How Do We Listen When We Listen?

One of the essential healing elements in working with trauma cases is listening to the person’s story, listening to their pain and taking the story and the pain seriously. Often when abuse happens within a family or relationship there is a tendency for the family or partner to minimize, dismiss, or somehow excuse the situation.  It is my understanding that the causes of theses minimizing behaviors are at least two fold.  The first is being fearful of being uncomfortable to really listen to another person’s pain.  The second is related to denial, due to shame of either causing the suffering or not stopping the suffering the other experienced.  While trauma cases are extreme by their nature of violence, neglect, and verbal and emotional abuse, it has become clear to me as a professional in the mental health field that one of our basic needs as people in relationships is to be heard and taken seriously.  This begs the question, “How can I listen better?”  An excellent starting place is to listen in the way that you that you want to be heard.  If we want our partners, family members, or colleagues to listen to us in non-defensive, non-judgmental, open minded way, we must do our part to create that environment by listening to them as such. I am in no way excusing any form of abusive behavior.  The purpose of this piece is begin facilitating healing in relationships by attempting to shine light on the way we listen.