Psychotherapists, how do you train to listen so intently?
What do you do if you feel particularly distracted for some reason? I find it fascinating how absolutely present you can be and hope to improve my listening skills too.
A great question that has given me the opportunity to really examine this.
For some reason I have been able to do some of this since childhood. I didn’t really understand the process intellectually until I was studying psychology in university. At that time it was called ‘active listening’. It involves truly focused listening and discernment at the same time. It’s like listening and processing on multiple levels simultaneously.