The exhaustion of not being heard: psychoanalysis and contemporary life

One of the great sources of exhaustion for the contemporary individual is the feeling of not being heard. In a culture shaped by the desire to be seen, what does it really mean to listen to another person?

In this article

·    Why not being heard has become so exhausting

·    What it really means to listen to another person

·    Why listening requires a certain distance from oneself

·    Having a sense of oneself in order to listen to another

Why not being heard has become so exhaustin

I begin this text with the hypothesis that one of the great forms of exhaustion surrounding the contemporary individual is the feeling of not being heard. Among so many excesses, sugar, performance, anxiety, the individual seems to drift without anywhere to find support. Everyone wants to speak. In fact, more than ever, everyone needs to speak. Some confuse speaking with being seen. They speak in order to go viral, in a kind of speech emptied of the self, repeating whatever might satisfy the urge to be heard so that they can be seen and, perhaps, recognise themselves. Then there are those who have been trying to speak, trying to appear, trying to say something of themselves, but whose voices remain drowned out by the shouting, the noise and the desperate performances of so many others who still need to be seen. Both suffer. Those desperate for attention can become so deprived of a sense of themselves that going viral seems to offer a path towards self affirmation. But it is a form of self deception, because appearing in the eyes of another is far from the same thing as appearing to oneself. And so, often after going viral, the person continues to suffer from the same uncured virus: the absence of a sense of self. They become obsessed with the gaze of others, and we already know where that can lead.

Everyone wants to speak, but who is willing to listen?

I would like to turn my attention to the other kind of person: someone who has a sense of themselves, yet repeatedly feels that there is nowhere for them to be heard. Someone who speaks and can articulate what they know, but does not find a place of understanding in the world. In a culture of appearing, being seen and being noticed, there are not many people willing to truly listen to another person. In fact, I would say there are very few people capable of doing so.

What it really means to listen to another person

The ability to listen does not belong exclusively to psychologists or psychoanalysts. Listening to another person begins with interest. Everyone is capable of listening when they are genuinely interested. Of course, psychologists, and psychoanalysts in particular, develop a particular form of listening through their profession. But that is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about something more basic: the simple capacity to listen.

But what kind of listening are we talking about? Interest in a subject, or in another person, can certainly ignite our capacity to listen. Yet what we often see today are people who are primarily interested in what a subject, or a person, represents to them. And here we return to the same problem. They are unable to offer a form of listening that is genuinely interested in the other person. They listen because of their own interest. The movement of attention never truly reaches the other.

At this point, many people might tell me that this kind of listening, one that can temporarily put aside one's own interests, belongs to the psychologist. This is precisely where I insist on my argument. No. This kind of listening does not belong exclusively to the consulting room. When we listen to a friend we deeply love and want to help, we listen, if we are capable of doing so, with the tact and empathy that the other person seems to need. We do not necessarily think about it. We do it out of love, often without even noticing. When your partner tells you about something that hurt them, if you are capable of truly being in a relationship with another person, there is a moment in which you put yourself aside and listen to what they are telling you. When your parents are no longer idealised and can simply be your parents, you may also begin to hear differently the things that once hurt you. What I mean is that listening to another person requires a certain capacity to put oneself aside. This does not happen for the purpose of analysis. It happens when we are able, for a moment, to become a little less preoccupied with ourselves.

Why listening requires a certain distance from oneself

And here we arrive at a third problem. How do we put ourselves aside enough to listen to another person without suffering because of what they tell us, without feeling responsible for it, without immediately searching for an answer, a solution or a piece of advice? How do we listen without becoming so entangled with the other person? Psychoanalysis certainly deals with these questions. But I am not proposing psychoanalysis here as a form of salvation.

Having a sense of oneself in order to listen to another

First of all, it is important to clarify that putting oneself aside is far from something negative. It does not mean disregarding oneself, erasing oneself or disappearing. It means having a sufficiently grounded sense of oneself that one can, for a moment, stop being so concerned with oneself. Having a sense of oneself is not easy. It is an achievement. It has to do with the possibility of not being so completely affected by the other, of not needing their gaze or validation quite so much. It is a kind of self confidence that is not performed or imposed from the outside in, but built from the inside out. Something developed through a profound loyalty to oneself, through examining oneself and becoming, in some sense, the object of one's own experience. Knowing something about oneself before allowing someone else to define it. This is something we gradually acquire through the experience of living. Over time, we receive clues about who we are, how we are, what we like and dislike, what hurts us and what makes us happy. And it is through our relationships with all the people who cross our path that we gradually develop the possibility of knowing ourselves.

The difficulty is that many people lack the courage to truly have themselves. Out of fear of rejection, abandonment or disappointment, the boundaries of what we know about ourselves can gradually be betrayed by the desire to keep another person. Of course, every relationship requires us to reconsider our limits and even what we think we know about ourselves. But it is precisely when we do not betray what is essential to us that we begin to gain ourselves. The confidence to exist despite the other. And this does not mean constantly reaffirming oneself or becoming someone who cannot tolerate contradiction. Quite the opposite. Someone who is able to exist with themselves becomes much more tolerant of their own frustrations. They become more capable of being with another person. This is a complex and long term process. As I said, no one is born fully in possession of themselves. At most, we work towards some degree of it, and we never complete that process, because we always remain somewhat unfamiliar to ourselves. So how can we return to the original question? How can I propose a capacity to listen if putting oneself aside seems to require something so difficult and refined?

Perhaps this is the paradox: in order to truly listen to another person, we cannot depend on them to confirm who we are. The more we are able to sustain ourselves, the less we need to transform what the other person says into a threat, an answer or a mirror. Listening then stops being a wait for our turn to speak, an attempt to solve something or a way of defending ourselves. It becomes the possibility of being in front of another person without immediately filling the space between us with what we already know.

And perhaps that is precisely what is becoming so rare, and so necessary.