Couples Therapy Homework: Active Listening
As a couples therapist, I know partners need to learn empathic listening and take turns communicating because these skills foster mutual understanding, respect, and connection. Empathic listening helps partners feel heard and valued, which strengthens emotional bonds and trust.
Accepting your partner’s subjective reality and internal feelings is important because it acknowledges that each person experiences situations differently based on their own emotions and perceptions. Recognizing and accepting these differences without insisting on hashing out all the facts allows partners to focus on understanding each other's perspectives and feelings rather than getting caught up in proving who is right. This approach fosters empathy, reduces defensiveness, and helps prevent conflicts from escalating, ultimately promoting a more harmonious and supportive relationship.
Key Concepts to Master:
Mirroring is the process of accurately reflecting back the "content" of a message from your partner. The most common form of mirroring is paraphrasing. A "paraphrase" is a statement in your own words of what the message your partner sent means to you. It indicates that you are willing to transcend your own thoughts and feelings for the moment and attempt to understand your partner from their point of view. Any response made before mirroring is often an "interpretation" and may contain a misunderstanding. Mirroring allows your partner to send their message again and permits you to paraphrase until you do understand.
Validation is a communication to your partner that the information being received and mirrored "makes sense." It indicates that you can see your partner's point of view and can accept its validity--it is "true" for the partner. Validation is a temporary suspension or transcendence of your point of view that allows your partner's experience to have its own reality. Typical validating phrases are: "I can see that. .. "; "You make sense to me because ... ": "I can understand that .... " Such phrases convey to your partner that their subjective experience has its own logic and is a valid way of looking at things. To validate your partner's message does not mean that you agree with their point of view or that it reflects your subjective experience. It merely recognizes the fact that in any communication between two persons. There are always two (or more) points of view, and every report of any experience is an "interpretation" which is the "truth" for each person. It also recognizes that no "objective view" is possible. The process of mirroring and validation affirms the other person and increases trust and closeness.
Empathy recognizes the "self' in the other. It is the process of reflecting, imagining, or participating in the feelings your partner is experiencing about the event or the situation. This deep level of communication attempts to recognize, reach into and, on some level, experience the emotions of your partner. This empathy allows both partners to transcend their separateness, even if only for a moment, and to experience a genuine "meeting." Such an experience has remarkable healing power. Typical phrases for empathic communication include: "and I can imagine that you must feel...." "and when you experience that, I hear ...," "I understand that you feel...," and "that makes sense to me," and at the deepest level. "I am experiencing your (feelings etc.) .... "
Active Listening Exercise
You and a partner can practice this basic communication exercise by starting small–pick topics that are mundane–like your preferences about pizza. Take 5 minutes and then switch roles with your partner.
Of course, this is also effective to use when discussing more impactful things and this guide can serve as a reminder to keep communication open, curious, and non-blaming.
The Speaker:
Brings up only one issue/problem
Uses “I statement” to describe thoughts and feelings about the issue
Describes the issue without blame or name-calling
And most essentially is open to learning more about themself than was known before they started talking
The Listener:
Listens actively and recaps a description of the issue
Asks questions to understand the partner's feelings, thoughts or desires
Responds with empathy
Continues with empathic responses until a soothing moment occurs for the Initiator
Common examples of breakdowns in the Speaker role:
Blaming the other rather than focusing on the self and/or their internal process
Avoiding or refusing to initiate. Maintaining only a reactive position in the relationship
Demanding a merged response from the other
Common examples of breakdowns in the Listener role:
Starting to problem solve and “fix it” immediately rather than allowing space for the partner's own process
Asking questions that have more to do with self than the other, like “Don't you think I'm upset, too?”
Demonstrating minimal ability to self-soothe and contain themselves when in the Inquirer role
Goals of This Exercise:
Increased anxiety tolerance
Increased ability to delay gratification
Increased ability to internally self-reflect and self-define
Increased capacity to self-soothe
Increased capacity to experience empathy
Increased ability to self-validate
