Why You Don't Feel Heard and What To Do About It

Do you ever just feel like you're not being heard? Do you feel like that often? It's a pretty common frustration, and we've all had it from time to time. So in this video, we're going to talk about reasons why that could be happening and what to do about it. For those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the shovel down. This YouTube channel is all about helping you to understand the science and psychology of addiction so that you can get back to living the life that you want to live now. Today's video is all about feeling heard, which is a topic we can all benefit from. It's not specifically about addiction, but it does connect to the recovery process. Whether you are a person in early recovery or you are a family member in early recovery, we all want to feel heard and understood, and we all want to be taken seriously. If you're having problems in this area, then the first thing we need to figure out is why is it happening to you? Because once you know why it's happening, it's going to be a lot easier to figure out the solution to the problem. Of course, there are lots of reasons this could be happening to you, but I've broken it down for you into the three main reasons why you might feel misunderstood or not heard. I guess a really good place to start would be trying to figure out, is it me or is it them? Well, in order to figure that out, ask yourself this question. Is this problem just happening to you with one particular person in your life, or does this problem happen to you pretty regularly? That's going to be a pretty good clue, right? Because if it's happening to you pretty regularly, it might not be all your fault. But there probably is something you're bringing to that picture. So hang on, we're going to explore those things in just a second. But first, let's explore the idea that it could have everything to do with the other person. Some people just have a hard time hearing and listening and paying attention to other people, and there can be lots of reasons for that. Here are just a few. Sometimes people just get so consumed with their own self, it's really hard to get out of their own head and listen to you. Maybe that's because they're going through something particularly hard right now, like are they struggling with depression or anxiety or a big problem at work? Those could be temporary situations that someone could be going through that could make them not the best listener. Other situations don't necessarily go away really easily. Like, for example, if you're trying to be Heard by someone that has an addiction problem. If you're trying to be heard by someone who's narcissistic, sure they can hear the words that you're saying, but they may not take enough time to really try to understand what you're trying to communicate. I know you know what I'm talking about here. Even people that struggle with anxiety sometimes have a hard time listening because their own head is just spinning with so much fear and worry, and they're just thinking about things so much, it's hard for new information to come in and really compute in there. Okay, moving on to the is it me? Category. This one is probably the most important because obviously this is the one that you have the most influence over. You can actually do something about this. So if you do decide that maybe part of the reason you're not being heard has something to do with you, that's actually good news, because that means it's a problem that you can actually solve. There can be many things that you can be bringing to the situation that's contributing to what, why you're not getting heard, or at least why you're not feeling that someone else understands where you're coming from. Most of these are communication errors. Like, for example, are you trying to communicate passive aggressively, Meaning you're not like directly coming out and saying it, but you throw in these little stabs and jabs here and there when you do that, it's probably likely that the other person picks up on exactly what you're trying to communicate, but you're doing it in the kind of way that's going to feel like a jab, or it's going to feel like a personal insult to them. So they're going to resist really trying to understand your point of view. They're just going to feel defensive and possibly even resentment towards you. Passive aggressively might be the worst way to get your point across. Do you have a tendency to get so frustrated that you're not getting heard that you become loud or aggressive with your communication? Because if so, then the other person is just going to be building up bigger and bigger walls between you and them. It's almost like naturally, even subconsciously, when we don't feel heard, we can have a tendency to get loud and say it louder. As if we say it louder, they're really going to it. Well, as you can imagine, it does the opposite of that. Are you whining? Do you tend to whine about things a lot trying to get someone to understand that you're not doing good or that they're hurting your feelings or that you're suffering in some kind of way. Because whining is something that some people tend to tune out as well. Now, this next one goes along with whining, but it's to a slightly different level. This next one I'm going to call over vulnerability. Sometimes when we really want to be heard, we can over communicate and we can do it in an overly vulnerable way, which can be off putting to some other people. Like, for example, we can share too much too quickly. We can be really focused on something negative that's happening in our life. And if you're always trying to communicate something negative or something that's going wrong with you or a problem in your life to another person, sometimes people will eventually begin to sort of tune you out because they feel like you're bringing a lot of negative energy. This next one's going to be hard. You got to ask yourself, do you have a tendency to be overly demanding? Do you have difficulty accepting when you can't get what you want? Because sometimes you can feel like you're not being heard when really you're being completely heard. But the other person just doesn't agree. They just don't want to do what you want to do. So it's important to differentiate not being heard with not being agreed with. I know deep down inside we kind of have this feeling like if they really understood me, if they really heard what I was saying, they would definitely be on my side. They would definitely agree with what I'm saying. But that's not always the case. You may be especially prone to running into this kind of issue at work. So say you have an idea for something at work, or you want a promotion, or you want something to change about your work environment. And you've went to management or to your boss or to your team leader, but they just don't seem to take your suggestion well. Maybe that is a problem, that you're not communicating it, or you're not getting your point across, or maybe the other person just sort of disagrees with you and they don't. They don't think that's the best possible solution. Now, some of you guys know that before I was a counselor, I was a teacher. My first year out of College, I taught 9th grade earth science. Let me tell you, that was the worst year ever. It was very difficult. Well, I remember that was my first year teaching. And about halfway through the year, I came up with this idea that I thought that the earth science class should take on like a recycling project at the school. And I can remember going to the principal at the time and saying, hey, what do you think if we put recycle bins at the end of every hallway and the earth science students can take care of that? And I remember my principal responding with, yeah, no, we're not gonna do that. Pretty much like didn't even give much explanation. And I was like, okay. And I just walked on. Now, to be honest, I wasn't overly upset about it, but I didn't understand it at the time. But now when I think about the situation, looking backwards, I can see why he thought that would be a bad idea. In fact, I can see about 30 reasons why he thought that would be a bad idea. But I couldn't see it then. Now, there's one more category of the reason why you could possibly be feeling not heard. It's a little different than the first two. This last one has to do with your childhood experiences. If as a child you often felt unheard or neglected or misunderstood, then that could be like a really big trigger button that you're bringing with you into adulthood. And what that means is you're going to have a button around that that is extra special sensitive. And it's really likely that you could be having that feeling, maybe even a little irrationally from time to time. You see, we all have these different buttons from childhood, these different emotional frustrations that were such a big deal to us then, either consciously or subconsciously, that we almost filtering for them in our adult life. So have you ever heard that saying, you find what you're looking for? If you are intentionally or unintentionally looking to feel dismissed, unheard, misunderstood, not taking seriously, well, you're gonna find it. In fact, you could inadvertently be creating the problem or adding to the situation. So if this is going on with you, if you feel like, oh yeah, this is like a childhood wound that's coming forward in your life, That's a really helpful piece of information to know. Because when you feel that way, you can stop and reflect and look back and say, okay, is this really happening? Is my emotional response to this situation on target or am I being extra, extra sensitive to it? It doesn't necessarily mean that there's something wrong with you. We all have these little trigger buttons. I like to call them blind spot. It's kind of like when you're driving down the road and you know that there's this blind spot in your car that you almost have to double check. You have to look over there and look back and then look again. To make sure there's not somebody before you change lanes. It's your blind spot and you know exactly where it is. So you know to double check. Well, we all have certain blind spots in our life, and most the time it comes from our childhood or some other big situation in our life. And it's good to know they're there because we know we need to double check them. Or we know we might not need to trust our judgment always when it comes to that issue. And sometimes it's even helpful to have another person that will help you check. Kind of like when there's someone in the passenger seat and you say, hey, can I get over? It's like that it's somebody else that can also look. And maybe sometimes they can see something that's in your blind spot that you can't see. Now, I said I was going to give you three reasons that you might feel not heard. But I'm going to give you this little extra bonus. One, this is kind of like a special circumstance. Do you have someone in your life that you tend to have the same conversation? Or maybe it's actually an argument with over and over, and it's like you have this same dang argument a million times. Well, when you get caught in that trap with someone where you just can't see eye to eye, one of the things that happens there is that you've had the conversation so many times that you feel like you know what the other person's gonna say, and they feel like they know what you're gonna say. And so before the conversation ever even starts, you could be mind reading the conversation where you don't actually hear them, what they're really saying to you, and they don't actually hear you. Because this conversation is played out so many times that both people are just repeating the same thing over and over. That's another one of those situations we've all found ourselves in from time to time. But you get locked in that kind of counterproductive hamster wheel kind of a situation. Now, regardless of the reason why, maybe you're not being heard, even if that reason is the other person has something going on. There is one little skill that you can use that will actually get the other person to listen to you, even if they've got some mental blocks going on on their side. That communication skill is called reflective listening. You see, the biggest mistake that we all make is we all go in just trying to get our point across. But the thing to remember is the other person's doing that too. So if you can go into conversations with the goal of hearing and understanding them. They are going to really like that. Trust me, I know people will pay big money to be listened to and understood. Can you believe it? I know. It's because we all have this need. So if you can focus on being a better listener and trying to understand the other person, what happens is, is they feel so understood, it's almost like all of their anxiety comes down, their wall comes down and then their window opens up and they're ready to hear you. There's some kind of old saying, sounds like fancy philosophy or something, but it's like first seek to understand before you seek to be understood. You guys know what I'm talking about though. How's that really said? You guys let me know that in the comments. But if you go into a situation like that and you focus on understanding them, that is going to set the right groundwork and framework for your points to be listened to, taken seriously and understood as well. So if you're really interested in those things, you need to watch this video next. I'm going to put it right up here. All you have to do is click on it.