’s selfish and insensitive.

Or it’s my fault: I’m too dependent or don’t express myself well.

Most failures of understanding are not due to self- absorption or bad

faith, but to our own need to say something. We tend to react to what

is said, rather than concentrating on what the other person is trying to

express. Emotional reactions make us respond without thinking and crowd

out understanding and concern. Each of us has characteristic ways of

reacting defensively. We don’t hear what’s said because something in the

speaker’s message triggers hurt, anger, or impatience.

Unfortunately, all the advice in the world about “active listening”

can’t overcome the maddening tendency to react defensively to each

BOOK: The Lost Art of Listening
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