Why We’re So Desperate to Be Heard

What listening gives us, why it matters so deeply, and what we often receive instead

This blog post is a part of a mini blog series "The longing to be heard". Sign up for future reflections in your inbox and get free access to Beyond Blame — a workshop on transforming conflict into connection. 

If you have ever found yourself in a conversation with another person, perhaps circling around a certain topic where you disagree, and you keep feeling that deep frustration, hurt, anger or aloneness that comes when you are desperately trying to get them to hear your perspective, to understand what it’s like to be you, to just sit with you and say, “Yeah, I hear you…”

You are not alone. It is probably one of the most common experiences I come across… in life!

In my work as a mediator, I often meet families and couples who have been in conflict for a long time. Sometimes they arrive with a long list of things they disagree about: parenting, communication, boundaries, housework, trust, old hurts, things said years ago that have never quite been repaired.

And yet, underneath many of those disagreements that seem to need a solution, there screams desperately that deeply human longing to feel heard and understood by one another.

Again and again, I’ve seen how powerful it can be when someone finally has the experience of being heard by the person they’ve been struggling with. It doesn’t necessarily solve every problem or create instant trust or agreement. But something can soften. There can be a little more space to see one another and, sometimes, to rebuild hope that there might be a way to move forward together, whether within a relationship, family system or through separation.

This topic has been at the centre of so many conflicts I have experienced myself and witnessed in the people I work with. It has sparked a wish in me to share some of what I have been learning about the art of listening: why being heard matters so much to us, and why genuine listening can be so difficult to embody, especially in conflict, and even harder to recognise when we think we are listening but we are not.

So I’m going to explore this in a short three-part series on listening and the need to be heard.

In this post, I’ll explore why so many of us are living with a kind of deficit of being heard and understood, and why that need is so powerful in our relationships.

In the next post, I’ll look at why listening can become particularly difficult when we are hurt, defensive or in conflict, including the fear that understanding someone might somehow mean agreeing with them, giving in, “losing the argument”, or losing our own perspective.

And in the final post, I’ll explore what can change when someone finally feels heard, and some of the ways we can create more of that experience for one another in our relationships.

So why do so many of us live with this deficit of being heard and understood?

There are many anecdotes and analyses from a mixture of my own relationships, my learning and teaching of Nonviolent Communication, and my work within the world of conflict transformation that I could draw upon to paint a picture of why I believe we struggle to be heard and understood.

And I am drawn to start by sharing some recent research that has helped me think about why the experience of being heard matters so deeply to us.

A recent study exploring the psychology of “feeling heard” identified several things that seem to sit at the heart of the experience of being heard: having space for our voice, and experiencing attention, empathy, respect and a sense of mutual understanding from the person listening to us.

I find that description striking because it suggests that being heard is about much more than whether somebody has accurately heard the words we have said.

“Yes, I heard you say X…” without the investment of a deeper connection to what I have said can easily feel unsatisfying or irritating, because that longing to be understood is not met through mirroring my words alone.

When I feel heard, there is also something in the interaction that tells me: you are taking me seriously. My experience matters here. You are willing, at least for a moment, to try to understand what the world looks and feels like from where I am standing.

Perhaps, then, the longing to be heard is connected to something even more fundamental than communication. Is it perhaps part of our longing to experience ourselves as known, accepted and in relationship with another human being?

It would certainly help explain why not being heard can become so painful, and why we may experience it as a threat, particularly when it happens repeatedly with the people who matter most to us.

Perhaps part of why being heard matters so much is that language allows us to do something quite extraordinary: to make our inner world available and visible to another person.

Of course, language is not the only way we connect. Through touch, expression, movement, creativity, shared activity and simply spending time alongside one another, we communicate far beyond words.

Language gives us another possibility. Through words and stories, I can try to show you something you cannot directly see: what an experience meant to me, how I perceived it, how I was affected by it, and how it shaped my inner world.

I’m not only telling you that you were late; I may be trying to tell you that, in that moment, I felt unimportant to you.

We don't simply observe what happens in our lives. Our minds are constantly making meaning from what we experience. The same event can carry a completely different meaning for two people, depending on their history, expectations, fears, hopes and what matters most to them.

One person may see a sink full of dishes as “I’m carrying this family alone,” while the other experiences the same moment as “Nothing I do is ever good enough.”

So when I tell you what happened, I am rarely only giving you the facts. I am also trying, consciously or not, to invite you into the very meaning that experience has taken on for me.

Perhaps this is part of what we are asking for when we say, “Please hear me.”

Not necessarily: Tell me that my interpretation is right or the only truth here.

But rather: Can you understand why this has come to mean what it means to me? Can you take my experience seriously enough to enter it with me for a moment?

One of the places I first began to understand this distinction was through learning Nonviolent Communication, particularly through the work of Marshall Rosenberg and my teachers Yoram Mosenzon and others.

When learning about empathy, we would often explore not only what empathy is, but also what is different from empathy.

That distinction has stayed with me because so many of the things we do instead of listening are actually attempts to care, connect or respond.

Someone tells us they are struggling and we reassure them: “It will be okay.”

We try to fix the situation or offer advice.

“Have you tried talking to your manager?” may be genuinely helpful, but it can land very differently from, “That sounds exhausting — do you want to tell me more?”

We tell them about a similar thing that happened to us, perhaps hoping they will feel less alone.

We explain why the other person might have behaved the way they did.

We ask questions, analyse what happened, look for solutions or try to help them see things differently.

And when we ourselves are involved in the conflict, our responses can become even more protective: explaining ourselves, defending our intentions, correcting their version of events, blaming, or trying to make sure that our perspective is heard too.

None of these responses are inherently wrong.

Sometimes advice is exactly what we are looking for. Sometimes hearing that another person has been through something similar can create an enormous sense of connection. Sometimes reassurance, perspective or practical problem-solving is deeply helpful.

But they are not quite the same experience as being listened to.

There are moments when what we are longing for is not for someone to change the situation, explain it, make us feel differently about it, or tell us their own experience.

We simply want someone to stay with us long enough to understand our reality.

Perhaps part of the deficit I am describing comes from the fact that many of us have learned countless ways of responding to one another, but have had much less opportunity to learn how to simply receive another person's experience.

And perhaps this is where things become even more interesting.

It is one thing to listen deeply when we are calm, resourced and not personally involved in what is being shared.

It is something else entirely when the other person’s experience includes us.

It is much harder to stay curious about “I felt abandoned by you” when every part of us wants to reply, “But that isn’t what I meant.”

When we feel misunderstood, blamed, criticised or hurt, listening can begin to feel much more difficult. We may find ourselves wanting to defend our intentions, correct the story, explain our side, or make sure that our own experience is not lost in hearing theirs.

Sometimes, I think, there can even be an unspoken fear that if I really understand your perspective, I might somehow be agreeing with you, giving in, “letting you win” or losing my own perspective to yours. This win-lose tension can make the art of listening feel so distant and so hard to touch when it is repeated over time that a relationship can become deeply entrenched in a cycle of tit for tat, me over you, reactivity and hurt, leading every conversation into relentless conflict even when the best intention to hear one another is there.

In the next post, I want to explore that tension between agreeing with another’s perspective and listening to their experience more deeply: why listening can feel so difficult in conflict, why understanding is not the same as agreement, and what might help us stay present to another person’s experience without abandoning our own.