Make it “hearable”: how to feel understood
I was reading a great book recently — Amanda Ripley’s “High Conflict”. It’s a useful, interesting, challenging and inspirational read. If you can find time for a book, and you’re interested in people and conflict generally, use that time to read this particular book. I recommend it frequently!
Within it, Ripley refers to the idea of making our messages for other people “hearable”. She learned this idea from Gary — a divorce lawyer turned politician whose story is littered with lessons about conflict (read it, I think you’ll like him). Gary believed that in order to communicate more effectively with people we’re in conflict with, we need to work out how to make our view, our message, our opinion, our feelings, in fact whatever we are saying, we need to make it easy for them to hear.
A message is easier for someone to hear if it speaks to the “understory” of the conflict — the thing that people are really arguing about when they think they’re fighting over who didn’t switch the light off or whether they’re allowed one or two biscuits. Ripley argues that “understories” are usually fuelled by one of six moral bases: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. According to her, some people give more weight to some of these than others, so if you can figure out which of these is more important to the person you’re talking to, you can frame your response in a way that makes it more hearable, palatable or effective.
This idea really connected with me. I often have discussions with people about increasing understanding in all sorts of relationships, to reduce harmful conflict and to create a closer connection or bond. I also talk to people about there being an understory to the conflict; I have a phrase I use with people — “it’s not about the broccoli”, meaning that the content of the argument is less relevant than the process or the feelings that are underneath.
So what does this mean for people who are trying to have healthier relationships with others?
Well, I like it as a mantra, a quick note to self in times of conflict — “Make it hearable!” or “Make it meaningful to them, knowing what you know about them as a person and what is important to them”.
It is a good way to remember that you can change things about yourself that bring about changes for other people. You can influence how heard and understood you feel, by helping the other person to understand where you’re coming from, by making it hearable. You can also help the other person to feel understood, even if you continue to disagree on the issue you’re discussing and feeling understood is a powerful connector.
It can turn “They have no idea what’s important to me; they don’t care!” into “We don’t always agree, but I know they have my back”.
So I encourage people to think, not only about the feelings, longings and desires that form their understory and how to express those with authenticity, but also to slow down, really listen — really listen! — to demonstrate understanding of the other person’s view and values, and then to express themselves in a way that is meaningful to the other person.
From a psychological point of view, I also think that it’s important to stop doing things that shut down the other person’s capacity to hear you. This involves thinking and talking about the things that you do during disagreements that are hard for the other person and making a commitment to stopping those things.
Psychological literature suggests that when we experience something as a threat, our higher order thinking gets shut down, so that’s our ability to be reflective, to prioritise, to bring information together to decide what’s relevant and to organise (including organising our thoughts). We need higher order functioning to be able to communicate and if we are under threat we lose this capacity, sometimes very quickly. As an argument escalates, our ability to communicate decreases.
At this point, people often say to me, “But I’m not threatening! Why do they see me as threatening, I’m not scary, I don’t shout, I’m never physical!” or something similar.
There are a few ways to respond to these kinds of concerns:
- The idea that you could be threatening to someone else hurts. Perhaps it touches on something you worry about deep down about what it says about you in those moments when you are not at your best and how the other person sees you, and it raises your defences and your need to assert that you are not a bad person. Perhaps this comes up in your negative cycle with other people; maybe there is a way to do this differently.
- Perhaps there is a difference between how you see yourself in those moments and how you come across, or how you are perceived by the other person because of their own past experiences (with you or others before you) and lens they have on the world. Maybe if we spent some time exploring their understory and what they experience as threatening, their fears and desires and helped them to make those things more “hearable” to you, this might improve your ability to understand them?
- Sometimes it is helpful to work out what a “threat” is or can be. In my experience, people often think a “threat” is something physical or overtly threatening words. There are actually a range of behaviours that can feel threatening to a relationship’s connection or security, particularly feeling misunderstood, misinterpreted, rejected, blamed, judged, belittled, undermined, betrayed, ignored, forgotten and more. Paying attention to these kinds of moments in your interactions with others, the feelings that are triggered by them and the way that you respond when you experience these feelings is a huge part of developing understanding in your relationships and a firmer sense of the understory of the conflict.
When I’m talking with people, I also highlight some of the irony within people’s interactions when it comes to attempts to be heard, understood and connected. For example, people who shout are less likely to be heard (really heard) and people who demand are less likely to be given something willingly. When people are able to see that the things they are doing are actually undermining their ability to be heard and understood, they’re generally more motivated to find other ways to be “hearable”.
So, how will you use this information to reduce unhealthy conflict in your life? Can you think more about the understory to your conflicts? Can you remind yourself, “Make it hearable?”. Can you get curious about other people’s experiences within the conflict, their understory, their values and allow them to express things in a way that is hearable to you, too?
If you need help with any of this, or you’d just like to get in touch and connect, you can find us here: www.altogetherhuman.org.uk or follow us here for more on relationships of all kinds.
