How to listen like a therapist
Good listening can transform relationships by unlocking empathy, helping others feel deeply heard, softening their unnecessary defenses, and materializing olive branches. In other words, what can transpire between two people when at least one of them is listening well…is magic.
Everyone has the ability to listen well, even if they don’t always exercise it. For therapists, listening well is a foundational practice: You simply can’t be a good therapist without being a good listener.
But even we professionals forget to put the skill into practice from time to time. I should know. One morning while mulling over this post, I asked my husband, also a psychologist, what he thought it meant to listen well—while I was literally searching through the trash for a bottle cap I’d accidentally thrown away. Hearing no response, I glanced at my husband, saw his raised eyebrow, and burst out laughing.
Keep reading to learn ways that we all can practice better listening.
1. Listen With Your Full Attention.
In the words of the French philosopher Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
How often do you only half-listen to the most important people in your life while simultaneously scrolling on your phone, reviewing mental to-do lists, ruminating over stressful situations, or engaging in any number of other distractions? While it’s probably not realistic (or even necessary) for every interaction to get your undivided attention, experiment with making it a conscious choice: know when it matters to give your full attention, and when it doesn’t. And when it matters—be generous.
2. Listen With Metta.
If giving your full attention is the first step, the second step is listening with a beneficial quality of attention. There are various qualities of attention you can bring to the act of listening: You can listen with fearful attention, or angry attention, or judgmental attention, to name just a few.
Metta is a Pali word often translated as loving kindness, friendliness, or goodwill, and this quality creates a rich substrate to cultivate deep listening. Why? When you connect with a sense of loving attention, something in the heart relaxes and offers itself more fully.
Think about how you engage with what you love, whether it’s a beloved pet curling up on your lap, a small child with a skinned knee, or an object of beauty like a sunset or piece of art that holds you in wonder.
When you love something, it stops you in your tracks and you turn toward it willingly, even eagerly. From this heart space, you probably find yourself less encumbered by overanalysis, personal agendas, judgments, or the fixing reflex. In other words, it makes your ego a little less vocal, a little less riotous.
And good news: Loving kindness isn’t something that takes years of therapy or 10,000 hours of meditation to develop. It’s something innate in all of us—a kindling flame that anyone can nurture.
If you’d like to try out metta for yourself, I’ve included a simple exercise at the end of this post so you can see what I’m talking about (it takes about two minutes).
A variation on metta that’s familiar in the therapeutic world is the concept of “unconditional positive regard,” a phrase coined by Carl Rogers, the father of humanistic psychology and client-centered therapy. From a place of unconditional positive regard, the therapist completely accepts and supports the client, regardless of their actions, while still working with the client to change unhelpful behaviors. is worth noting that acceptance does not equal agreement. We can accept and meet others where they’re at while not necessarily agreeing with certain perspectives or condoning certain behaviors.
3. Listen With Open-Ended Questions.
While open-ended questions technically require talking rather than listening, a good open-ended question takes a conversation off autopilot and makes both the speaker and the listener engage more fully. And because it shows that you’re listening, it can foster conversations that might not occur otherwise.
Open-ended questions are simply questions that can’t be answered with a single word, like yes or no. Here are some quick examples:
Closed Question: Did you have a good day?
Open-Ended Question: Can you tell me about some highlights from your day?
Closed Question: Is school going well?
Open-Ended Question: What’s going well and what’s not going so well in school?
While closed questions aren’t bad per se, open-ended questions communicate more interest and encourage exploration and elaboration. Here’s how it might look in a conversation:
You: How did the meeting go?
Partner: Kind of mixed. I think I got my key points across, but I’m not totally sure how my boss took it.
You: What makes you say that?
Partner: Well, it’s not anything she said exactly. In fact, she didn’t say much at all, and her expression was hard to read. Although her expression is always a little hard to read, so who knows.
You: Sounds like it’s hard to know how it landed. Aside from your boss’s reaction, how are you feeling about your part in the conversation—what you said and how you said it?….
When you’d like a conversation to develop instead of petering out, lean more on open-ended than closed questions.
4. Listen With Your Eyes.
There’s a world of information you can glean about someone before they utter a single word. Here’s an example: Maybe your partner or roommate arrives home in the evening, and without saying anything, you can tell from their stooped posture, distracted eye contact, and forlorn expression that they had a rough day. These are your first clues, before any words are spoken, as to what you might call their emotional weather. These clues can help you begin to attune.
Maybe you were itching to tell them about the latest annoying thing your co-worker did, but instead (having just read this post) you gather your full attention, connect with some metta, and pose an open-ended question. “It looks like you might have had a tough day—how are you doing?”
With this emotionally generous gesture, you’re gifting the other person a soft landing place. You’re also setting in motion a virtuous cycle in the relationship, whereby the other person will probably soften toward you and be more likely to respond in kind in the future, which will further incline you toward them, and so on and so forth.
Now, rewind this situation and imagine how things might have unfolded if you disregarded the other person’s nonverbals and launched into a diatribe: “You’re not going to believe what so-and-so did today…”
What cycle of interaction might this set in motion for the evening?
Listening with your eyes doesn’t stop once the talking begins. The quality of full attention that I referred to above is conveyed as much through sight as through hearing. Really look at the person you’re talking with, and keep on noticing their gestures, expressions, and posture as the conversation unfolds. This will help you summon up good listening skills and sustain the positive practices you’ve put in motion.
In Conclusion
Children equate being deeply seen with being deeply loved. For adults, it’s being truly heard. While the ability to listen deeply is innate to each of us, it takes practice to strengthen it. In my experience with patients, as well as in my own life, the practice of deep listening yields tremendous benefits, and thankfully, these benefits accrue continually along the path of practice. The rewards of deep listening begin with the first step.
HOW TO PRACTICE METTA
Close your eyes and invite to mind a being (any being—real or imagined) that’s easy to feel a sense of kindness or friendliness toward. Maybe an animal or pet, a child, or maybe even you as a small child.
Whoever the being is, bring them to mind and imagine them in front of you, looking at you.
Then offer these phrases, or something similar, either aloud or to yourself: “May you be well… May you be happy… May you be safe… May you be free from inner and outer harm.”
Continue to repeat these phrases for a minute or two, slowly, perhaps imagining how the other being responds to hearing these words.
OK, that thing you’re feeling? That’s metta.