Empathetic Listening

Human beings have social needs, in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs its termed as the need for love and belonging. This means connection, trust, and intimacy. Once they are fulfilled one feels a sense of well-being.

During the last few days of the circuit breaker since we could not meet our friends and family, the need to connect was even more pronounced. Hence, we all were connecting with our family and friends through face time, zoom and phone to meet our social needs. Some of the questions that came to my mind were how much of quality listening we were doing. By listening I mean sincere emphatic and non-judgmental listening. Its listening with understanding and compassion.

As I spoke to one of my friends the other day, she told me how comforting it was to just be able to share how she was feeling during these challenging times. There was a myriad of emotions she felt, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, or angry. It also got overwhelming at times, which was all normal to be experiencing. We also discussed some coping methods which could be helpful like mindfulness activities, meditation, home based exercise, pursuing hobbies and self- care which were beneficial in combating these feelings.

I was happy that I could lend her a listening ear which she really needed where she could express her true feelings without any judgments and biases. At the end we realized that we all need someone who can give that listening ear and make us feel comforted. Someone who can really listen without any judgments.

Related posts:

123 likes. 12 retweets. 928 followers. This is how we measure connection, friendship, and identity in 2019. Never before have we had such quantifiable markers of our relationships, and in the short…

Quarantine has been going strong for more than 10 weeks in a lot of places, and people are getting exhausted. Although it has felt like an eternity to some, states across the country have begun…

Bullying is a pervasive problem in the United States. Recent reports that capture bullying in first person and cyberbullying are shocking and disheartening. Bullying can be a type of aggression when…