Active listening is something we hear all the time. But what does it mean? How is it different to just listening? Here we discuss what active listening is, and some tools for practicing it.

Our research highlights not only the importance of feeling listened to, but also the potential negative impact that feeling ‘unheard’ and ‘unsupported’ can have on a person. Our participants told us that feeling listened to helped them to feel supported, whilst also helping to take their mind off some of the negative feelings they were experiencing.

“I had a friend who was a really big support for me. She didn’t necessarily do anything, but I don’t think she realised how helpful it was just to have someone to listen to me, or even just to chat to about other things to take my mind off everything you know.”

“It makes you feel resigned, you think, I tried to get help and it didn’t work so, I might as well go back to what I’m doing before, like unhealthy coping mechanisms”

“It’s nice to have someone who actually understands – I think it mostly just helped really, because it was mostly someone who I could talk too. And we could share things mutually.”

As social beings we often want to be helpful when a friend is upset or in distress. We sometimes try to solve their problems or present them with a solution. This can be helpful. It can certainly provide that person with another perspective or give them ideas about things they hadn’t considered previously. But sometimes it can do the opposite. It can make people feel like they are not being heard. This can lead a person to shut down, and have the opposite effect of what we had intended – it can stop people from sharing their thoughts/feelings with us.

We are shaped by so many things – our past experiences, our genetics, our interests, our financial situation, our family situation, past relationships, our belief systems, the world we live in etc. People are different. We experience things differently. This is important when thinking about active listening. Below is an example I use during teaching when discussing the importance and value of listening to a person’s story:

Take a moment to think about your driving test (or if you haven’t done a driving test think about the reasons why).

After a few minutes I ask students to share their experience. The room is often flooded with examples of near collisions, tales of anxiety driven dry mouth, feelings of excitement, perhaps fear. Sometimes people haven’t done their driving test because they aren’t interested in driving, don’t have the money to drive, live somewhere they don’t need to, believe it’s better for our environment that they don’t, or have a health condition that means they can’t. I did my test quite late in life. It was more of a ‘need to’ rather than ‘want to.’ I passed first time – much to the disgust of my partner at the time who passed on his fifth attempt. But after several years of driving I am just about finding my feet. I don’t think I will ever love it, but I certainly don’t experience the same anxiety I used to have when getting into my car.

Anyway. Why is this important and how does it relate to active listening? Well the point of this long-winded tale is that even small moments in our life can mean entirely different things to different people. On the surface it is the same event, yet experienced completely differently by so many. And so, when we listen to others it can be difficult to hear what they are truly saying to us – it is difficult to not come at the situation with our own ‘baggage.’ To try to image being that person, with their own unique feelings and experiences can be difficult. But if done correctly, it can help us to support others during the darkest and most difficult times. Please remember that you are not expected to be counsellor. Nor would it be appropriate for us to try to counsel our loved ones. But we can often find ourselves in scenarios where someone has chosen to open up to us. And it is times like these when we can be most helpful, so having the right tools for listening can be vital.

So in short… active listening is the act of paying attention to what the person is trying to tell you, refraining from judgement and assumption, and trying to understand from their perspective.

So, here a few helpful pointers for active listening in everyday life. This is not exhaustive and there are many resources online (e.g. the Samaritans) that can help foster our listening skills.

  • Try to refrain from judgement – our judgement can be shown in not only the words we use but through our expressions. Phrases like ‘wow’ or ‘oh dear’ can seem harmless – and in many cases are – but we should think about how we are using such phrases and how they might come across to the person hearing them.
  • Pauses – silence can feel uncomfortable, but sometimes people need time to process their thoughts. We tend to want to fill silences. But filling a silence can mean that a person you are talking to misses the opportunity to share.
  • Clarification – because we all come with our own thoughts, feelings, experiences, we can sometimes interpret someone’s words differently to what they had intended. So using clarifications can help. For example ‘I heard you say xxxx, I am just checking this is what you meant by it’ or ‘you said xxxx, can you tell me a little more.’
  • Repeat back – what they have said – ‘you told me…’ ‘you felt….’
  • Ask open questions – ‘why, how long, tell me more, in what way…’ rather than questions that require a yes or no answer. Closed questions can inadvertently shut someone down.
  • Explore – If appropriate, explore different things in your conversation, such as feelings, behaviour, and thoughts.
  • Be sensitive – phrases such as ‘take your time’ ‘tell me as much or as little as you want to’ can be helpful.
  • Thank them for sharing – e.g. ‘I know it must have been difficult for you to share that with me.’

Validation – this can be difficult. Especially when we disagree with what the person is saying/doing.

What is validation? When discussing feelings, validation is the process in which we acknowledge and accept what a person is experiencing/feeling (i.e. sadness, guilt, grief etc), and know that is understandable for this person to experience these feelings.

How to validate? Well we can help to identify emotions by asking simple questions such as ‘how do you feel.’ Or if they have told you they feel sad or are crying using phrases to show you recognise the emotion they are experiencing can be helpful. For example ‘I can see you are crying’, ‘I can see you are upset’, ‘I hear that you are sad’ ‘that is understandable’ ‘it is understandable that you feel that way’.

We can recognise the emotions of others, try to understand them, and accept them (this is arguably the most important and most difficult part, especially when we do not want them to feel a particular way). It is probably easier to validate the emotions of a person who we do not know. It is certainly most difficult to validate a person’s emotions when we have strong feelings about them, their behaviour and/or things they have said. Particularly if those things have hurt us in some way.

For many years I volunteered as a listener for a mental health organisation. Part of the service was email responses. I remember reading a reply from another volunteer. To this day I do not know who that volunteer was, but it has stuck with me. It was one simple sentence ‘you are not alone now you have spoken with us.’ Validation helps us to connect with others. But beyond that it tells us that we are not alone in whatever it is we are going through. Someone is there listening, trying to understand, and trying to share our experience with us.