THE ART OF LISTENING

By Barry K. Surratt, MAGTS, BCC, SEC, CCLC

Barry has served in professional chaplaincy for 16 years in various settings, including healthcare, hospice, and veterans. He serves as the CPE Program Director with Christian Chaplains and Coaching, has completed his Supervisor-Educator Candidate training, and will sit for board review this summer. He is the Director of Chaplain Training for the Idaho Chaplains Association and resides in Boise, Idaho.

MASTERING THE ART OF EMPATHETIC LISTENING

Besides being present, listening is the most important skill for chaplains and caregivers to master during patient visits. While essential to the pastoral care visit, its mastery is most difficult. As chaplains, we can all reflect on visits when we didn’t listen well and struggled with fix-it reflexes. Are we genuinely listening when we interact with others? Every conversation offers an opportunity to dig deeper and understand why we react the way we do. Whether we're trying to help, teach, comfort, or guide, we must assess our self-centered needs in those interactions. Take a moment to think: Are we interrupting, rushing, or avoiding because we're uncomfortable? Are we projecting our emotions onto others? Consider how our responses are shaped by our experiences and emotions. Avoiding these impulses is crucial for effective, empathetic listening.

Empathetic listening is not just a skill but a formidable instrument capable of transforming relationships and interactions with patients. For those in caregiving roles, mastering this art offers a pathway to forging deeper connections, fostering trust, and cultivating understanding. In this discourse, we explore empathetic listening, illuminating its definitions, examples, and the skills requisite for becoming a more adept listener. This journey of mastering empathetic listening can significantly contribute to personal growth as chaplains, offering new perspectives and insights.

Empathetic listening is a dynamic process that involves not just hearing but truly understanding the other person's perspective. It's about making an emotional connection and finding common ground to respond more meaningfully. As chaplains, our role is to listen and understand deeply. Regrettably, it is all too common to engage in merely transactional listening, where responses are offered hastily, and advice proffered without establishing a genuine bond. Such interactions often leave individuals feeling unheard and unattended.

Attentiveness and responsiveness during conversations involve directing our full focus toward the speaker, discerning verbal and non-verbal cues, and reflecting on their conversation to grasp their perspective authentically. Furthermore, empathetic listening necessitates the application of critical thinking, enabling one to delve beneath the surface of spoken words and comprehend the underlying emotions and motivations. One common method is ascribing themes to the patient’s narrative or story.

To practice empathic listening, we must listen patiently to what the other person is saying, even if we disagree with their conclusions. Read that last sentence again… to listen patiently even if you disagree with them, for our role as spiritual care providers is not to correct, rebuke, or counsel but to journey with the person through this pain, problem, and/or crisis. The goal is to create connection, understanding, and a feeling of being heard by the person speaking. The word – practice – is key in empathic listening because, if the truth be told, listening is hard work, listening to understand is harder, and listening with a non-judgmental attitude takes effort to suspend our embedded theology and act deliberately.

MASTERING THE ART OF VALIDATION

It is important to show acceptance, though not necessarily agreement, by simply nodding or injecting phrases such as "I understand" or "I see." Learn that the goal is connection, not correction. If we are solely concerned about their progress and not the process of listening to understand, we often short-circuit any meaningful change in the person’s outlook. Remember the saying, ‘A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still?’ While the jury is still out on the original author (possibly Samuel Butler’s 7th-century poem Hudibras), the adage especially applies to our understanding of the art of listening. Our role is not to convince anybody of anything but to provide a supportive, listening presence that allows the speaker to vent their emotions and reach the best conclusion or outcome for them. All such efforts to influence by responding without understanding will certainly fail, and alas, the person leaves our presence more defeated and discouraged than when they arrived.

Let's journey into the world of a beloved Disney Pixar film, Inside Out. This film offers a unique perspective on emotions, depicting them as personified entities that influence our actions. Memories are portrayed as vibrant orbs, stored away each night. The main characters, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust, work together to navigate the mind of their host. This film provides a rich illustration of empathetic listening in action. Consider the importance of empathic listening after you observe Joy’s attempts to cheer up Bing Bong (the elephant) or motivate him, or Sadness’s approach to sitting with HIM in pain and validating what they’re going through with reflective statements, empathy, affirmation, etc.

Click on this link to watch this short video from the 2015 Pixar movie – Inside Out[i]

Whose response (joy or Sadness) results in the creation of relationship, support, and empathy? Can you think of times in your own life when someone tried to cheer you up instead of just being present and listening to you share your pain? Can you remember how you felt when they validated your emotions? This movie scene illustrates how important listening with understanding can be when providing pastoral care to someone who is hurting.

 

[i]

MASTERING THE ART OF AFFIRMATION

It’s OK to say, ‘I’m sorry,’ once, but silence in the midst of pain speaks more than an echo. Here are some phrases to employ in these situations:

o   That must have been really hard

o   That sounds really bad

o   I can’t imagine how difficult that would be for you

One of my CPE supervisors encouraged me to utilize something he called ‘Therapeutic Grunts’. A grunt can signify affirmation, particularly in informal or non-verbal communication, and serve as a concise expression when words are minimal or unnecessary. These sounds tell the speaker that you’re listening and tracking with them by giving verbal feedback without words. Sounds like ‘Uh huh’ or ‘Mmmhm’ are non-verbal affirmations encouraging patients to speak up and share more because you show them your attentiveness and desire to hear their stories.

MASTERING NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION

Nonverbal communication is the first communication we receive from and give to another person. Studies have found that the total impact of a message is about 7% verbal, 38% tone of voice, and 55% nonverbal[iii] (body posture, gesture, eye contact, facial expression, etc.).

Attending well involves being aware of our own nonverbal messages that could create barriers and attending carefully to the nonverbal clues a person is sending us. It is worth bearing the following in mind: Even if the person cannot see you, body language can be detected by sound, tone, etc.

•        Avoid physical barriers between you and the other person and try to sit at an equal height.

•        If the person is a wheelchair user, try to find a seat equal in height to the wheelchair.

•        Be sensitive to the space between the seats; people will feel comfortable at different distances.

•        Keep your arms uncrossed (even with non-sighted people) and avoid fiddling or distracting movements.

•        Face the person and maintain comfortable eye contact, ensuring that this does not become a fixed stare. People with vision impairment can also tell if you are not facing them when talking to them.

•        Sometimes, it is helpful to use a light touch of the hand of someone who is visually impaired to indicate the distance you are sitting in relation to them.

SUMMARY

Theologian John Powell said, ‘In true listening, we reach behind the words, see through them, to find the person who is being revealed. Listening is a search to find the treasure of the true person as revealed verbally and nonverbally. There is the semantic problem, of course. The words bear a different connotation for you than they do for me. Consequently, I can never tell you what you said, but only what I heard. I will have to rephrase what you have said and check it out with you to make sure that what left your mind and heart arrived in my mind and heart without distortion’.[iv]

Empathic listening is being attentive and responsive to what others say during conversation. It results in making an emotional connection with the other person and finding similarities between their experience and your own so you can give a more heartfelt response. It takes a lifetime to perfect and should always be at the top of our action-reflection goals list. This ability helps patients feel heard and understood when you listen attentively as they share something difficult or painful; it is important that you are fully present and focused on what they are saying.

Listening requires more than just hearing words; it encompasses a psychological engagement with the speaker. It necessitates a genuine desire to comprehend the other person, an attitude of respect and acceptance, and a readiness to broaden one's perspective to understand the speaker’s point of view.

I hope the goal of listening better is near the top of your top ten chaplain skills list, as it is in mine!

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[i] Inside Out, Directed by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen (co-director), Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, 2015, https://youtu.be/t685WM5R6aM

[ii] Basic Emotions Image - Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Disgust by Sara Barber (purchased and used with permission – www.classful.com)

[iii] Mehrabian, Albert; Wiener, Morton (1967). "Decoding of Inconsistent Communications". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 6 (1): 109–114