Are you having a hard time being a good listener? This video has found you for a reason, I think. Now let’s get into why you’re not actually listening. Hey everybody, I’m Dr. Drew Ramsey. I’m a board certified psychiatrist, professional listener, and this is our connection series. If you’ve stumbled across this video, we are working to create a set of videos for you to build the skills that are necessary to build deep, authentic, real connections.
Someone tells you about their terrible day. What do you do first? Now, if you’re like most people, you start maybe problem solving a little bit, or you think about your terrible day and how you can connect with them by you both being people who had terrible days. Now, the problem with this is we’re not listening to really understand. Like, why was their day terrible? What’s been going on? We’re listening to respond and we’re wanting our response to show our connection, right? We’re similar people with terrible days, or I’ve got a great solution for your terrible day. And this isn’t actually listening. People sense this really quickly and they’re not going to share that deeper level and the people in your life, they can feel it, even if they can’t quite name it.
When someone starts talking, most of us start a secondary process. We’re building our response. We’re really trying to think about how we can say something that lets them know maybe that we’re bright or that we’ve got a good idea. Instead of really focusing just on what they’re saying. Now, this secondary process, building your response, it takes a lot of bandwidth. And it distracts you from the five skills we talked about in the previous video on active listening. This is a skill that you can build. It’s not a character flaw. A lot of us get distracted in conversation, and a lot of us are habituated to not really actively listening. And so working on this skill, settling down, not building your response.
One of the tricks I’ve learned as a psychiatrist that I think you can use is becoming a little more comfortable with silence. A lot of times we fear that silence in a conversation signals we’re not tracking, we’re not paying attention. But if you’re using the active listening skills from the last video, you’re letting people know you’re there, you’re present. Silence is just a pause, and people are looking to see if you’re actually a person who is really listening and going to sit with them in that pause and allow the next often more detailed, more vulnerable, more wonderful thought to come out. But you have to do your part.
Instead of building a response, instead of thinking about what you’re going to say, really stay focused, like a laser, like a meditative process on what someone is actually saying. Receive first, respond second. Real listening like flips this order. We’re not focused on response. We’re focused on people feeling heard and understood. This is so critical in relationships. People really aren’t looking for you to fix it or solve it. They’re checking if you’re actually even listening.
This means sitting sentence to sentence, being present and really fighting this urge to respond. It means letting pauses happen and there being a small silence where it’s not awkward because you’re waiting almost on the edge of your seat for the next thing, and it will come. A lot of this has to do with being patient and understanding your job isn’t just respond, especially because you don’t have all the information. It feels slower. It is slower because you’re building an understanding. You’re not building a quick response to fill the next gap.
All right, section three. This isn’t the only way to talk. We all have moments where we’re excited. Maybe some of you watching have ADHD or another neurodivergent disorder that really affects how you communicate. Some of us are really extroverted and we love to share, or we get really silly when we’re anxious. There are lots of ways to communicate. This video is about those moments when you’re really needing to actually listen. To use the active listening skills in the last video and to focus on being present and receiving information, not jumping to a response. This over and over again, I see and I hear about is one of the most common barriers that people experience to forming connections and to feeling really understood is people so quick to respond with their own experience or to give a sense of judgment and or to fix things. So really try and step away from any of that.
And kind of I I think about it as a meditative process. And I feel so really blessed as a therapist, I get to sit all day and receive. And the more that I’ve learned about the job and the more I’ve learned about human connection and people really feeling that I’m present and I know what’s going on with them is that I don’t have to always respond and always have a solution.
The the solution in some ways is letting people know that their experience can be heard, that they can be understood, and that most importantly for you, that your connection with them is a really special one. It’s one where you’re going to be really listening in a way that they don’t experience with other people. And folks know right away.
I’m Dr. Drew Ramsey. This is our connection series. I hope this helps you form better connections. Please share, please subscribe to our channel so you can keep building these skills and do whatever you can today to use this to build better communication skills, better connections, and listen better to see what you receive. I’ll see you in the next video. Thanks so much for watching.
