Listening to Feelings
Part of the “A Problem Solver’s Approach to Listening” series
“You’re not listening to how I feel!”
If this sounds familiar to you, then you’re not alone — I’ve heard it too. I recall once listening to a rant about some workplace political drama that might have spanned three episodes of the Office. All the while, I was fixated on dissecting the narrative and not my friend’s emotions. Needless to say, they felt upset that their feelings weren’t heard, and I felt confused that they hadn’t explicitly brought up how they felt.
Listening to feelings is hard. Even deciphering our own emotions can be a monumental task, let alone understanding someone else’s. And to make it worse, sometimes the speaker also can’t grasp how they’re feeling.
To approach this, I began treating listening as a process of discovery. It’s a process through which listeners can learn to hear and comprehend a speaker’s emotions while often also helping the speaker gain insights into their own emotional state.
I like to break down listening to feelings into three key parts: labels, context, and empathizing. Each part can also involve an active listening component through which we can ask questions and use reflective listening techniques to build connection.
Labels
“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.” — David Foster Wallace
When listening for emotional content, my initial focus is on the labels: the words or concepts we use to describe emotions. These can range from broad terms like fine, good, and bad to more precise ones like exasperated, infuriated, and joyful. Labels can also appear as phrases like “butterflies in my stomach” or “my heart skipped a beat.”
Ideally, I like to hear words or phrases that are more specific because they’re easier to connect to. For instance, consider two statements about the same scenario:
“I feel bad when I see them together”
“I feel jealous when I see them together”
Although both bad and jealous are negative emotional labels, the latter arguably conveys more information. Since experiences of jealousy are more distinctive than experiences where we’ve felt bad, it’s easier to recall our own similar experiences and empathize.
Moreover, we can ask questions like “How do you feel about this?” or “Would you say you’re feeling [emotion]?” if these labels aren’t readily provided. I’ve found it helpful to use a wheel of emotions as a reference to pinpoint more specific labels:
That being said, not everyone can accurately articulate or label their feelings, which often leads to statements such as “I feel some type of way…” or “I don’t know how I feel.” And that’s ok! We don’t want to pressure someone into applying a specific emotional label if they are unwilling or unable to do so.
Instead, we can explore something easier to describe: the context.
Context
“Love and hate are two sides of the same coin”
Our emotional response to a situation depends greatly on the context through which we experience it. One notable example of this is the misattribution effect, where going on dates involving physiological arousal can lead to the participants finding each other more attractive. The feeling of fear while crossing a wobbly bridge or the rush of endorphins released during a cardio intensive activity become perceived as attraction due to the romantic context.
Since context plays a huge role in emotional perception, effective listening involves gathering as much information as possible about a speaker’s context. This information can come in different forms:
- Physical: Observing nonverbal cues such as body language and noting physiological responses (“My heart was beating out of my chest”)
- Situational: Learning about the setting (“I was on a date with someone, and we crossed a wobbly bridge”)
- Mental: Exploring thoughts and perceptions (“I thought they were very attractive”)
- Prior: Considering any feelings or thoughts leading up to the situation (“I wasn’t sure how I felt about things going into the date”)
Exploring context is part of what makes listening an interactive process of discovery, in which I like to ask questions to lead a speaker into sharing more:
- Can you walk me through what happened?
- What were your thoughts leading up to the event, and what were you thinking during it?
- Can you tell me more about [specific detail]?
- Did you notice any physical sensations during the event?
Building up context helps us imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes and consider how we might have felt in their position, bringing us to the last part: empathizing.
Empathizing
Empathizing is the process through which we build a personal understanding of how someone else is feeling. This understanding is based on our interpretation of the labels and context provided by the speaker.
Once we believe we understand how someone might be feeling, we can use reflective listening to repeat it back in our own words with the goal of acknowledging and validating the speaker’s experience. In addition, empathizing can also help both the speaker and listener apply new labels to their feelings.
Consider the previous example where the speaker says “I feel bad when I see them together.” Diving into the context, we may discover that they learned their crush had gone on a date with someone else involving a certain wobbly bridge. After empathizing, we might reflect: “It sounds like you felt jealous when you saw them together,” to which the speaker might acknowledge, “Yes, that’s exactly how I felt!”
However, it’s important to remain open to the speaker’s perspective. They could also respond: “No, that’s not quite how I felt” and hopefully offer additional context. Then, we would continue listening and building a better understanding of their feelings.
What I’ve grown to love about framing listening as this process of discovery is the moment of connection it provides. As much as I wish it were possible, we as humans can never truly understand how someone else feels. After all, it’s impossible for us to go through the exact same experience with the exact same context as someone else. But at least by listening and empathizing, we can bridge our perspectives and forge meaningful connections.
