Thanks for taking the time to read Part 1! I know it was a lot of information, but for me it’s really important that we are on the same page about these topics, or at least, you understand what page I’m on, before I am really vulnerable with you.
There are a few more things that I want us to be in agreement about before I take you on a trip into the inner sanctum of my mind.
As I said in Part 1, this is a bootcamp to prepare you to be a safe person that I can be emotionally vulnerable and intimate with. We have professionalized these skills to the realm of “therapist”, but that’s just capitalism talking. It’s really important that you have these skills too; they are what make us human and maintain healthy connections with each other.
I’ve been working on improving mine for years, and am still learning, will always be learning.
Here’s the agenda for part 2:
Again – not a medical professional, just done a lot of research and been trying to solve my own problems and reflecting on my experiences as a human.
Grateful for you going on this journey with me!
Love you!
Sammy
Purpose of Therapy
In my opinion, the purpose of therapy is to provide a safe space for you to be emotionally vulnerable and intimate to help you work through your problems because, right now, you do not have people in your life you can do that with. The therapist’s role is to model and teach you the skills to work through conflict, process your emotions, and relate to others in healthy ways so that you can build and maintain trusting relationships with friends, family, and colleagues. They are a temporary medical intervention to support you in improving the quality of the relationships in your support system through you learning the skills and then becoming a model and teacher for the relationships you are dependent upon.
Therapy is really just continued learning of socialization skills that we were supposed to learn from our families and schooling before we graduated, but many of us didn’t.
Therapy is really just paying to access a good friend or parent. And yet, even with professional training and experience, it’s really hard to find a good therapist.
I currently have two and have worked with eight different ones over the last 5 years, and they still aren’t getting the need met. They keep asking me what I need, what my goals are, and what my life would look like at the end of our time working together. If I knew that and could communicate it effectively to other people, I wouldn’t need a therapist.
It’s because, like I said, therapy is designed as a temporary medical treatment meant to support you in improving the quality of your relationships in your support system. In order for the treatment to work, the other people in your life need to improve their skills and develop, too. They need to know about what you are going through and be able to support you.
Your therapist can’t actually make changes in your life, they are just someone you can talk to about it. You have to make the changes.
At the same time, they can’t do it with you like a friend or family member can. They can’t go to the doctors appointment with you. They can’t pick you up from work when you have a breakdown and get sent home. They can’t go for drinks and boogie with you when you finally get the job you’ve been hoping to get and now have resolved the problem you’ve been trying to solve for 4 years. They can’t do a lot of things, and yet these are the people we are told to turn to when our friends, family members, colleagues, or partners can’t meet this need for us. Our therapists will never be able to meet this need for us. We need each other.
I need you.
For most of my life, I found it hard to get emotional support from the people in my life. I found that they were either too busy with their own problems, too concerned about the outcome going the way they wanted and how it would affect them, or too afraid to see me fail. Now, I have compassion.
They, too, were not taught these skills by their family and schooling, and that they were just doing the best they could with what they had, and they really did care about me and wanted to support me, they just didn’t know how.
I’m tired of trying to learn this shit mostly alone (I have found a few people on a similar learning journey), or learning these things and trying to teach you them but not telling you I’m trying to teach you so that you don’t get defensive.
It feels manipulative, and honestly, it feels like I’m living in my own reality that no one understands, and that makes me sad. That’s the original reason that I wanted to be a writer. I thought that by being a writer and publishing a book, I might finally be able to be understood, listened to, and respected.
From this fucked up experience as a public high school teacher, I have learned that I deserve that right now. I deserve that even if I never publish a single fucking book. I deserve that because I am a human. And you deserve that too.
Thus, in the next sections, I’m going to teach you what I’ve learned about how to provide emotional support to people you care about, more specifically what behaviors and actions you can do to show someone that you are listening to them, that you respect them, and that you understand them.
How to Show Someone You Are Listening to Them
Growing up, my Dad would come home from a long day at work and he’d ask, “How was your day?”.
I’d get all excited and start gushing about my day, and then I’d look over. “Dad, you’re eyes are closed. You’re not listening.”
“I am, I am. I’m just resting my eyes.”
As an adult, I have compassion for my father. He was busy working 10 to 12 hour days to provide for our family, three kids under 10 and a wife, that he was financially responsible for. Of course he was tired.
As a kid, I thought he thought I was boring and didn’t care about my day. That wounded child is still inside of me, however, because I am an adult and have learned how to listen to myself, to seek out relationships with people who have the energy and skills to listen to me, and am able to communicate with the people who care about me, she is healing.
At the age of 30, I have never felt more loved, listened to, and supported by my Dad and he’s not even legally responsible to do that for me anymore.
Here’s some techniques to show someone you are listening to them (and also creates the perfect acronym LoF ME PPlease):
Look at them
Seems pretty obvious, but from my anecdote above, it can actually be pretty challenging. Making eye contact is a basic way to show people you are listening to them.
Some people struggle with this – such as people who are on the autism spectrum or blind – and so it is important that you explain that this is something that is hard/not possible for you, but that you are still listening to them. You will then have to show them that you are listening in others ways.
I have dated two people who are blind, and it’s very important that if you can’t look at someone or don’t have eyes (in the case of one of them!) that you are using other strategies to show that you are listening to compensate.
Focus On them
Another pretty obvious one, but equally challenging. To show them that they have all of your attention, you have to give them all of your attention aka don’t be distracted or doing other things.
Facing them and putting away your phone, headphones, or other things that can be distracting. This can be very hard for people with ADHD, as phones or headphones can actually provide much needed stimulation that helps the person to focus, but in our culture (designed by neurotypical people), we are taught otherwise.
Thus you will need to find what works for you and what is more socially appropriate for you to get those needs met and still communicate to the person that you care about that you do actually care about them enough to listen to them.
Some suggestions:
- tell them that you are better able to listen and focus on walks (movement can help with stimulation as well as releasing anxiety)
- bring a fidget toy with you or something to fiddle with that doesn’t make noise or ask if you can doodle while they speak
- have the talk in a noisy place like a cafe or bar where music is playing in the background but can also give the privacy needed to share honestly
- Have the call over the phone so that you can be doing other things to meet your stimulation needs, but they don’t see them and thus don’t know you’re doing them and think that you are 100% focused on them
Mirror them
When they are talking, copy their body language and tone like a mirror. Reflect back at them using your body what you are hearing.
If they cross their arms, then you cross your arms. If they take a sip of their drink, you take a sip of your drink. If they are whispering, whisper. This is a way to show someone that you are on the same wavelength as them, and many people when they are on the same wavelength as someone else will unconsciously do this.
You can go deeper into this mirroring by echoing them and paraphrasing them. (If you are blind, then you will really have to do a lot of this)
Echo Them
On top of using your body language to show you are listening, you can use verbal language. Making soothing sounds like “uhs” or “ums” or “yeahs” when someone pauses while sharing can encourage them to keep talking and fills in the silence where they might feel nervous or stop to reflect on what they are saying and start judging themselves.
You can also repeat phrases back to them that they have said, but let them dangle like a question to encourage them to go deeper or expand on what they said.
An example would be:
- Person Sharing: “And then Linda said to me, “Can I see you in my office?”
- Person Listening: “Linda said that she wanted to see you in her office, huh?”
- Person Sharing: “Yeah, and I’d been in her office before, but this time felt different.”
Another technique is to reflect back the emotions/feelings they are communicating to you and check if that is what they are intending to get across.
An example:
- Person Listening: “When you said that Linda wanted to see you in her office, you sounded scared. Is that how you felt?”
Paraphrase them
Paraphrasing what someone said to you aka listening to what they said, summarizing what you thought they said, reflecting it back to them, and then checking if you understood them correctly is by far one of the most powerful techniques I’ve experienced (and used) for showing someone that I have heard them.
I usually pull this one out in very high stress conversations like a break up or a coaching session where someone is giving me negative feedback. Some foreshadowing for you. HA!
Sometimes I even like to write what they said down and put it in an email or text message (or a poem!) just to hold the person even more accountable for their words. Once something is written down, it becomes a legal document! People hate that shit, it terrifies them.
I can’t help that I come from a family of accountants; I experience a lot of joy holding people accountable, especially myself.
But again, the point of listening to someone that you care about is not to scare them, that whatever they say can and may be used against them in a legal proceeding. It’s about supporting them and making them feel safe.
That is why trust is very important when being vulnerable with people. You have to truly believe that the person you are sharing with cares about you, wants what is best for you, and is a safe person who will not use the information to hurt or harm you.
This is another reason why sometimes we need a therapist! In our “me, me, me” society where we are all competing against each other for a fixed amount of resources [capitalism!] – no one is safe and everyone is a predator.
With a therapist, because they are a medically licensed professional held to HIPAA, we can sue them and they can lose their license if they violate our privacy or use the information to hurt or harm us. Thus, they maintain this boundary not because they love and care for us, but because if they don’t they will be severely punished.
This was a pretty logical operating system back when white landowning Christian men who often used tools of oppression to control the women, slaves, children, and employees they used to get their needs met while not meeting the needs of those people (or like literally raping, hitting, and killing them if they didn’t do what they were told), but it doesn’t work now.
In a society, where we believe that all people of all backgrounds and identities deserve equal opportunity, we have to believe that all people are trying their best and want to help and take care of others, they just need to be provided the education, support, and resources to do so.
It is a society that is love-based, not fear based. People are intrinsically good and want to do good, versus people are intrinsically bad and will do bad unless they are threatened with punishments in this life or when they go to Hell.
One resource that is critical for all people to develop into healthy and caring individuals is they need to be listened to.
Being listened to in our society is currently a scarce resource, not because we don’t have enough people to listen, but because we don’t have enough people who know how to listen and don’t have enough time to do so because we are so busy working!
Hopefully what I’ve shared above will be helpful. If you have other ideas, techniques, and resources to share – I’d greatly appreciate it! Just message me or comment below.
Praise them
And last but not least, praise them! If someone chooses to share their problems with you, that is an honor and a gift. It is fucking terrifying and very risky to be emotionally vulnerable and intimate with someone, and it is one of the highest compliments that they want to nurture that kind of relationship with you.
And yet many of us are either not taught how to support each in this way or we are told that we are burdening others when we try to create that type of relationship.
When we are not taught how to support each other in this way and try to, we might actually cause the other person harm. Like for reals. It can have serious consequences on their physical health.
The worst part about this tragic and typical interaction is that, usually, we are not trying to hurt that person. We do care about that person and we are trying to support them, we just don’t know how to support others in this way, or are not supported enough in our own lives to support someone else. We can resort to using the same toxic relating strategies that have been used on us, continuing the cycle of harm.
It is a gift though to become aware that you are in a cycle and are harming someone else or yourself because then you can stop it. Until you have that awareness, you are stuck. Since you can control yourself, you can learn set healthy boundaries and work on communication with that person to improve the relationship and make it healthy.
To keep a relationship healthy requires continual effort (or work). It requires maintenance, just like a car or any sort of machine.
Many people I have dated got frustrated when our relationship required work – having difficult conversations where we had to be emotionally vulnerable AND time spent intentionally with a goal and focus – in order to maintain our relationship. Instead, they decided that I wasn’t exciting anymore, or that we weren’t compatible for the long-term, and chose to break up with me.
In the past, we didn’t require this kind of work from our male partners because we were dependent on them for our financial and physical security. We were forced to do emotional labor for the men in our lives because we were simply expected to take care of the kids and elderly, AND also essentially forbidden to go to school or work.
Now because of feminism and capitalism, both men and women are working outside the house. We have moved the emotional and domestic labor that women did outside the house, too.
We have professionalized it – teachers, care-givers, therapists, nurses etc. – and moved it to schools, daycares, senior homes, and hospitals. Only wealthy people have the luxury of providing it for their own family members, although they usually don’t want to because of how much our society values our jobs over all other parts of our lives, and we don’t really respect people who choose to take care of others. We martyr them, we thank them, we give them discounts, we think they are nice people, but we don’t actually respect them.
How To Show Someone You Respect Them
Last night I had a crazy evening. I went to a book launch party sola and after started talking to this guy who asked me if I wanted to go for a drink on him.
I said yes, and we had some interesting conversations that led to us making out at a bachata bar in DTLA. When we would make out, he would bite me and I didn’t like that so I told him nicely. He seemed to accept it, so I continued dancing with him.
A little bit later, he did it again, and I said, “Oh, that hurts, could you please not bite me?”
He said, “I didn’t do it for you, I did it for me.” Like that was a sexy thing to say. Sigh. After that, I just wanted to go home, but I was too afraid to tell him and start a public conflict, so I just went inward.
We made out a little bit more because I still hoped that he would listen to what I said and change his behavior, but when he bit me for the third time!, I was done. I told him that I did not like that, and he kept doing it anyway. He was not respecting what I wanted, so I called a Lyft and went home.
Although, then he wanted to get into the Lyft with me, and I was too nice to say no, and so he did. He wanted to go back with me, and I said maybe just to cuddle, but then from his behavior, I didn’t trust him to respect that. I was literally driving us back to my house when I decided nope, I didn’t feel safe with him and that even though what he wanted and what I wanted were different, I needed to respect and listen to myself first even though he was not doing that, and finally, thankfully dropped him off at his apartment.
Key takeaway from this situation: you show someone you respect them by listening to what they say and acting on it. Respect isn’t just listening to someone and responding, you have to demonstrate you respect them by modifying your behavior based on what the other person is communicating to you.
You have to validate what they are saying and build on it. You can’t just ignore it because it’s not what you want. Well, you can but then you are a passive-aggressive communicator (there are four types of communicators).
Passive-aggressive communicators really fuck with me. They appear passive when you talk to them, respectful and nice, talking quietly and seeming to prioritize your needs, and then they do what they want and only they get their needs met (aka an aggressive communicator). In the end, there was no compromise. Only one person got their needs met, and yet, it’s hard to be upset at them because when you did talk to them, they did make you feel heard. It’s just they didn’t actually respect what you said.
And sometimes, if the other person will not respect what you say, you have to respect what you say even though it will cause a conflict. Even though they may not like you, even though they may think that you don’t like them. You have to respect you.
Although it’s important to communicate with the other person why you are doing so, and not pretend that everything is fine, or that can become passive-aggressive.
OMG! I just realized that I have been a passive aggressive communicator, and why it super triggers me. As well as why passive aggressive communicators communicate that way! Although I came to being passive aggressive by being passive for most of my life… but still!
The goal is to be assertive. When you are assertive – it helps everyone. When you are assertive, both people get their needs met. You stand up for your own needs, wants, and feelings, AND also listen and respect the other persons needs and are willing to collaborate to figure out how they both yours needs can be met because you respect each other equally.
In order to do this, you have to understand each other so you can collaboratively brainstorm ways to both get what you need and then support each other in getting those needs met.
How to Show Someone You Understand Them
Elvis Costello sang, “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding,” way back when and it spoke to a truth. We laugh at peace, love, and understanding. We call people who fight for them and who act in these ways naive or childish or sweet or innocent. I know, I’ve been called those words a lot. What they don’t realize is that to truly act in alignment with those values takes emotional resiliency and fortitude, and a ridiculous amount of strength and intelligence. They are way harder to cultivate than violence, hate, and ignorance.
To show someone you understand them, you have to actually understand them and then use your words, body language, and actions to communicate that you have understood them. This is a three step process: (1) listen to them, (2) validate them, and (3) respect them by modifying your behavior based on what they communicated to help both people get their needs met.
Step 1: Listen to them
I already talked about how to show someone you are listening to them – LoF ME PPlease! Just do that.
Step 2: Validate them
Validation! Validation is magical. It is power. It is beauty. Validation makes the world go round and our society function. I wrote about this in How to Value Your Own Thoughts already, but it is so so so critical that I’m gonna go into it again.
Validation is the acceptance of ones thoughts, feelings, and needs. Validation is not agreeing. You can validate someone and still disagree with them.
It’s more like scanning someone’s parking ticket. How long they were there, what type of car they are driving, whether they parked well or not doesn’t matter (double-parking assholes). You are simply checking their ticket in the parking lot of life.
Marsha Linehan, who created Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (the most effective treatment for supporting people with borderline and bipolar), details that there are six levels of validation.
These levels are different ways to show some that you understand them, each one more meaningful and strengthening than the next. They might sound familiar.
Level 1: Being Present
Aka! Listen. Focus on them. Look at them when they are talking. Use verbal and nonverbal cues to show that you are with them in the moment. LoF ME PPlease!!
Level 2: Accurate Reflection
Paraphrase what they say back to them, but don’t parrot. Ask “Is that right?” Be nonjudgmental and matter-of-fact and create an open space for them to share. Have an “of course” attitude, like of course that would happen, that’s a natural and common thing to do. You don’t have to agree with or like the other’s perceptions or feelings.
Validation isn’t approval, rather it’s tolerating others’ feelings and demonstrating your ability to respect those feelings even if you might not have had that same reaction yourself. You are showing that the person’s feelings are universal enough that you “get” what they are feeling.
Example: “My therapist doesn’t like me.”
Validation: “Sounds like you feel pretty unaccepted by your therapist.”
Level 3: Stating What Hasn’t Been Said Out Loud (“the unarticulated”)
At this level, you try to read between the lines to figure out what else this person might be feeling. You learn to “read” a person’s behavior and imagine what they might be feeling, worried about, or wanting. Receiving this level of validation feels good because it’s clear someone else made an effort to think about you.
You don’t have to get it right, it’s a way of checking that you are understanding what they are trying to communicate. This can also help them to figure out how they are feeling because sometimes when we share, we don’t notice our body language or certain words or phrases that we keep using, or the reason we need help is we don’t know how we feel and so we don’t know what we need. You can help reflect these patterns back to us and help us figure out these things.
By making educated guesses based on verbal and nonverbal cues of the other person, you can provide valuable emotional support to help us problem solve and process.
Some sentence frames include:
- I wonder if you feel ___?
- I noticed that when you talk about ___, you ___. Is that because you feel ___?
- If I was you, I imagine I would feel/want to ___. Is that how you feel/what you want to do?
Level 4: Understanding the Person’s Behavior in Terms of History and Biology
Level 4 validation is contextualizing their feelings and behaviors with their personal histories and biology. This demonstrates that their responses make sense based on their past experiences, as well as how their mind and body are connected and their unique biodiversity.
Again, you are not judging the feelings – aka that’s a good way to feel, you should feel like this, you should do this, should should should! Try to eliminate using that word. I hate that word! Should is a judgement. It means whatever you did was not the right thing to do or that you were entitled to something. This a judgment. You did it, so it was what you wanted to do. Just because you expect something doesn’t mean that you are going to get it, or that your expectations are realistic or are more important than another person’s expectations. Whether you should or shouldn’t, or they should or shouldn’t have doesn’t matter anymore.
It happened, so you must have needed to do it. Why did you do it? That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Was there a better and more functional way to get the same need met that wouldn’t have caused as much harm? What can you learn from the experience to prevent the situation from happening again?
Whenever you say “should” though, that is an amazing clue about what you need to focus on. This is the thing that you wanted to have done, but didn’t for some reason. This is where the conflict is, and through analyzing this gap and recognizing when you are in a similar situation again, you can make a new choice that brings you closer to what you wish you had done, becoming closer to the person you want to be. Becoming in alignment with your words and values.
These moments when you say “should” are your unconscious and unspoken rules and expectations about how you, other people, and the world should be. By identifying these and making them clear and transparent to the other person, or even (and most importantly) yourself!, you then know what it is you need to do or try to make happen.
Whenever I notice I’m saying “should”, I try to replace it with “wish”. I also try to use “wish” instead of apologizing for things that I am not in control of because I did nothing wrong and choose not to take responsibility or be blamed for something that was not my fault.
In conclusion, this level of validation is all about demonstrating that you understand how those feelings make sense given the person’s circumstances.
Level 5: Normalizing
In level five, you are communicating to the other person that what they are feeling is perfectly normal and that any human in their situation with their background would have done the same thing.
At the same time, if you believe that something they are doing is not normal, you need to tell them. If you aren’t honest with them, this breaks trust. Try to find the grain of normalcy within what they are sharing and acknowledge that. Or express that you understand that they had good intentions and that they weren’t trying to hurt or cause pain, and that you understand that if they could have done something more effective, they would have.
Level 6: Radical Genuineness
Level 6, the deepest way of validating someone, is to validate by sharing about a time when you felt similarly or struggled with a similar problem. You treat the person as an equal who is strong and capable and able to handle reality and solve their problems. You let them know that their experience is just part of being human by sharing your own human experience grappling with that same challenge.
This is why making art and sharing it with others who reveal that they have felt that way too can be so healing. It helps you feel like you are not alone in your suffering and connect to others who understand. They get it. It roots you to your own humanity.
Step 3: Respect Them
Already talked about this one, but I want to reiterate. In order to truly respect someone, you have to listen to what they say and modify your behavior to make sure that both you and this other person are getting their needs met. It’s critical that you also get your needs met, because that is how you show respect to yourself.
If you don’t also get your needs met, you will end up becoming resentful towards the other person. Like I said, that’s how trauma happens- when one person doesn’t get their needs met in a situation. And mental health (and physical health!) problems start when this trauma happens over and over again.
I love this quote from The Courage to Be Happy by Ichiro Kishimi.
Respect denotes the ability to see a person as he is; to be aware of his unique individuality
Observing Your Own Responses
While you were reading part 2, I imagine that your own thoughts and feelings came up. This is natural. This is how we develop our responses. This is how we figure out who we are, what we want, and how we feel. In response to other people. We need an input in order to have an output, and this output is how we learn about our identities, how we become more self and socially aware, how we become who we are meant to be.
Since you are reading this on your own, whatever thoughts or feelings that you have- I would love it if you stopped and wrote them down. Then return to reading. Later when you read them back and reflect, you will have a deeper understanding of who you are and what you think, and then choose what you would like to do with this insightful information.
Usually, we just release these thoughts and feelings without thinking about them; we react instead of respond. This is where things can get messy and people can get hurt. This is the beauty of reading something instead of speaking. You are protected and safe. This is why we love sending long, angry text messages and letters or ranting on social media. We can be honest AND physically safe.
And yet, eventually – we have to resolve the conflict and be able to tolerate and accept each other out in the world when we are standing in line at a grocery store or sitting next to each other in the office. To move through the conflict and keep living our lives.
My intention in sharing my story and what I have learned is because I want to better understand and support you, too. I need you to also get your needs met because I need you to get my needs met, and if you’re angry, tired, or resentful, that makes it harder for me.
I believe that when we talk to each other, there are only two types or responses. Loving responses or a call for help. If both people are calling for help, then no one can help. I have learned how to identify when I am in situations with people who need help, to take space and give myself the love I need, and then come back ready to help the other person.
But it’s getting exhausting. It’s exhausting watching the people I love and care about trying over and over again to get help from people who can’t help them. It’s exhausting having to recognize I need help, trying to get help and be dismissed, invalidated or disrespected or recognizing the other person needs help, too, and can’t help me.
Then having to remove myself from the situation, give myself the listening, validation, and respect that I need (journaling bitches!!), and then go back into the same situation and keep trying to cope or teach or communicate or problem solve until I can get what I need while trying to set boundaries so that the other person in denying their responsibility and power to help in the situation unintentionally makes me think I am the problem, that I am too sensitive, too weak, or too lazy. That I am not smart enough, not thick-skinned enough, not hard-working enough. That I’m just overthinking.
This is why I burnt out. After three years and 2 months of not having my needs met by my administrators and colleagues, I started experiencing PTSD, OCD, anxiety, depression, anger, resentment, and fatigue, and I just couldn’t do it anymore.
I have been processing what happened and why (phase two! Almost there!) and learning to how to create boundaries between what is my work and responsibilities, what is the work and responsibility of others, and how to best advocate for myself and hold others accountable has really helped me to understand why I burnt out and how to prevent it from happening again.
It’s been hard and I am still figuring it out, but I wanted to share about the work that I am doing in this area.
Questions
Once again- all questions, feedback, and responses are valid! This is how we grow!
Read the next post in the series:
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