The Stories We Tell Ourselves When We Think That No One Is Listening

~~~ podcast version opens with clip from Sound of Silence by Disturbed (covering Simon and Garfunkel) ~~~

From around October 2023 to March 2024, I went through a major anxious depressive episode, struggled with suicidal ideation, and had the only real crisis of faith that I have had in my adult life. This experience resulted from a whole host of unresolved or unaddressed psychological and spiritual issues, combined with a confluence of stressors and convergence of significant life transitions – all creating the perfect storm of potential for emotional distress. While I could write many pages about that dark time in my life – and I may blog about it specifically at some point – in this post, I want to share about one other major factor which contributed to setting the stage for this tragedy of my inner person: isolation.

Whether real or imagined, fully conscious or not, by the fall of 2023 I had already spent years living with a belief that I was largely alone and even, oftentimes, that I wanted to be. I never, ever stopped believing that I had people in my life who loved me and cared about me, yet I regularly felt isolated; and, actually, the confusion of this apparent contradiction made it all the more difficult for me to be honest with myself about my thoughts and emotions or to begin to understand them. For me, most of this loneliness came from feeling, thinking, and believing – again, whether in reality or my imagination – that nobody was listening to me. This experience of feeling that I did not have anyone listening to me took two forms: First, it sometimes seemed that no one was available to listen; and, second, that even when people were physically present and letting me speak to them, it didn’t always feel like they were actually hearing and understanding me at all.

In the quiet isolation that I believed into becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, I began to tell myself tall tales that simultaneously rationalized my sense of loneliness and undermined my ability or desire to break out of it. I told myself that nobody really liked me, that I wasn’t worth anyone’s time. I told myself that I was difficult to understand, that I wasn’t worth the effort of trying to understand. I told myself that I was better off alone anyway and that others were better off without having to deal with me and how I was somehow always either too much or not enough. I started listening more and more to myself, in dangerously twisted ways, because I had forgotten how to ask and given up on asking others to listen to me.

I have always considered myself to be a fairly good listener. Often, those around me have seemed to agree as I found myself functioning as the “kind listening ear” in many circles throughout my life. However, as I have gotten older and continued accumulating the life experiences of having a family, working different jobs, growing and studying in my rabbinical training, and facing more of my personal demons, I have realized how much more there is to being a truly great listener and how unhelpful and even destructive the “kind listening ear” paradigm can often become. In regard to the latter point, while it can be quite beneficial – especially in a moment emotional need – to have someone, anyone, simply listen to you vent, express yourself, or get something off your chest, it often takes the form of a spontaneous, one-sided exchange which may temporarily benefit the listenee but leave the listener drained and, at the end of the day, can never be a successful long term substitute for what both people truly need: real relationship.

I have had seasons in my life where I allowed myself to listen to everyone, whenever and however much they wanted, without ever finding anyone to whom to talk myself. It left me feeling not only depleted, but used. If I am being honest, I have wasted quite a bit of energy resenting myself for letting this happen, but also misplacing that resentment as blame of the people to whom I listened for “taking advantage of me, despite the fact that I was more than willing to victimize myself. The primary missing relational piece here for me was simply the lack of reciprocal opportunity to be listened to myself. But the people to whom I listened were likely missing out on a lot as well. I rarely invited these people to talk to me, expressing curiosity about their lives and experiences or inquiring as to their wellbeing; I was simply there, quiet, and seemed willing enough to listen. I certainly was not seeking these people out and pursuing a connection with them as one would in a true friendship or other meaningful relationship. As a result, I don’t think I ever felt recognized or appreciated fully as a human being in these exchanges and I doubt the other person did either. In an odd way, the interactions were mostly passive on both of our parts.

Truly great listening isn’t passive. Both the listening, and the relational context in which it flourishes, require action to reach their potential. Hold on to that thought while I get back to explaining why I felt so isolated.

I used to think quite frequently that everyone I knew was too busy for me. Honestly, sometimes I still do, but I have learned to reframe that and not take it so personally. Even if everyone around me is currently too busy to have the kinds of interactions that I wish we could be having, they aren’t consciously choosing not to have time for those interactions, and they certainly aren’t specifically choosing not to have time left over for me personally. I might feel lousy about the outcome, but it isn’t about me; it’s about them. I could even choose to be compassionately sympathetic – the other person probably isn’t thrilled with being so busy either. On the other hand, if any of us habitually finds ourselves too busy to really connect meaningfully with those around us, especially family and friends, something is off and we need to recalibrate.

Sometimes some people who told me that they cared about me (and I believe truly meant it) – family and friends even – were not making much, if any, of an effort to reach out to me, to connect, to make time to spend together. Even despite me making efforts to connect with them, it seemed like they just weren’t there and, though I consciously believed that they did care about me, it was very difficult to feel like and avoid doubting it on a subconscious level. I’m not naming names or pointing fingers, nor is my intention to complain, but I have experienced a lot of that, and it hurts. Badly. I’m not looking for anyone’s pity here either. I just hope this might be a useful reminder for all of us to prioritize people over stuff, relationship over busyness, and take an honest look at our choices and behaviors so we can do a better job of putting our time and energy where our mouth is when it comes to our families, friends, and communities. Being there for each other doesn’t happen automatically, it is an active commitment, a repeated decision time and time again.

What about when a family member or friend and I did manage to make time for each other? I mentioned that I still tended to feel unheard or misunderstood. One issue is simply distraction. Even if one person is physically present and hearing the other speak, if the listener’s attention is divided or really somewhere else, there’s little hope of the benefits of listening taking place. I could spend a solid hour pouring my heart out to you but, if I failed to get your attention first, I have wasted my energy and heaped disappointment on myself and probably some guilt on you to boot. Just like choosing to schedule and show up for that coffee date or walk in the park, giving another person your attention does not happen by accident; it requires an active effort to direct your focus.

Even when we make time, show up, and focus our attention, listening can still fail. [I know – this stuff is hard, isn’t it? Why didn’t they teach us this in school? Stay hopeful; it really is never too late, and it is always worth the work.] To listen well, we have to make our best effort to understand what a person means, what to do with that information, and what the person wants or needs from us, all of which requires active participation from us as listeners. In my experience, where things tend to go wrong are in four areas: misunderstanding (of content), misinterpretation (of meaning), misidentification (of needs/wants), misresponse (failure to reply in a helpful manner, or at all).

One of the worst experiences one can possibly have after sharing something personal in conversation is cold, deadening silence on the other end of the line (I mean this literally or figuratively). There are plenty of moments where simply listening quietly without responding verbally can be appropriate. My point is not that you have to reply – that can often be quite unhelpful, more on that shortly. However, in the absence of any verbal or nonverbal communication acknowledging what the person just said, there is a significant risk that he/she will be left wondering if you actually heard and understood him/her or if you even care.

Ironically, the faux pas that takes the cake for being even worse than no reply at all, is one that skips all the other steps and jumps straight into responding or reacting, often in very unwelcome and unhelpful manners. We have all experienced this: We tell our spouse or friend or relative about an experience we are having and then, like an abrupt scene change in a B-list movie, we are now receiving an unpleasant response. Maybe our spouse completely misunderstood us and now is reacting defensively or argumentatively. Perhaps our parent leapt into well-meaning efforts to fix a perceived problem when we just wanted to share our emotions. Or a friend jumped ahead to sharing something from his/her own life that was brought to mind by whatever we said, without engaging with our experience at all.

Listening actively can help us avoid some of these pitfalls – but how, exactly, do we best listen actively? If, like me, you have ever taken a work training on “Active Listening”, you may have also come away from it with the conclusion that active listening simply means repeating back to someone, in your own words, what you heard him/her say in order to check that you understood correctly (“So, I think I heard you say . . . . is that right?”). If that seemed insufficient, a bit superfluous, or even trite or silly, I don’t disagree; repeating back to check for understanding is useful but it is only the tip of the active listening iceberg.

If we want to truly understand someone and make him/her feel understood, we have to put anything of our own agendas aside and get curious. Ask questions; a lot of questions – and keep them open-ended too. If your friend tells you factual information about something that happened, ask – in true TV shrink fashion, however cliché it may seem – “And how do you feel about that?” If the friend shares his/her feelings or hopes and dreams with you, ask if there is more that he/she wants to share before responding. If you aren’t sure if you’re wanted to offer sympathy, feedback, suggestions, help, or something else – just ask! And, yes, always make sure that you actually understood what they said to begin with.

As many of you reading this might know, the Shema is considered to be the most fundamentally central prayer and declaration of faith in Judaism. Here’s a quick reminder of its text (taken from Deuteronomy 6):

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יה אֶחָד

Shma Yisra’el HaShem Eloheynu HaShem Echad

Hear, O Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one.

The placement of the word “Shema” at the beginning is significant. The verb has to do with hearing and is stated as a command; “listen up!” might be a good contemporary translation. Certainly the rest of the declaration contains very important information – the most important information there is – but here Torah gives us an example of excellent communicational technique: when delivering important information, make sure to get your listener’s attention first. Not only does the Shema explicitly request the listener’s full attention, it identifies who that listener is (“Yo, Israel, listen up!”) and does both before delivering the essential information regarding God’s identity.

The Shema does not end with the hearing of this message, though. In the Jewish tradition, the recitation of Shema includes an immediate responsorial sentence blessing the “glorious name of God’s kingdom” and subsequent passages from Torah exhorting us to love God, follow and dwell on His ways, teach them to our children, a reminder of the blessings or curses we will receive if we do or do not heed these words, and a reminder that God is the one who brought us out of Egypt. In reciting all these texts together, we are left with a realization that it is not enough to simply hear that God is God, or even to understand it. Rather, we are prompted to engage with the words deeply and respond to them with our own words and actions, and in sharing this knowledge of God with those around us.

The mitzvah of hearing the shofar on Rosh HaShanah presents a similar situation. We are commanded to hear the shofar, but simply hearing is not enough. The sound of the shofar in the days of ancient Israel was a call to assembly and to battle. Though we may not be fighting a literal, physical war, we are indeed fighting a spiritual one; and the shofar’s voice begs us to engage it in conversation. To understand what God wants us to hear in it and get from it, we need to ask Him questions regarding its meaning and then take that information and channel it into action.

Over the past few years, I have learned to take increasing comfort in the reality that God truly hears and understands us fully and completely without us having to do a thing. That being said, we all benefit from being heard and understood by each other as well. We also have an obligation to partner with God in the work of showing His love. God knowing and understands us so comprehensively and automatically because He is our Creator and our Redeemer. Obviously, we are not God and we do not create or redeem each other. However, we can extend godly love to our fellow persons by getting to know and understand each other. This won’t be automatic for us, it will take work – but that work will make the relationship all the more valuable and instilled with love, just as the relationship to which God invites us carries a depth of worth and love because of the work and sacrifice which He has afforded us.

A related theme constantly recurs throughout my recent healing journey: slowing down. Yeshua took time to visit the poor, needy, and ailing wherever he travelled; to do miracles, preach sermons, and pray; to cry and to celebrate; to speak with adults and with children. Slowing down enough to make conscious choices in how we invest our time and choose to truly be present with and for others is one simple yet profound and challenging way in which we can follow His example. Becoming good, active listeners requires that type of deliberate pacing.

I’ll leave you with a cautionary quote from earlier in the same Simon and Garfunkel song with which the podcast version of this post began:

"Fools" said I, "You do not know

Silence like a cancer grows

Hear my words that I might teach you

Take my arms that I might reach you"

But my words like silent raindrops fell

And echoed in the wells of silence

Let’s listen.

L’chayim and Shanah Tovah!