On Listening

Reading Alain de Botton’s book, How Proust Can Change Your Life, I am aware that reflecting deeply on the ideas he is presenting can indeed change one’s life. Botton’s look at the author highlights the way in which Proust goes beyond the surface and the obvious, to a realm where to understand one must simply let go. Not an easy thing to do, to just let go, to be in the present and to allow the realities of the present in all of their simplicity and complexity to affect one. But it is exactly this skill or habit or way of being that can situate a therapist to most deeply be of assistance to her client. Theodore Reik called attention to a skill of this kind, calling it, “listening with the third ear.” To me this means “listening” with the whole of one’s being, past, present, and future, body, mind, and spirit. I think of all of us as, in a way, holograms of the whole of our existences. When we meet with others in any setting these holograms interact with one another on both superficial and profound levels. 

If I am able to some extent to be connected to the whole of the being that is myself in that moment of intersection with another, I can then most openly and meaningfully recognize and “be with,” that is, deeply “listen” to the other. The act of listening occurs on mental, emotional, and physical levels. Aware of, though not reflecting on especially, my own history, experiences, physical and emotional states, I am simultaneously receptive to, though again not necessarily reflecting upon, parallel dimensions in my client. I take in, to the extent that I am wholly present to her, all that she is communicating to me, verbally and by hundreds of unspoken messages given through gestures, tone of voice, bodily arrangement, facial expressions, eye contact, and so on. Just being in the presence of the client in a state of presence with myself, I am then able to “hear” and respond to this myriad of communications in ways that can be revealing to us both. In the things that she says to me I may be aware especially of a word or tone that expresses and conceals at the same time.

An example: A woman relates to me a series of circumstances that have caused her agitation and unhappiness in recent days. What most catches my attention as she speaks is her mounting agitation. I stop her and ask what she is aware of within herself at that moment. She pauses and acknowledges that as she is talking she is becoming more agitated. From past sessions and work we already know that the regular discourse of her family of origin involves the mutual sharing of stories of thwarted goals. Each actor in a scene recounts in escalating crescendo the horrors of recent experiences. One revelation prompts another. The agitation of one stirs that of another and a growing pool of unhappiness, indignation, and cynicism regarding the possibility of life being lived peacefully, settles about the group, pervading and maintaining the tone of their interactions. In our session my client was engaged in this familiar pattern as she gave me her recitation of unhappy circumstances. 

My interrupting and questioning her about her feeling state during the speech allowed her to move out of the environment of her family in which she had been mentally and emotionally dwelling as she spoke to me, and back into the space that she and I share when she comes to see me. Within this space she has, over time, developed sufficient security to risk letting go of some automatic defensive locations, still maintained to a certain degree with her family and others. As a way of feeling relatively safe in what seems a chaotic arena, being annoyed and indignant can work. Giving one some sense of personal power, it is certainly safer than displaying vulnerability and openness. 

As I spoke with her about the effect that her tale of the day’s or week’s misfortunes has had upon herself, and usually upon her listener, she began to calm down and to understand at another level the reasons and effects of her behavior. We went through once again a quiet exchange about the importance of letting go of minor agitations, of seeing these as a normal part of life, rather than excuses for maintaining, nurturing even, a chronic state of unhappiness and discouragement. In recognizing the pattern that she is falling into she has at her disposal a couple of simple, though not necessarily easy to acquire habits: take a few deep breathes and repeat to herself, out loud if possible, “Just let it go.”

The reader may be skeptical about the effectiveness of such a simple process, but certainly my client, over time, as she has reminded herself to use this method, is learning to calm herself and to establish an inner perspective on the relative necessity for alarm and rage about life’s ordinary difficulties.