What’s your immediate emotional response when you don’t feel heard?
Feel disrespected? Humiliated? Outright rageful?
We all want to be heard, long to be heard… deserve to be heard.
When we’re not heard, we feel unimportant, worthless, powerless.
It’s like we don’t matter.
Contrast that with what if feels like when we are heard.
We can vie for those around us to hear us. We can ask, cajole, and/or scream to be heard. Others may or may not choose to listen. This is beyond our control.
What’s within our control, is to hear ourselves. We all have voices or parts (see previous blogs about Internal Family Systems). Some parts may only faintly whisper in the background, while others like the People-pleaser, love to talk.
Have you ever been triggered because you weren’t heard, causing a temper flare-up? In IFS therapy, we understand that this is a part of us, and in the end, all parts just want to be validated.
When we don’t listen to our inner voices or parts, or worse yet, when we suppress these voices or parts – they get louder. Louder voices create chaos – the opposite of harmony.
When we validated through being heard, we soften… and the same with our parts. When understood, our parts feel respected, cared for, and that they matter. When our parts feel validated, we feel harmony, we feel whole, and we have access to Self. Some parts may be misguided, and we may have to help them understand how to better help us in the present, but once softened, our parts listen!
Want harmony? Listen! Listen to those voices inside. Hear them out. When we really hear them, we will see that these parts love us and that they are our best advocates. We may not have an external advocate, but we have a whole support team inside of us, just waiting to be heard.
