Everything You've Been Taught About Listening Is Wrong

It goes completely against everything we've been taught about listening, and yet it's the most powerful relationship skill there is. It's called affect labeling— naming what somebody feels by simply saying, "You feel..." So think of affect labeling, or validating emotions, as simply lending your prefrontal cortex to your partner for the 90 seconds it takes for their prefrontal cortex to come back online and come back to calm. All right, so how do you do this? It's a 3-step protocol, really. Step number 1: ignore the words. Just don't pay any attention to them whatsoever. Step number 2: read the emotions. Your brain knows what to do. It's exquisite at accurately and effectively and quickly identifying the emotions in another human being. So let it do its job and just sit in silence and wait until emotions come into your consciousness. Then tell your partner what the emotions are. You're angry. You're feeling frustrated. You don't feel loved. You feel all alone in this. And as I said, wait. Name some more emotions. And within about 90 to 120 seconds,