The Heart of Listening

Words. I love words. I’ve been writing about their power and weight for a couple of weeks but this week I'd like to bring attention to listening. I stumbled upon a fascinating YouTube video called, “Trauma and the Nervous System”. Trauma and the Nervous System: Stephen Porges & Gabor Maté. Gabor Maté and Stephen W. Porges talk about trauma and specifically about Polyvagal Theory. I won’t go into the theory just yet, but several times both highly trained and experienced experts in trauma pointed out the importance of listening in trauma therapies but added a couple of specifications, seeing with the heart and listening with the heart. “It’s only with the heart that one can see rightly… . So listening is far more than hearing and we have not, in a sense, given it its true place.” (3:38) The heart of listening requires an additional step most of us don’t think about on a regular basis unless we’re professionals working in the field of trauma. That step is engaging our hearts in such a way that both listener and speaker can see and feel it’s safe to have a meaningful discussion.

Maté and Porges speak about how words formed by our brain have become the main form of meaningful communicating in our modern world. We’ve forgotten about our other senses like listening to the voice and observing facial expressions. Words “…only carry a small aspect of the meaning of life. Our voice, our intonation, our facial expressivity are really the cues to tell the other person that we're safe to come close to.” According to these experts, when our hearts are engaged, the connection between speaker and listener is made and can actually be measured. There was a study done a couple of years ago that used electrical magnetic radiation to measure the most meaningful moments in a client/therapist session. Interestingly, the most meaningful moments recorded were when the therapist was listening to their client. (7:07) I’m extrapolating here, but when a heart connection is made it sounds like people feel heard and are able to trust which opens the heart’s door to meaningful conversation that can calm our nervous system and relieve stress.

Let’s get back to the Polyvagal Theory. “... one of the major take home lessons from the theory. … is [that] our underlying physiological state shifts our perspective of the world. So if our body's in a state of mobilization or fight or flight, we see the world more negatively. If our body is calmer through this neural vagal regulation of our autonomic nervous system, we see the world optimistically.” (12:23) It turns out that our physiological state becomes calmer when someone is able to feel safe enough to engage with another because they aren’t judging, they’re understanding and listening with their heart.

This topic, by now, was racing through my mind and I had so many thoughts and questions. The one that hit me, though, was the idea of listening to ourselves with our hearts. It’s not technically a conversation, but what if our internal dialogues were kinder, more compassionate and we were able to listen to our self-talk with our hearts. That’s a good one, I thought. I’d been wrestling yet again with needing to pay attention to my physical body. After two vacations, I found it really difficult to go back to daily walking and have been beating myself up about that. Why not engage my heart instead of my judging mind and just listen to what’s really stopping me and understand my reluctance? As it turned out, I just needed to list all my complaints about the weather, the cold, and being too busy to conclude that taking care of my body really was a priority. After listening with self-compassion and without judgment, I felt less stressed and was able to decide what I wanted to do. I started a walking meditation that very day and added planking. Did you know that holding a plank position for a minute daily can fire up muscle groups simultaneously and help improve posture, balance and coordination, body alignment, core strength, flexibility, metabolism, and overall mental health?

“Our physiology, our autonomic state is this powerful, intervening variable … that comes between the context that we live in and our responses to that context. And if you step into the world of trauma, people are telling you that they are dealing with a world that is threatening to them. … they're literally telling you that their physiology is in the state of threat, which it is, in all the comorbidities that they describe including cardiovascular, irritable bowel, [and] a variety of things that are clearly features of the autonomic nervous system not supporting homeostasis. …when does the autonomic nervous system not support homeostasis? When it's being diverted to deal with threat.” (13:07-13:39)

I don’t know about you, but my autonomic nervous system certainly feels like it’s being threatened from multiple directions. A good portion of our world is under threat of annihilation and what words of encouragement and calm are our politicians giving us? They’re using political agenda lingo designed to puff up support for their own political ends and wear down support for those they’re bashing. There is a notable absence of meaningful dialogue that might help calm the rising tide of “anti-isms”. In North America, using words and phrases repeatedly to blur or change narratives has become normal. Even the words in books have come under threat of extinction as some have been banned from school libraries.

Some groups of people have collective trauma from decades of discrimination. Now, I believe all of us, worldwide, are experiencing trauma and don’t feel safe. Humanity’s collective autonomic nervous system is under threat and we all feel it.

“... we have these three different physiological states. A state of calmness that supports our ability to engage each other or functionally to co-regulate with another person. A physiological state that supports mobilization but that can be contained with that neural circuit …. So we move and we smile at each other and we are co-regulated. But if we don't have the smiling [in our faces or hearts], our movement leads to aggressive behavior and we have a shutting down defensive response. … when we keep the social engagement system on board, that immobilization response becomes moments of intimacy. Our body doesn't need to fight. We are comfortable in the proximity of another. So polyvagal theory identifies this evolutionary hierarchy that occurs…” (14:12)

Let’s put that into a life context. Maté describes two states within himself that occur when listening to his wife’s voice. They happen when he hears her voice as nurturing and present and then when he hears it as harsh and threatening. Porges responds by saying that his body is in a state of defense and is giving him powerful clues , "probably because you have a deadline, probably because you're trying to do too much, probably because you're not honoring your own body's needs to what we would now call self-compassion, the respect for your body needing things.” (15:46) I can certainly relate to that as all of us can, I suspect. I tend to get frustrated when I feel overwhelmed and my husband experiences my voice as harsh and responds defensively.

“So the fallacy of our culture is that as soon as we feel bad … we attribute it to someone else, our narrative says that other person had intended to be hurtful to us or should have been sensitive to us. And the answer is, highly unlikely. (17:07)... So we literally have to become our … own parent in a way, and observe ourselves and say, look, I'm feeling this way, now, how do I manage that within the complexity of a social interaction, a marriage, a family, a work environment, a laboratory.” (17:24)

How, indeed! I believe there are some major takeaways from this enlightening video. The most obvious is to be responsible for our own emotional state when it’s giving us cues that we’re neglecting our body’s needs. We push to hurry up and get things done. We push to get ahead. We push to make our lives better, and yet, at what cost do we do that? The second takeaway is to look at early trauma in our lives. It was clear from these two experts that autoimmune disease, and inflammatory disorders are responses to trauma we experienced early in our lives. (24:15) Porges also suggests activities we can all do to help regulate our autonomic nervous system. The first is breathwork. When we’re frightened our breathing is shallow and short. To calm our nervous system we can do the opposite. Take a deep breath in and then exhale deeply and slowly. When I’m starting my walk I take a few deep breaths in and then elongate the exhalation and can feel my system start to relax very quickly. Other similar ways of elongating the exhalation include singing, chanting or playing a wind instrument. “Dancing is a good neural exercise because it is movement with facial interaction.” (52:23)

Lastly, one could say the heart of listening is a way to engage meaningfully with others which helps us regulate our autonomic nervous system. I can say it’s easier to think clearly and make healthier decisions when I’m not feeling threatened or stressed and now, thanks to this video, I know why. I can’t help thinking we’ve lost a lot over the past few years during the pandemic as we isolated ourselves. Listening with our hearts is an important concept to really get because “safety is much more than just the absence of threat. … Safety is the presence of connection.” (25:17) And there’s no better connector than our hearts.