I remember a time when someone suggested I’d try repeating people’s exact words back to them more. At first I felt like I couldn’t do it, because gah, obviously this cannot work, I’m just parroting their words back to them so why would they feel any better because of it, they’re just going to think that I think they’re dumb…
Then I voiced some of those thoughts to the person who had suggested this, and after I did that they repeated some of my words back to me, in exact same form as I had said them.
And that felt validating and like they’d heard me.
And I was like ”...huh.”
And they were like ”...see?”
(But it definitely doesn’t work with everyone, some do just get annoyed.)
It occurs to me that the reason why this (sometimes) works might be that it’s an unfakeable signal of you actually having paid attention to the other person. It’s possible to seem like you are listening to someone, nodding along and being quiet except for a few encouraging words like “uh huh” and “yeah?” every now and then—while thinking about something else at the same time and missing out on a lot of the other person’s actual words. But repeating someone’s words back to them in the exact form they said them, proves that at that moment at least, you had to be actually listening.
This would also help explain why it seems so stupid if you see such an excerpt written out in text form. If the other person’s words are written down, then you can just read them at any time, and copying them doesn’t prove that you were paying attention at the exact moment when they were written.
While that might be part of it, I wonder if there’s not something more If I’d venture a guess, I’d say that hearing one’s words repeated by a dispassionate (but compassionate) third party’s voice helps detach oneself from one’s current emotions (by empathizing with the third party view?) and move forward.
I remember a time when someone suggested I’d try repeating people’s exact words back to them more. At first I felt like I couldn’t do it, because gah, obviously this cannot work, I’m just parroting their words back to them so why would they feel any better because of it, they’re just going to think that I think they’re dumb…
Then I voiced some of those thoughts to the person who had suggested this, and after I did that they repeated some of my words back to me, in exact same form as I had said them.
And that felt validating and like they’d heard me.
And I was like ”...huh.”
And they were like ”...see?”
(But it definitely doesn’t work with everyone, some do just get annoyed.)
It occurs to me that the reason why this (sometimes) works might be that it’s an unfakeable signal of you actually having paid attention to the other person. It’s possible to seem like you are listening to someone, nodding along and being quiet except for a few encouraging words like “uh huh” and “yeah?” every now and then—while thinking about something else at the same time and missing out on a lot of the other person’s actual words. But repeating someone’s words back to them in the exact form they said them, proves that at that moment at least, you had to be actually listening.
This would also help explain why it seems so stupid if you see such an excerpt written out in text form. If the other person’s words are written down, then you can just read them at any time, and copying them doesn’t prove that you were paying attention at the exact moment when they were written.
While that might be part of it, I wonder if there’s not something more If I’d venture a guess, I’d say that hearing one’s words repeated by a dispassionate (but compassionate) third party’s voice helps detach oneself from one’s current emotions (by empathizing with the third party view?) and move forward.