How to listen like a therapist: 4 secret skills

I'm gonna show you the four secret skills therapist used to listen and teach you how you can start using the skills to improve your relationships today hi I'm clinical psychologist dr. Ellen my too I've been doing therapy for almost fifteen years now and the skills I'm going to show you are the skills I learned in my early training and they're the skills I use every single time I sit down with a patient they're not rocket science they're pretty simple but they're skills that most people outside of the mental health and counseling fields don't really learn because you never really see them in action we're not really taught how to do them and I want you to have these skills because they are so helpful when you're talking to someone who's going through a difficult experience like a friend or a family member they're also really helpful when you're in a tough conversation in a business setting in a negotiation type of setting well they're simple they're very hard to do they go against a lot of your natural urges to jump in in a conversation or to talk about yourself or to offer advice they go against all of those urges so while they're simple remember they're gonna take a lot of practice to learn how to do well skill number one is to reflect back to just listen to what the other person is saying to you to follow the sequence of events they're describing and then to reflect it back to to see it back so for example I might say so this happened to you and then you experienced this and then you did this as a result and that was the reaction does that sound right number one it shows the other person that you're actually listening you really care about what they're saying number two it forces you to turn down the part of your brain that wants to interrupt or offer advice and it forces you to turn up the part of your brain that is about empathy and understanding and compassion and number three it gives you a chance to check in to see if you're actually hearing is right and it helps to clarify what the person is actually experiencing hi so often do this in therapy and I am completely wrong like I've reflected things back as I've heard them and I have missed out on important details or what I thought was important is not actually important to my patient and it's this other thing that I just completely didn't realize so through the process of reflecting you show that you care you have to care just to be able to reflect and also you get to a shared understanding and you get to overcome barriers in understanding it's the most important skill that everything else that I talked about in this video is built upon you can't do everything else until you are able to reflect back skill number two is to ask the person what is this like for you the stereotype about therapists is we often ask how does that make you feel I hate that question because it's a stupid question most of the times people who are coming to me have a hard time understanding what they feel or they might be so overwhelmed that they don't even know what they feel because they're feeling so many different things or what is usually the case is people have a hard time putting words to emotions that's part of why they're coming into treatment so I don't like that question it's a dumb question in most situations it's not a dumb question if you and someone else have been working for a while and you kind of built up a understanding of emotions how the person experiences them stuff like that but that comes later before all of that you want to check in with the other person once you have this scribed this thing that's going on for them is to ask them how are they experiencing this what's what's going on in your body right now as you're describing this what's it like for you to go through that situation when you describe this stuff what was popping up in your head was anything going on inside those are the kind of questions I want to add because I want to get to a place where I understand how is this person experiencing this event some people might experience something and they feel just really sad really bummed they feel a sense of loss they feel shut down other people might go through the exact same experience and get angry get upset one it hit something want to break something and other people might not feel anything in their body but they're experiencing all these thoughts and maybe they they are having a hard time shutting those thoughts off I'm not a mind reader I wish I was like Professor X that would make my job a lot easier but I'm not the best I can do is ask this question how how are you experiencing that what was that like for you as you describe this what's going on for you that gets me the closest I can get to actually knowing what what is going on for this person skill number three is validation helping the person to understand that what they're going through what they're experiencing makes sense given the situation that they have been in so this is now building upon reflection and understanding how the person is experiencing this event and you're kind of starting to put those two things together so it's something like if I had gone through all of this I would have definitely been feeling this - or saying Kasia makes so much sense that you're so upset about this it's because x y&z happen to you now I don't care who the person is what your relationship to them is what emotions that are going through you can always find a way to validate the experience of another person their emotions are real whether or not they make sense to you it is what the other person is experiencing it's their authentic experience and if you can find a way to validate that you go so far to releasing more of that tension that difficulty the struggle the pain that the other person is going through sometimes just validation in in itself is enough to help the person overcome the problem they're going through and it's it can be very hard for us to validate the experience of others especially if you're a parent trying to validate the experience of your teenager because it doesn't make any sense to you but I will push you there there's always always a reason why someone's experiencing something even if it doesn't make sense to you it is the authentic experience of the other person so find a way to validate that if you are able to do that you have shown that you have empathy and compassion for the other person and validation is not the same thing as supporting or approving the behavior or the experiences of the other person no it's not saying that like I think it's really great that you got angry and punched that wall in your room like good job no it's not that you're not saying that this is a good thing what you're saying is I get it I get it you were really upset and you went through a lot of difficult things and this happened I think if I was that upset I might have hit something myself that's validation it's not approving but it's helping person the other person to make sense of what they have gone through skill number four is to understand the ambivalence so what does that word mean ambivalence is word that gets tossed around I think it's sort of lost its original meaning what ambivalence really means it's about being honestly torn between two different paths two different decisions usually in therapy what it means is you want to make this change in at the same time you're struggling to make that change because of important reasons so what I want to do is in situations where someone wants to maybe change a habit like smoking or drinking eating physical activity stuff like that usually there's a lot of ambivalence that's coming up and what most people want to do is they want to jump in and give advice oh hey view tried this have you tried that have you tried that but none of that really works because you haven't really understood the ambivalence first you haven't understood why the person is torn between wanting to make a change and not wanting to change what's going on so the important question to ask is what is that doing for you how is that helping you what do you like about that so for example if someone struggling with smoking what do you like about smoking how does smoking help you what do you enjoy about smoking what does it do for you and you will be so surprised that the reason sometimes people say well it helps me to connect with other people or it helps me to deal with stress or it just you know it really feels good or I forget why I started doing this but the reason why I do it now is it's I'm just kind of stuck in this pattern but I like I really like that feeling of holding this thing like there could be so many different reasons and again different people have different reasons why but you asked a person how is this helping you and then you ask what do you like about it less or what what are things that you don't enjoy about it what are things that you dislike about it we also asked a person zero to ten how ready are you to make a change or to change this this situation and if someone says zero or if someone says five or someone says ten that gives you really important information then you can ask oh what makes it zero what makes it five what makes it ten sometimes you can also ask zero to ten where were you a month ago oh you were you're a five now but you're zero before what changed or you can find out that oh you're a zero right now and you're a five before how did it go down these are the four skills I use before I even get to a place of trying to help someone make a change in their life and again they sound simple but they're very hard to do in practice because so many strong emotions will be coming up for you when you're listening to someone else and you might start to judge the experience that they're going through or you might want to immediately jump in and give the other person advice but pause when that happens remember this video and just practice using these skills with other person I promise you over time it's gonna get easier and you'll start to see the benefits of this approach if you want to learn more behind-the-scenes secrets of being a therapist check out this playlist that I made for you it's all about that stuff there's one video in particular which is the most common question I get it's about how psychologists analyze their patients I could tell you all the ways in which I do that so check that out for more it's time for this week's deck boo challenge which I'm also combining with this week's comment of the week and this week's comment of the week comes from Julie Herrick who says I understand that getting comfortable being uncomfortable is a technique for moving through anxiety at the same time I have experienced situations in which that senton sentiment has been used to manipulate me to do things that I was genuinely uncomfortable with for good reason and later regretted doing and it concluded that I should have listened to my gut after all any advice on how to distinguish between discomfort that's worth pushing through versus discomfort that's a legitimate signal to stop doing a think this is such a good question and such a great comment so thank you Julie for this comment GetGlue isn't about always doing the tough thing it's not about ignoring the things that your body is telling you to do it's not about just biting your lip and get getting through a situation so it I really hope that's not the message I have gotten across and if it is I am sorry I'm going to clarify what I mean exactly by ghek boo right now get boo it's about when you are experiencing discomfort related to a situation that's getting in the way of your life and it's consistent with your values to overcome this and it's gonna actually help you with your own goals in your life to overcome the situation that's when I want you to get comfortable being uncomfortable it's when it makes sense it's gonna help you it's consistent with your use as a person that's when I want you to practice all the things that we talked about in these videos there's two videos I made that go into more detail about this the first is about how to deal with emotions in a healthy way the second is about how to overcome anxiety how am I gonna practice get boo this week the big thing for me is it's it's the holidays I've got a lot of family stuff coming up this week so much more than I've ever had in a long time I just moved back to California from New York and I have a ton of family here I had like no family in New York so a lot of family meetings a lot of interacting with people who might be on very different places in me in lots of different beliefs ideas perspectives politics so for me it's about practicing these skills in this video this week with all of my relatives and extended family and all of that sort of stuff and if I the specific challenge I'm gonna do is not only listen but ask this question if I get into tough discussions with people about politics I'm gonna ask the person this question why do you think this issue is so important to me because it kind of forces the person to use some of these listening skills that are that I talked about in this video and I can also do another version of this which is why is this issue so important to you which is a way that I can better understand these things and practice these skills this is my last video for 2019 and I just want to take a moment and thank you everyone in the mighty Saiki for being so supportive of everything I'm doing this year and for being a part of this community I am so excited for all the stuff I'm working for in 2020 I'm so excited to be full-time on YouTube and to do so much more stuff I got a lot of cool stuff in in the cooker for you so if you want to learn more about the stuff I'm working on I've got a 2020 goals video that I just released on my patreon so you can check that out and also just want to take a quick moment to thank all my new patrons there's a lot of new people who have joined recently Thank You Emily Troy Alexander Jose Julie Rebecca Mariana Carl Cecily Greg Christi Bob Sam Lena hope you all have a good holiday break and I will see you in 2020 [Music]

Channel: Doctor Ali Mattu

Views: 517,901

Keywords: ali mattu, psychologist, psychology, the psych show, clinical psychology, mental health, mental illness, cognitive behavioral therapy, cbt, therapist, therapy, How to listen like a therapist, listening skills, active listening, therapist skills, active listening skills, active listening examples, clinical psychologist, listen like a therapist, validation therapy, motivational interviewing

Id: UVN96JhDOmg

Length: 15min 51sec (951 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2019