The lost art of listening

Has listening without interjecting ourselves become a lost art?

I finished listening to an audio version of "The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brene Brown. Yes I know she is secular, but I appreciate her research. In my opinion, her strength lies in identifying patterns of behavior by listening to thousands of people, which is way beyond my limited scope of humanity. At the end of the book, she describes the research process and writes this - "When I code data (analyze the stories), I go into deep researcher mode where my only focus is on accurately capturing what I heard in the stories. I don't think about how I would say something, only how they said it. I don't think about what an experience would mean to me, only what it meant to the person who told me about it." (pg. 129, italics mine)

This requires a lot of self-discipline because Brown has to take herself out of the picture and objectively examine what others have said. This goes against our default - interpreting what we hear through our experience of the world.

I don't need to tell you how hard it is to finally get up the courage to share something that is troubling you personally only to get this response - "That's never happened to me. Is it really that bad as you say it is? Is it even real or just your imagination?" The flip side is when you share something that has encouraged you only to have it get deflated like a balloon. This is disheartening and discouraging and does not invite deeper fellowship or further transparency.

Why do we do this? Why can't we just listen without making it about us?

I have a hypothesis. "Man is the measure of all things" combined with the enlightenment and American individualism has morphed into "I am the measure of all things" based on my very limited scope of knowledge and experience.

To test this - What is the response when a friend confides something you have never experienced? Is the first response considering what they have said or searching your personal knowledge base for how it relates to you? Do you believe, doubt, or think they have exaggerated because you have no personal frame of reference? Or are there areas where you need to become a learner rather than an advisor? I'm also not talking about "out there," but with family and the family of God.

I own that I have been guilty. I have to consciously keep my mouth shut and listen when, for example, my daughter wants to unburden herself. As a fixer by nature, I want to cut to the chase and find a solution, but what if a big part of the solution for her is just being heard? What if the unburdening itself is what she needs, not mom-to-the-rescue? But how can she talk it out if I can't listen without interjecting myself?

Here's something my pastor shared years ago that I am still in the process of learning -

"There are times when we need to go into a conversation with our ears first and our mouth second."