Listening “Listening is hard, as my friend once said, because you run the risk of having to change the way you see the world. I can admit something now, which this interrupting only evidenced: I have been inclined to force the people around me into boxes. It’s a subtle thing, but to hear someone talk without imposing one’s own expectations, one’s own categories---I’ve never been very good at it.” From the novel, In the light of what we know by Zia Haider Rahman We often think that we listen so the patient can change. What if listening is hard because it will change us? We think we “understand” someone, when it may be that we just fit someone’s statements into a formula we have learned, pushed it into the sausage grinder (theory), and offered a pronunciamento which is a substitute for genuine understanding. Our theories can be useful tools to test out our inferences, or we can misuse them as boxes to fit our patients into. “I know”: a potential form of violence. Not-knowing: how we love. A student asked today regarding her patient, “Where do we go?” I asked, “Why do you have to go anywhere? Can we ride the patient’s feelings now and let them take you to the unknown?” Driving my car in the summer water appears to be on the road up ahead. But it constantly recedes the further I drive toward it. What does this optical illusion mean? It tells us that we don’t see reality directly. We see the world as we perceive it, not as it. Likewise, someone appears to me to be the way I perceive him. Then something occurs, and I realize I had an optical/auditory/mental illusion (aka projection). How much of our life and work is driven by the wish to control how others perceive us? How often do we ask others to agree with us, so we can avoid facing any reality that would contradict our beliefs? “Listen to me.” A potential form of “lie to me, reinforce my lies, or else I’m going to get really anxious.” It’s not the patient’s job to listen to us, but to listen to her inner being. When the patient does not listen to us, can we listen and be open to the rejection of our box? Can we step out of our box and enter the unknown of the patient and the inner unknown of ourselves? Rejecting our boxes and categories is how the patient invites us to listen to our inner being. Then we can begin to speak from our depths to the patient’s depths instead of from our heads to the patient’s head.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 17:33:02 +0000
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