The Splendid Feeling of Being Understood

“Seek first to understand and then be understood” Stephen Covey.
In the course of my work with people, I’m always gratified when someone responds to my summarising what was said, with a single word, “Exactly”! Because it’s important for people to feel that another person can precisely pinpoint their thoughts and feelings.

I’m sure we’ve all heard ourselves say, “ I just want someone to understand me.” “I just want to be heard”. “I feel invisible”.

Since a young age, I always felt I was very good at understanding others, but I never felt understood by them. It took me a long time to realise that what was happening was that I wasn’t seeing, hearing or understanding myself and the people surrounding me were reflecting my own inner feelings.

What I had to come to grips with was the fact that my listening and understanding of others had an agenda attached. I wasn’t coming from love but from neediness! I needed them to listen and understand me...not the other way around. Today, many years later, it’s different. I still like it when people hear and see me, but it’s the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. I don’t need to feel understood by others in order to feel worthy.

We all want to be appreciated, approved of and cared for, but most of all we want to be understood. Not feeling that others really “know“ us can leave us feeling hopelessly estranged from the rest of humanity. It may not seem like a big deal, being empathetically understood__ but it is!

In order for us to feel comfortable within our own skin, we need to know that what’s happening inside our minds and bodies makes sense. And we make sense of ourselves through our interactions with others. When we express ourselves and the other person shows a sincere curiosity to understand our perspective and communicates that understanding, we internalise the idea that we are understand-able.

Much gets communicated to us when this happens. We feel we are worth someone’s attention and curiosity and more importantly we feel there is nothing wrong with how we see the world.

An enormous uplift in mood is available right now, with very little effort, if we simply learn to change the way we typically respond to the statements of those who matter to us. We only need to play their feelings back to them, using certain phrases:
“I can hear you and it must feel....”
“ You must be feeling so....”
“ I can understand completely that....”

Such phrases can change the course of lives....it’s a non-judgemental mirroring that has taken place and the stress begins to decline. Feelings get milder as soon as they’ve been given an airing. We become bullies when nobody has listened, not because someone listened too much.

The bottom line is that underneath the desire to be understood is the desire to not be alone. We all want to be part of something greater, a community or a circle of people that add value to each other.

I know that there is almost no end to what we may be ready to do for those that give us the honour of once in a while acknowledging what we’re feeling, however inconvenient or sad it maybe....I know I would!


So, let’s seek to understand before we are understood!

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