Empathetic Vs Dismissive Listening - Do You Actively Listen Or Do You Always Give Advice?

I have realized that I have a dismissive listening trait, where I am always trying to give advice to the other person to fix their situation and them, without actually letting them vent and get stuff off their chest. I am trying to work on this.

Transcript

Hi everyone,

I hope you are doing amazing wherever you are in the world.

My name is Bhoomshakha and I welcome you to my channel.

As always I am so grateful that you are listening,

Subscribing and commenting.

I really appreciate the support.

In this one I wanted to speak to you about empathic listening vs dismissive listening.

Recently a friend of mine shared a post on my Facebook feed about the difference between the two.

The artwork was done by an artist called Keely Shaw.

I will link her below so you can go check her out.

She is amazing.

She has done a bunch of different,

A lot of different art that is very inclusive and a lot of advocate work and a lot of figuring out,

Putting the eye or putting the attention on something that is important in the environment right now,

In the atmosphere right now.

Something that we should be paying attention to.

She creates art on stuff like that.

So really brilliant stuff.

But one of the ones that I was looking at was the one,

The difference between empathic vs dismissive listening.

Recently I have been noticing that I have gotten into a bad habit of dismissing people basically when they are speaking.

This is something that I have been really kind of observing in myself and I have been kind of asking why am I doing this.

Because I will be doing it in the moment because I will interrupt someone when they are speaking which is the worst thing you could ever do to someone really.

It doesn't matter if you apologize after you are like,

I am sorry I just want to interrupt for a second.

No,

It doesn't matter.

You are interrupting the person.

So I will apologize and I am like,

I just really want to share something right now.

But why am I interrupting this person over and over again?

I have been doing this over and over again with a lot of different people and a lot of different conversations and I caught myself one day and I was like,

Why?

Why am I doing this over and over again with so many different people?

What is it inside of me that believes that my conversation or what I am saying is more important than what this other person is saying?

That what I have to say on this subject should be heard before this other person whatever they are saying.

Why cannot I just sit and listen to this person's ideas and then if the need arises for me to share my thoughts then yeah,

I can do that after.

But why do I have to insert it in the middle of what this person is saying?

Why can't I just be patient,

Let them speak,

Let them finish and then be like,

Alright yeah that's really interesting.

I would like to add to that.

Unfortunately a lot of us do this but obviously I am observing it a little bit more in me right now because I assumed,

I wrongly assumed that I am a good listener.

And in a lot of cases sometimes,

In some cases I am,

I think.

And sometimes I will sit and just listen and not say anything or not really say anything but not interject or interrupt but let the person speak and let their thoughts come to me and then really mull over it and then if I have something important or useful to add then I will add something.

But mostly I am just sitting and listening.

But with certain people I have noticed that I have a tendency to interrupt them.

Now of course I think it also has to do with the fact that perhaps I have this idea in my head that what I am saying is more important than that person because perhaps I don't actually attribute much value to that person.

And so again that's something that I need to work on upon myself because no matter who the person is in front of me,

No matter what they are saying,

No matter what assumptions I have about them,

They are still important and their opinions still matter and I should still be paying attention to it and letting them speak in full.

Of course that's my dilemma and that's something that I need to work on myself.

But I noticed this post by my friend and I was like,

Ah,

That's exactly it,

That's what I am doing.

Because as an INFJ,

As an individual in this world right now,

I have this tendency because I am doing a lot of different things to improve myself and I am doing a lot of self-help stuff,

Things like that.

I have this general tendency that I can fix you.

I have this thing inside of my head that oh no,

I know exactly what will fix you.

You just need to do this,

This,

This and then you will be fixed.

And as I realized as I have been doing these videos and also talking to a lot of you viewers,

A lot of people that message me constantly,

I realized that a lot of people don't actually really want to be fixed.

Of course,

There is nothing to be fixed.

They usually just want to share their story with me.

They don't actually want me to give them advice.

Sometimes they do,

But that's mostly very rarely.

I would say 5-10% of the time they want advice.

Mostly what they want is they want to share their story.

And in a lot of the comments as well,

A lot of times I will just be like thanks for sharing because in a lot of cases,

The person doesn't really want help or they don't want to be fixed or they don't want a solution to their problems or they don't want advice.

They just want to share.

They are in a mode where perhaps they are a little bit lonely or perhaps they cannot really share the stuff with their family or friends because it is a big issue.

And so they are going to a stranger on the net and saying let me share.

I want to pour my heart out on this page or in this comment.

Please let me do that.

Let me share and then just listen to me with an open heart.

And so in a lot of cases I said I have this tendency and I am trying to break that tendency.

I have this tendency as I said oh I know what you should do.

Just do these things and you will be fixed.

In a lot of cases I am recommending the same things over and over again.

Do yoga or start meditating or start journaling or things like that.

And I am constantly like just do these three things and you will be fine.

But as I said that is dismissive listening.

That is not actually conducive to the person who is speaking to you.

Now there is a difference between what the person wants and what the person needs.

Right now when you are sitting with a friend and they are like I really need to talk to someone about this stuff.

The basic essence is you need to ask them.

Do you want me to give you advice or do you want me to just let you vent?

And that was something I saw as well on Instagram post where this person is like you know when my friend is really coming to me with a problem or with something that they want to speak to me about.

I will start up the conversation with that.

I will be like alright do you want me to just listen or do you want me to offer advice.

And it is just so brilliant because a lot of cases the person will be like well I don't really need advice.

I know what to do.

I just want to vent.

I just want to get it off my chest.

I just want to speak about it.

And so I have been really loving that delineation because in a lot of cases when I go to a person and I am like I really just want to vent.

I just want to get it off my chest.

I don't actually want advice.

I already know in my head what I need to do about the situation.

I already know how to fix the situation.

I don't need advice.

I just want the person to listen.

I just want a sounding board or I just want basically to get it off of my chest and to empty myself off of it so I can go on,

Have closure,

Move on off of it and then do what I need to do.

And so those two things,

The combination of just asking that question to our friend,

Do you want me to listen or do you want me to actually give you advice.

What do you need right now?

What do you need?

Because for us it doesn't really matter.

We can go either way I think.

But if we know clearly that this person wants advice then we can start thinking in that mode.

If we know clearly that the person does not want advice,

They just want us to listen then we can go into that mode.

And it's so much easier because you're not constantly thinking okay I think I'm going to give this advice to this person.

Oh this is what they said.

I think this is what's going to help them.

You're constantly not thinking about it because you know that all this person wants is to vent.

And just kind of you're more relaxed when you listen to them.

They're more relaxed when they're talking to you.

I think all of it just works out perfectly if we could just start off the conversation with that kind of question.

And as well when you're having the conversation,

You're talking,

In a lot of cases I said people don't want you to give them advice.

They just want you to listen.

But in a lot of cases,

Especially for me I've noticed that I have as I said the tendency to be like no I can fix you.

So this is all you should do blah blah blah and then that's it.

It's done.

Okay cool.

We're done right?

We're done here.

And I said so dismissive of them,

Dismissive of their feelings,

Dismissive of their emotions,

Dismissive of the conversation that we just had,

Dismissive of them as general.

And it's not empathic.

Right?

It's not empathic at all because empaths,

I mean even if I'm feeling it in my heart I'm not displaying it by actually dismissing them.

I'm dismissing what they're feeling.

I'm dismissing how they're doing by saying this is what's going to help you fix it.

Maybe you don't want to fix it.

Maybe you already know what you need to do to fix it.

Maybe you want to sit with it,

Sit with the suffering for a bit so you can really learn from it.

I don't know.

But I won't know unless I actually ask the question.

And so as I said in a lot of cases I noticed that I'm doing this wrong and so I'm trying very much.

I'm really trying to kind of switch it around.

Be like alright I'm just going to try a lot of empathic listening now rather than dismissive listening.

And I do that a lot with a couple of people in my life as I said and I'm noticing that as soon as I switch to empathic listening versus dismissive listening the conversation goes faster and the person is able to relax a little bit more in front of me.

They're able to chill out and really share what's going on within them because they're not afraid that I'm going to start trying to fix them or trying to give them advice.

They don't actually really want that.

But a lot of people don't know that they don't want that.

So even if you ask that question sometimes you'll be like well I don't know I guess I I mean who's going to refuse advice?

Who's going to be like no I don't want to be fixed.

I just want to mull over this and moan about this forever and ever.

Some people do actually just want to do that.

I know a couple of people in my life who just want to moan about the things that are going on but they don't ever want change.

In my head I'm like but why would you want to just moan about it for the rest of your life?

Well they do.

And so my prerogative in that situation is that don't forget don't worry about giving the advice.

Forget about it.

Just chill out.

Just listen to them over and over again moaning about the same thing because that's what they want.

That's all they want really.

It's hard but that's what they want so you have to give them what they want not what you want.

It's not about you it's about them.

I hope this makes sense.

I hope I was able to explain myself to you.

It's a really important delineation.

The two kinds of listening I think if you can kind of integrate that into your conversation style I think it would really change the conversations you have with people.

I think it really changed the relationships you have with people as well.

And so I highly recommend that you obviously go to Keely Shaw's art.

She's on Instagram I'll link her below.

Also look at the artwork that she's done on other subjects but also empathic listening versus dismissive listening.

Again thank you so much for listening.

I hope you were empathically listening.

And I shall see you guys next time around.

Bye for now.

Reviews

BRILLIANT❣️ Why is it that the most SIMPLE Understandings escape us⁉️
This is WONDERFUL Food for Thought ! 🙏🏻💕