There are five types of listening that someone could be using: ignoring, pretending to listen, selective hearing, active listening, and empathic listening. These are ranked by order of "listening", or how much content and emotion you are taking in from the person you are listening to. I knew about the first four types of listening, so learning about empathy and empathic listening was interesting. Understanding someone's emotions and the content is extremely valuable for making that person feel understood.
To improve my empathy and empathic listening, I completed an empathic listening assignment where I spent 30 minutes listening to a college friend. During this conversation, I made sure to understand my friend's emotions and content while he was describing some of the issues he was facing during the school year. Doing this assignment helped me improve my empathy and empathic listening skills, as detailed in the reflection. I plan to use empathic listening to help improve my relationship with others.
This empathic listening assignment was done with a close friend of mine from college. This conversation was done on October 15th, 2024 at his apartment. It was also done face-to-face. The conversation lasted about 30-35 minutes. Topics ranged from school, stress, video games, and his habits. This conversation helped me better understand my close friend and some of the troubles he was currently facing. It also helped me build a strong connection with him and encouraged us to be more open with each other.
Looking at the conversation as a whole, I thought I did a good job empathically listening. The topics ranged from serious to very casual, like his smoking habits and his relationship with his boyfriend, to video games and some homework/exams. I think for a larger portion of the conversation, I either actively listened or emphatically listened. There were certain points where I would get distracted and check my phone so I would pretend to listen. However, these points only happened once or twice, near the beginning and the end of the conversation. By empathic listening, I think that the conversation opened up near the end. For example, in the conversation, the topics started with very superficial and basic topics. When the conversation progressed and I showed I was paying attention, the topics shifted to more serious topics. These topics included his smoking habits. He told me how he stopped smoking for a week and a half. He also noted that his schedule this semester was much more difficult and he was struggling to keep up with the classes. It was clear that my empathetic listening helped him open up and share some struggles and issues he was currently facing.
The key components of empathic listening were reflected in my responses. Whenever I responded to his emotions or words, I acted as authentically as possible. For example, at around the minute mark, we were discussing some exams he had on the same day. He said that he “needed to lock in” and study for the two exams he had. As a response, I asked what exams he was the most worried about, showing interest and curiosity about why he was stressed. He responded by saying that his general education class was causing him the most stress because he did the least studying for it. He also stated that he hadn’t gone to lecture recently for this class, so he was more worried about it.
Another example of me showing authenticity and curiosity during the conversation was when he shared his recent cooking experiences. This happened at 20 minutes where he shared his interest in learning how to cook different cuisines. In response, I asked which specific cuisines he wanted to learn. He answered by saying that he wanted to learn more about cooking Thai food and the different types of curries. In response, I asked why he wanted to learn how to cook Thai food. By focusing on the tone of my voice and showing curiosity in the conversation, I was able to learn more about my friend’s hobbies. It also led to a discussion on how he has been using cooking as an outlet for trying to stop smoking.
I used a variety of empathic listening techniques in my conversation with my friend. For example, at 29 minutes, I mimicked his worries about an internship and GPA. I mimicked his content and shared how I was having the same worries. He was talking about how he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do after college, either working immediately or going to graduate school. In response, I nodded and confirmed his worries. I also shared about how I was feeling the same thing, I wasn’t sure about my future out of college. Another example of mimicking the emotion and content was when we were talking about classes, exams, and just overall stress from school. At around 6 minutes, he was talking about how somewhat stressed about his ECE classes and how he was behind on some of the lectures. I also shared a similar experience, reaffirming his feelings. I shared how I was also behind on lectures and feeling the pressure, reaffirming his emotions. He nodded and shared more about his struggles with school after I mimicked his emotions. These examples showed how mimicking a person's emotions and feelings can help them feel more safe and comfortable in the conversation. As seen with my friends, they also tend to open up because you understand how they are feeling.
Another empathic listening technique I used in the conversation was rephrasing the content. Throughout the conversation, whenever I responded and would rephrase his thoughts and content, he seemed to open up more and talk about more serious topics. For example, at 5 minutes, I rephrase his stress about school. I rephrase his feelings about his accounting exam, and how he’s feeling about it. He talks about how he’s not sure if he’s properly prepared for his online exam later this week. I rephrase it by asking him if he’s worried about the exams because they might have an extremely specific or “random question, or something out of left field” (5:22). Rephrasing his thoughts allows him to confirm my appraisal of the situation and not misunderstand anything. It helped me better understand the current situation and the person’s emotions.
However, I think I struggled with the other empathic listening skills, reflecting on the feelings. Throughout the conversation, I don’t think I explicitly reflected on my friend’s feelings. I think this didn’t help with certain topics like his birthday party and his smoking addiction. In those topics, if I reflected and reiterated his feelings, I felt like he would have opened up, allowing us to discuss more about his personal life. In future conversations with other people or this same friend, I hope to reflect on their feelings so they can feel heard and understood. Acknowledging their emotions will help them open up and share more with me.
There were some points in the conversation where I fell back into other levels of listening. At around 30 seconds, I got a text from another friend and checked it. I was in the “pretending to listen” level, where I wasn’t focused on the conversation at hand. My friend saw that and he shut off the conversation for a little bit. After noticing that, I quickly turned off my phone and focused back on my friend and the conversation I had. This mistake of mine impacted the overall quality and content of the dialogue because he was more hesitant to share some deeper information with me. This was noticeable because we only started covering some more serious topics near the end of the thirty minutes (27-31). There was a clear difference between empathic listening and other levels of listening. With empathic listening, the conversation seemed to flow much more naturally, topics just seemed to come up and the discussion would flow. When I was not empathic listening, the conversation seemed to force itself along. I would have to try to get him to talk instead of him talking freely. It seemed clear that he knew whether or not I was empathic listening.
The empathic listening assignment really helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses with empathy. I think I am very good at rephrasing and mimicking content and emotions people feel. However, I think I need to be more explicit in pinpointing their emotion. Furthermore, I think I also need to remove my phone from all important conversations. I get too easily distracted by my phone and this often negatively affects the future content and quality of the conversation. I think I also do a good job of reaffirming their feelings and emotions when they talk. Throughout the conversation, I will say “mhm”, “yeah”, “that makes sense”, and “I get what you mean” to confirm that I am paying attention to the content and the emotion in it. From class, I also learned to stop giving solutions when listening. I just affirmed their emotions and listened to him. I did not offer solutions and let him talk. This helped me learn that sometimes I just need to listen and be a good friend. This empathic listening assignment helped me create a deeper connection with one of my friends and address some of the issues he was currently facing.