A Lesson in Listening: The Day I Lost My Therapeutic Stance and Snapped - Letters from Esther Live

hey welcome if you're here today it's either because you come to this free workshop series every month you read my newsletter or you saw it on my social channels so you probably already know that i'm sharing a story today about a time that i acted out of character i snapped i snapped at the person across from me in my therapy office and i walked away feeling like i was i wasn't going to say that i failed but i was certainly going to say that it was a failed session and i think it's really important to share this particular experience because there's more to this story than meets the eye or shall i say that meets the ear because this story today and the entire workshop is about listening so hi everyone and thank you for joining me for letters from astaire live my monthly workshop series to help you reflect and develop greater confidence and relational intelligence in all your relationships this series happens monthly on youtube and facebook live subscribe that way you know and you dare and we can talk to each other for more letters from astaire visit esterparel.com blog every month i invite you here on youtube and on facebook to discuss the newsletter so you can read it you can hear me talk about it we can discuss it together and we can learn it from multiple different angles but before we start number one consider reaching out to one person who you know may benefit from joining you in this workshop today who do you think could use a session on listening who hasn't been heard who could listen better and as always i encourage you to take notes whether it's written in your notebook or on your pad but we keep a place dedicated to the notes from our conversations you will begin to sense how much you're learning session upon session building block upon building block all developing your relational intelligence and if you like what you learned today again like and subscribe to my youtube channel the button is right here below this video so as i was saying i was oh how would i say this it was a bad therapy day you know i have bad therapy days and it was over this past summer and i was already having one of those days when you just don't feel like you have much to give i was languishing as my friend adam grant would call it that sense of stagnation and emptiness that feels like you're muddling through your days looking at life through a foggy windshield people have become so interested in that word because it describes a universal experience everybody seems to be having during the last two years in this pandemic era part of the reason languishing is so tough it's because it's not severe enough to derail your day but it's also not minuscule enough to not affect you for me i believe the opposite of languishing and its antidote is eroticism the opposite of languishing of stagnation of blah is when i get in touch with the vibrancy and the vitality of life is when i tune into the senses and the environment it's like rather than staying behind that foggy windshield and letting life pass by but sometimes even for me especially for me it's easier said than done and this is true for many therapists like me who are meant to be able to guide people through that sense of feeling unmoored so on that day in july i was languishing and i had work to do we were recording a one-time anonymous couple session for my podcast where should we begin but by the end of it i was convinced that material was unusable and that has not happened often all the sessions that we have done have been included so to have one where i'm like i don't know if i can put this out there was very very significant the recently married early 30s white american couple and new parents were sitting across me and they were bickering to no end from sex to money to in-laws they had fallen into quite a pattern of not hearing a single word that the other was saying well they were hearing the words but they were not listening they were hearing the words for the purpose of rebuttal and they couldn't help themselves from cringing when the other one talked rolling their eyes shaking their heads and sighing every time that the other person spoke i and you know i would listen to one person but i would watch the other person get all agitated and i couldn't listen anymore i myself was getting derailed you know so sooner or later i was experiencing from the inside what was happening between the two of them hurt and each partner each partner you know their whole body seemed to express the inability to accept a different reality from their own but her tendency was to speak over him to fill in all the details about his point of view not as he had told her but as she saw it what she thought he should tell me what she thought was important and it was crashing the session but he wasn't any better you know he would let her talk quiet wait seed you knew he wasn't listening because he was organizing his rebuttal and he wouldn't acknowledge anything of what she said that he may have agreed with he would wait till he found the one thing that he could argue with and then he would refute so you can imagine the dynamic and this is not unusual in high reactivity and many of us have been in this situation but many of us have been more so in this situation so they were stuck in a feedback loop leaving them both feeling trapped and frustrated and i knew they wanted to be better they wanted to be more caring because they were caring they just couldn't it got lost in between all the noise they wanted to be more loving they wanted to be more intimate and this is why they came so i wanted to know how long they had been hearing each other without listening and i couldn't even get there i mean i could not make two steps forward without all the cacophony you know basically derailing all of us you know we couldn't have any specific conversation because they were locked in a cycle of negative escalation every sentence was a blame about the other person an attack on the other person a counter-attack and a defense usually the path forward as a therapist is to help them develop the basic skills for self-regulation to lessen their reactivity and to structure practices for listening usually i would emphasize ways to connect to their own needs and i would be empathic to their needs but also to their ability to acknowledge the needs of the other i wish i had said every once in a while that is really hard i feel for you that makes me feel so bad for you i said it but i didn't really say it you know because they were cutting each other off so quickly that i began to experience a sense of this regulation myself and i was being sucked into the feedback loop and i lost my position as a therapist and suddenly i snapped so at the risk of cringing myself i want you to hear for yourself right now let's listen in on the session it's just hard for me because he speaks so slowly and i feel like i'm so high energy i always just want to get the facts what fact i see is that when he talks you are shaking next to him so he can barely keep his mind straight i know i'm so angry i don't care the subject yes but you don't know you know you collect you collect anything else i could be angry about because he knows every single thing about my finances and i don't understand how we're fine because the numbers he tells me they don't match up if you want her to stop you need to ask her i'm sorry i believe that that you know you need to do it may i stop you sure i'm sorry not may i stop you i know you're so beaten down from me i feel horrible but i'm also angry not may i stop you what should i say i want to describe my situation myself okay and could you please make the effort of managing your impatience and give me a courtesy of explaining my own situation all that no no you don't borrow you have to do it give me the courtesy of explaining my own situation sorry goal at this moment is really not to help them talk about money or their financial situation the goal is for them to develop some basic skills about regulating together so they don't escalate when he feels observed that she took over because she doesn't trust he can tell his own story and she can do a better job at it and he wants to reclaim it he has to take it kindly respectfully and assertively so he can draw the boundary of i own my story and i will tell it as i see it and i ask that you make space for me to do so and hopefully can hear it and then i will hear your reaction to it so we start with very basic work around the boundaries the delineation the demarcation between the two of them it goes so fast each one cutting the other person off i can barely keep it straight and i start to experience the same dysregulation inside myself i've been there before and it's not a good place to be because i start to lose my therapeutic stance i begin to act with them the way they act with each other i'm inducted into the system you know it's funny i've played the clip a few times now and there are three times that really stand out once i first i played it to my team i wanted them to hear you know but i wanted to know if they heard what i heard basically i played it at my annual conference sessions live which is a professional conference for coaches therapists people who work with relationships and as a case of bad therapy i showed it to my supervision group which is a group of colleagues that meets to discuss cases and to consult with each other my team cringed and it made sense because i was cringing when i was presenting it to them i mean after all the couple gave me license to be direct but had i been too direct i felt that my reaction had been inappropriate but more importantly i felt that my reaction was unhelpful the conference attendees they said that they were surprised by the vulnerability and they appreciated it i appreciated that comment but really this wasn't about showing myself vulnerable it may have been but this was about showing how every therapist has their moments and we don't get to see those moments often enough i've always actually wanted to show work that wasn't perfect because i've always thought that one learns more from work that is less elegant more poor works if you want and it's the same was happening when i was the student and i was looking at my teachers i don't want to see something that i don't know how i can ever do the same you know it's very very reassuring to know oh someone else can flop as well and when he came to my supervision group one of the main things they said is it's not as bad as you hear it to be and i kept saying you haven't heard the whole of it yet but when you hear the whole thing no of course i still think it wasn't good therapy you know that's not that end changing there's so many things that could have been done very differently but what they also said is that we've all experienced that kind of session before and sometimes when you have a patient who's not listening we have to ask ourselves might it be because they don't feel hurt and let me read you some of you know your one word reactions to this clip i want to just get a sense you know as you've listened to this what jumps at you you know have you been in either of these positions do you have an instant reaction to one person more than to the other give me a sense for a moment how do you react to this little clip and you can listen to the whole episode on where should we begin on spotify on my podcast it's uh it's it's a one of a kind let me know you know you will notice that my team and the conference attendees and my supervision group they each had a different reaction and that's because each listened from a different vantage point the context assigns the meaning the context for the conversation the context for listening or let me put it differently more importantly the way we talk will influence the way the other person listens it reminds me of the paul simon song sounds of silence you know people talking without speaking and people listening without hearing or was it people hearing without listening it's probably the reverse yes it is the reverse and the quality of the listening shapes the way the story is told so the way we talk influences the way the other listens and the quality of the listening will shape the way that the speaker talks or the way the story is told it's different if you listen alone if you listen with a partner if you're part of a team meeting if you are in a three-day conference or if it's part of a short workshop or if you're actually in the room so let me tell you what was the couple's reaction because the couple had an entirely different reaction than any of these groups so i always go a few weeks later and i ask people to send us some feedback where did it land what was helpful what stayed with you what would you want us to know about your experience and it turns out that they had heard me very differently from how i hurt myself so i wanted to know however inelegant my intervention had been i wanted them to know that i was really invested in their well-being you know and i didn't feel like that came across in the way that i spoke to them so i had a chance to just really make that clear and take ownership you know but i was happily surprised to learn that the signs and that the things that had you know between them had gotten a lot a lot better actually um they told me in a letter that instead of staying neutral or diplomatic like most people would have been and like other therapists had tried to be i told them what they really needed to hear amazing this is like really you know i thought that was so harsh you know and i realized that i had a second chance to listen to them deeply she said you told us that we were not broken and that we can work through this you gave me very specific things that i can do in the moment and i've listened to it completely and things have taken such a turn for the better so i want to go back to something that i shared with you in the beginning i told you eroticism is the opposite and perhaps the antidote of languishing that feeling of experiencing life from behind the foggy windshield i told you that eroticism is about tuning into the senses and the environment around us the sense that we're talking about today is the sense of hearing and more so what we can do with it because there's a difference between hearing and listening and thoughtful conversation and good therapy for that matter is about a healthy balance of thoughtful communication and hardcore listening i wanna know did you identify with the couple that you heard on the clip do you recognize yourself and if so how just give me very short quick responses so i can do a pulse check with you because i did too and it's part of why i responded the way i did we all know what it's like when we're locked into a dynamic of escalation with each person's thumb ready to push on the rebuttal button you know in fact couples researcher howard markman has said that when we listen to things that we don't agree with our attention span is basically 10 seconds which means three sentences after three sentences if i don't agree with what you're saying or what you're saying feels assaulting to me or feels like you know i'm being ignored basically i am having a reaction to it i'm in rebuttal mode i'm no longer able to listen so this is very very short you know it's easy to repeat to do reflective listening when the stuff that we're hearing is actually you know pleasant that we don't disagree with it's stuff that i can easily repeat but when it's stuff that i don't agree with it's amazing how people cannot repeat the sentence they just heard time and again this is what i see in front of me in my office and these three sentences can so quickly derail the entire dynamic so even if we don't interrupt like this young man was doing he began making mental notes every time she talked at one point he even says i'm working hard at keeping a list and of course it meant the list of the stuff that i can refute disagree with counter attack on so i want to give you an exercise and with this exercise i want to help you move away from a hearing from for the sake of rebuttal to listening for the sake of connection i want you to imagine a situation where you want to bring something up okay think of a situation where you want to bring something up it could be the most recent gripe that you have with your partner your friend your colleague your family member and now structure your sentence as an xyz statement this is from howard martin's work as well from prep instead of you never you always you the statement goes when you do x in situation y i feel z so it's like the woman on the clip she could have said when you don't share our finances with me and i know that we have a whole new set of expenses now that we have a child i get scared i get worried what can we afford and what can't we afford that uncertainty makes me very nervous when you do x in situation y i feel instead of saying you never listen try when i pour my heart out and when i tell you that this bothers me or i tell you that this hurts me and you sit there and you say nothing i feel like you don't care i feel ignored when we do it this way x y z it puts the emphasis on how we feel and that nobody can argue with this is my feeling this is my experience of what you do it's not the same as my saying this is what you do so instead of defining the other person which everybody will bark at i actually own my experience in response to what you do it makes a world of difference instead of you never tell me anything about your finances it becomes when you don't tell me much and i am working three jobs as she said i am left feeling very vulnerable that's an xyz statement so as a take-home practice you come up with a few more examples of recent situations in which you and someone that you care for got locked in a cycle of escalation anyone and think about how listening differently to one another could have changed the entire conversation and go back to that person and say i want to try it differently we absolutely didn't get through we locked horns we just went at each other can i try this again i think we can do better and then you just own your part because generally when one person does this so does the other person you know so redo the conversation with xyz statements and then you'll tell me how this went so now i want to go for a minute and read what some of you have read here because you've given me so many comments i did identify with the angry one my person doesn't talk much yeah i do what the man did but i usually snap and at the end i can't respond at all and i just feel caged in and i run it over and over in my mind again and again verbose and shut down places i have gone in many difficult conversations i empathize i also remember being a child around the dynamic and having no agency good people you really are getting what we are at what we're talking about here it's the negative cycle dance when we are triggered and only listen to attack back the woman was too angry to xyz yes but i could have worked with her and just said pick one statement and don't start with the finances don't start with the most challenging subjects money sex in-laws start with something very simple you know when i she said when i saw him eating these pop-up tarts you know i i feel sad for you because i'm remembering you know the neglect that you experience and the aloneness that you experienced as a child that gives him a very very different sense and this is a passage in the session actually where she does that and he receives it not as an attack but as an empathic statement and it's immediate so listen to the whole session you will see that she actually does it she just doesn't do it enough and he could do more of it as well when you blow off a dinner with me at christmas and don't acknowledge my hard work and success for the company i feel undervalued and distant from you shouldn't we start with the i feel no there is something in the structure because it contextualizes when you do x in situation y i feel because it changes the reactive cycle it does say i am reacting to something you do but it puts the emphasis on my experience and my reaction and on the subjectivity of this and not just on the fact this is what you do you see if anybody says to you this is what you do the first thing you're going to come up with is the one time when you didn't because you're going to re refute because it's too invasive nobody wants somebody else to tell us who we are but we are more willing to listen to how they experience who we are that's the real shift here god it's so hard to do this in the moment mary just tell me which you know i'll i'll try to uh to to rehearse it with you zainab amazing exercise i've been doing xyz for years and in my relationship and it works yes mary page does you do x not qualify as a soft startup however always it's when you do it's it's it it the the wording is really really precise here it's when you do this when you don't respond when you attack when you ignore when you say such and such at the moment that or in the situation that i experience it or i feel z very very precise my ex would have said you don't really feel that you're just making it up to pick at me because i can never do anything right master wordsmith was hard to have a convo with yeah paula basically what he was saying is that your feeling is not something that you own your feeling is something that you're doing to him this is this is part of the same kind of high reactivity dynamic is that one person's feeling is experienced by the other as something you're doing to him if you're cold if you're tired if you're hungry if you're sad if you're hurt it's something you're doing to them on purpose to make them feel bad to blame them you know it that is such a lack of boundary you can see but i can't oh i wish i could enter into each one of these etienne her intrusiveness maybe needed a resolute passionate non-diplomatic intervention bundle which is what you did looks like you might have it might have gotten the job done however cringe yes indeed i do think it got the job done sometimes a very inelegant intervention is actually what is helpful that is true too and sometimes you think you've done the most beautiful intervention and it lands you nowhere so yes i am very well aware of that you know i had an experience where i did this is beth foster hunter where i did this naturally the other day and it really opened up a close understanding yup yup yup yup lindsay when you tell me if my feelings are wrong it makes me feel yes of course of course when somebody starts to argue with your feelings there's any there's a problem because normally they just are i'm cold what you want me to do with this you know you want to attack me because i'm cold i you shouldn't be cold the heater is on it's like i'm hungry you shouldn't be hungry now we just ate three hours ago like you know what are you arguing with riley right michal it's life changing yes perfect timing for me the xyz you have to have an emotional vocabulary to do why yes yes do some you know wow people you many here sue i felt like the first stages of marriage locked in a power struggle it takes us 17 years but you got there your ability to interpret language means everything just thank you denial about starting when you don't seriously people i'm gonna repeat it when you don't respond to me no no people do something when they don't respond to you they raise their eyes they smile they turn their head they shake when you do x don't start with when you don't do x the don't do something is something else really really precise you know and i'm going to say it again start with small things don't go to the hardcore issues you know tom when it seems to me that you does xyz work with narcissists try it out and you come and tell me all of these ones listen people you don't just do it and you know for some of you it you did it and it changed and it was just so immediately meaningful for others it may take a while but it's about you extending that also to the other person right so when somebody's fighting and suddenly someone does this it disarms they're expecting you to come back and if instead you say i can see that it makes sense that i understand that you all these statements are going to counteract what is expected as the attack response we're coming to the end here but people these are amazing lin this is so because you're not saying you always listen do you always and you never these totalistic all-encompassing statements shove them they they are by definition the most triggering ones because the minute you say to someone you always they're thinking about the time the one time when they're not they can't it's it's it's too you know it's it's too invasive and when you say you never they'll tell you the one time when they did so you can't go with that plus you always and you never it's a subjective statement meant to to convey an impression a sentiment it's not something you're going to factually confirm so don't go for the pseudo-factual conversation understand that this what you're really trying to communicate is your feelings and what you want is for someone to understand them to hear them to listen to validate and maybe to have some empathy for them that's the simple trajectory here which is not that simple oh god these are amazing beth how do you know when to do to do a direct intervention like you demonstrated and when to withhold that instinct to fix and simply listen look when people come to me and they're entrenched in a thing like that it's not a good thing to just let them do this in front of me i was stopping them non-stop micro moment by micro moment the good the bad and the ugly because people feel so stuck in this they don't want to be that way and they're not like that with other people for that matter so it's very important to not let people just degrade in front of us that is my point of view and so in that sense but there are other ways to be directive i was directive challenging confrontational and not particularly empathic and i could have done that very differently that's the main thing so people there's a lot a lot of lot when my partner doesn't use xyz where are you judith just to text me with you always what do i do i want to hear what you say because you're trying to say something that really matters to you can we try this differently can you and you know i heard this woman with that accent and she gave me this structure xyz can we try that just because we're not getting anywhere and i know we want to hear each other so you have to make that assumption from him anyway people this is for you to practice i want to hear from you write to us read it on the blog i broke it down in pieces go listen to this session as well on the spotify channel and um i don't mean to be mean but is the name of this episode let me know how it goes thanks everyone for joining and i hope that you will join us next month for letters from astaire live and follow along by signing up for my newsletter if you haven't done so already at www.esther blog and follow at esterparelofficial on social media i oh this is incredible all of you i mean i wish i could read many more of these and respond personally but thank you francesca anna sayus sayusaime christopher maureen judy jody ivana ivan natalie jasmine i mean all of you from all over the world i see you i hear you i see you i listen to you so long bye

Channel: Esther Perel

Views: 25,240

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Id: W0-8-TZ0DZY

Length: 35min 39sec (2139 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021