To be heard is to listen
musings on listening, living on purpose, and more
This is a voice recording (by me) of this week’s newsletter in it’s entirety. It’s not perfect sound quality and isn’t edited, but I hope it makes my writing more accessible for those who don’t have the time to read or prefer listening. Enjoy!
Hello hello!
How’s your breath? How’s your heart? Today is your last chance to sign up for the 15-day challenge! We start tomorrow at 6am PST/9am EST. Please check out the header of this email to receive your discount code. I’m SO EXCITED to get started! And, if you don’t feel like committing for a full 15-days, Cindy and I are hosting our monthly Energy Breathwork this Saturday at 8am PST. 75-minutes of ceremonial breathwork to reconnect to Self, reset the nervous system, and clear out some internal gunk.
This week is a reflection on listening. Not just listening with our ears, but full body presence to your moment to moment experience. I explore how listening led me to my life’s “why,” and how maybe it can lead to yours, too.
Xo,
The deeply curious part
I have a confession to make.
I’m hesitant to say it because I’m nervous it will make me sound like a bad person.
But here it is anyway…
I didn’t become a therapist because I wanted to help people.
Or maybe initially I thought that’s why I wanted to support people, but now I know for sure that wasn’t the driving force. As I’ve worked with more and more people, I’ve come to realize that people choose to heal if and when they are ready to. Don’t get me wrong, I think everyone can benefit from therapy with a therapist they feel connected with, regardless of whether or not they are “ready to do the work.” But I’ve seen a lot of therapists and coaches and nurses get in trouble when they pursue a career simply because they wanted to help people.
It’s my anecdotal observation that if someone goes into a helping profession solely because they want to “help people,” it’s a recipe for burnout and compassion fatigue for the very reason stated above; people will change when they’re ready, not because you told them how to. When a person in a helping profession identifies too much with “wanting to help people,” they quickly start to recognize that this whole helping thing isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Why aren’t people listening to me?! Helplessness begins to build; they begin to feel like they’re incompetent and grow more and more frustrated that they’re incapable of doing the thing they set out to do. Feeling incompetent all the time is a fast track to chronic dysregulation. Chronic dysregulation leads to burnout and compassion fatigue.
Help people?
Nah. Not for me.
I want to work with people because I’m fascinated and deeply curious about the complexities of the human experience. And I always have been.
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Why aren’t people listening to me?!!?
Oh but my friend,
are you listening to you?
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There’s a trail that goes around LadyBird Lake here in downtown Austin. Every morning I take my french bulldog down to the trail and we walk for about 45-minutes. The morning humidity hugs my face with a warm embrace. The sandy trail beneath my feet sounds like a steady metronome as Luna pulls me to the off-leash dog park nearby. My husband always laughs that despite our short legs Luna and I are the fastest walkers. And it’s true; once we find our rhythm it’s hard to slow us down.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
I watch Luna’s ears perk up as she surveys the morning joggers and fellow four-legged friends. I, too, am watching my surroundings with eager curiosity. Like mother, like (dog) daughter.
I start to wonder where he is when I hear it. The labored sporadic breaths and a frantic gait that’s just as irregular as the loud exhales; the sand sounds more like it’s being dragged than simply walked on. As he comes into view, I see his braced shoulders unmoving while his hands flail faster than his feet can go. Sweat drips down his face. His T-shirt sticks to his big, boxy frame. In one hand he holds the leash to his dog, some sort of collie-mix. The juxtaposition of the dog’s grace and ease with the man’s frenzied rendition of a jog makes me smile.
I wonder why the man jogs when his body so clearly hates it. I wonder what has caused his shoulders to become so tight to the point of seeming brittle. How long have those muscles been deprived of a steady flow of oxygenated blood? I wonder if it hurts to breathe.
And yet, he’s on the trail every single morning, putting one foot in front of the other. I’ve seen him smile at his dog lovingly. I’ve seen him take breaks from jogging to catch his breath. I haven’t built up the courage to say hi yet, though I have tried to make eye contact for a friendly smile…it was not reciprocated. I desperately want to connect, human to human. I know that body has a story, and I’m deeply curious to hear it.
I wonder about the billions of other humans in the world who are living with pain, both visible and invisible. I wonder why we all think we’re alone with our pain when we can so blatantly see others’ on display everywhere we go.
If only we were willing to listen with all our senses maybe we wouldn’t miss the walking miracles happening all around us.
This is how my brain works.
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Listening
Is more than just what you hear.
It’s more than paying attention to someone
when they speak.
Listening
Is being aware of your internal experience
It’s feeling with all your senses
While in the presence of another.
When was the last time you truly listened?
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It’s through listening that we’re able to connect back to our Authentic Self.
Richard Schwartz, the psychologist behind the popular modality Internal Family Systems (I wrote more about IFS in a past letter), states that there are 7 ways of knowing that we are living from our Authentic Self. We’re connected to our Self when we are feeling:
Calm
Curious
Connected
Compassionate
Confident
Courageous
Clear
When was the last time you felt any, or all, of these things? What do these things mean to you?
The more we can connect with any of these 7 “C’s” of the authentic Self, the more we are living in and on purpose. But again, it requires us to sit back and listen to ourselves, rather than distract and create defenses against our true experience. Listening is hard, especially in a world that values the person being listened to over the person doing the listening. We scream over others in order to be heard at the cost of actually listening to ourselves, first. Further and further away from our authentic Selves we go…
Instead of being all doom and gloom about it, I see the time we’re in now as an amazing opportunity to try new things and ways of being. Why not just try listening to yourself for 5 minutes while you’re in the shower? Hear the water hitting your skin, feel your hair soak it up. If that feels too scary, maybe just try to truly listen with all your senses to a TV show rather than splitting your attention between scrolling, cooking, and the show. Try doing one thing at a time. Listen.
Listening is a learned skill. Go slow. Be gentle with yourself. The more it’s practiced, the closer you’ll get to your “why.” Trust me, if it can work for me, it can work for you.