The art of listening is central to all “professionals” in service of their clients but especially in the healing professions and talking therapies. In this short blog, I’m just going to outline and suggest the four stages of the “Art” and expand a little on each. Active listening, Hearing, Being Heard, and finally, Communion.
- “Active Listening” is the first stage and can perhaps best be described as what you’d expect of the average GP in a hurry. It is listening, knowing that listening is an important part of the job, whilst at the same time studying notes and formulating strategy (perhaps thinking about the last patient or the next…or dinner venue!). The client in this phase is “object that needs a service”.
- “Hearing” is more present where the therapist hears with “big ears” what the client is saying and begins to develop a subjective internal experience of the client. The therapist feels they are beginning, not just to listen to the words, but also to “hear” (hence “big ears”) what is not necessarily spoken. In psychotherapeutic theory the beginning of self reflective “countertransference” where the therapist “feels” unexpressed and unconscious emotions within the client.
- “Being Heard” where the client feels they are being treated as a subject and understood or “got”. They are eased in the experience, that their words and what they are saying, is not just listened to but empathised with. For the client, this is an important stage as they begin to start to trust and relax defenses.
- “Communion” is the point where therapist and client begin to “commune” and experience each other beyond words through feelings and bodily sensations. This might be described as the “intersubjective” stage where therapist and client are subjects to each other. It is the place of optimal therapeutic benefit that cannot be forced or made to happen but arrived at as a consequence of alignment with the first three stages. It is also an effortless space where no “work” gets done rather we experience ourselves as being in “the flow”. This is a very healing space co-created by an alignment between therapist and client as subject and object collapse we are simply left with healing. No wonder we do this work!!!!
Like all “practice” the art of listening is developed and deepened over time and the thousands of hours of practice. It’s a paradox that it takes us so long to effectively “get out of the way”….so long… “to bear the gaze” without getting busy. It is a profound space, predicated on the humble realisation that, in truth, none of us really knows what is going on here and the best we can do is show up with as much presence as we can muster with the realisation that to paraphrase TS Eliot….the rest is not our business…