I am not a huge fan of popular jargon, especially in my professional world of Social Work. I cringe when I find myself starting to use words that at one time distanced me from others.
One such word is “resonate.”
The word has come up in social media posts and in CE programs and in my yoga teacher training classes. In the past, every time I heard the word, I felt less connected to the speaker, as if we didn’t share a common language and therefore lacked the ability to establish shared meaning and purpose.
So yesterday, when I found myself wanting to say, “I resonate with what you just said,” I checked myself before I spoke. I verbalized my struggle with the word before I made my point and moved on, hopefully not leaving the other person—probably not one who uses the word resonate—behind. In hindsight, I’m not sure I should have shared anything at that point. Which brings me to today’s lesson.
Today, I think I finally have a handle on the idea of “holding space” for someone. Social Work and Yoga are full of this concept and I honestly could not resonate (teehee, cringing less now) with the concept until this morning when I listened to a Yoga lecture and the presenter talked about holding space for someone else by not telling your own story.
Aha! Now I know what they’re talking about.
I am reminded of one of my favorite books, Cure by Crying, written by a man who experienced severe anxiety. He cured himself by setting up listening time with others and letting himself cry. He simply trained his people to listen. He noted that his listeners might get bored with the life stories he told over and over in order to cry himself clean of distress (my phrase, not his) so he wore an eye mask in order to not notice their boredom, even making room for them to do something else while they “listened,” like read a book. Because the key issue was not the other person’s ability to convey their listening skill. The key issue was the man THINKING the other person was listening, or holding space, for him to heal.
I love this man’s story. I think he’s a genius. He taught me that having space to heal might mean pretending, or having faith, that someone else is holding space (listening) even when they’re not. This is not new. Think religion.
Believe you can heal. You can. Create your own holding space. Tune into whoever or whatever listens to you–God? Goddess? Nature? Your dead cat?–and go for it.
If you’re fortunate enough to find another human being who is willing to listen, reciprocate. Either pay them, or have them paid through your insurance, or trade time with a peer.
If working with a peer, choose a length of time; divide it in two; decide who will listen first and who will listen second; note what happens. When it’s your turn to be listened to, notice someone is holding space/listening. When it’s your turn to hold space, shut the f*ck up and listen, or offer an eye mask to your partner and tell them you won’t leave the room, no matter what they say or do. Then crack open that book you’re dying to finish.*
Holding space for/listening to others can be difficult for blabbermouths like me whose stories spill out in bits and bytes of lived experience, striving and straining to process what is uncomfortable, or unknown, or unknowable. When I listen, I feel driven to communicate that I can relate.
I now resonate (feels like a gentle, tinging vibration) with the idea of holding space and I will keep practicing this act of listening by not interrupting.
What’s your story?
*Before anybody wants to spout off about the ethics of pretending to listen, I acknowledge that ACTUALLY LISTENING is a much better course of action, and OF COURSE as a professional listener is the only way to go, but I stand firm in asserting that pretense of caring and compassion is better than nothing. Remember Harlow’s monkeys? The very act of being willing to spend time with someone is like putting cloth on the wire dummy.