Listening well

I have been accused at times of not being a good listener.  This is ironic because probably 50 to 60% of what I do for a living requires good listening.  In college we called it active listening.  Active listening is basically listening in such a way that the speaker feels heard, validated, and understood.  This comes quite naturally to some people.  These are often the people we feel comfortable going to for advice or for comfort.  For other people, active listening is more difficult; it is a skill they have to develop with practice. 

I probably fall into the latter category.  Naturally, I'm not the best listener.  I don't think I realized this when I decided to become a therapist.  If I had, I might have chosen a different career path.  Anyway, at some point early in my career I began to notice that listening was a struggle for me.  Even now, after years of consciously honing my active listening skills, it still takes a significant amount of effort.  I constantly have to remind myself to pay attention, to make eye contact, and to refrain from interrupting.  I regularly forget to validate a person's perspective before suggesting another way to look at things.  I frequently have to quiet the running commentary in my mind so that I can fully attend to what a patient is saying.  All of this is in addition to reigning in my overwhelming impulse to blurt out every response the moment I think it.  (Self censorship is another skill that doesn't come naturally to me.  I've gotten a lot better at it over the years though).

Because listening demands so much of my focus and concentration it also requires a lot of energy.  Talking to people all day may not seem like it would be exhausting but it really can be, at least for me.  When my husband and I first got married he used to call me as soon as I got off of work.  He always wanted to talk about some problem he wanted to solve or to ask my opinion about some decision he needed to make.  It felt overwhelming to me and it led to a lot of stupid arguments.  Eventually I had to ask him to stop calling me right after work.  I simply didn't have the energy right then for the kind of conversations he wanted to have. 

Fortunately my husband was willing to do this so it wasn't a big deal.  What's been a bigger problem for me is that I never get re-invigorated after working all day.  By the time my husband and I get home in the evening I just want to read or watch something online.  Like most normal people, my husband wants to tell me about his day.  This is perfectly reasonable and yet it is such a struggle for me to listen.  This is especially true if he starts a conversation when I'm in the middle of looking at something else.  My inclination is to keep doing what I'm doing.  Normally, I'd set aside this inclination, stop what I'm doing, and have a conversation with my husband.  When I'm tired, however, I don't have the energy to overcome my natural tendencies.  It takes will power to overcome an urge and will power takes energy. 

Does anyone else have this kind of problem?  Do you have any suggestions for overcoming it?     

Seasonality: Energy and Mood in the Winter

As the days grow progressively shorter, my body and mind protest.  I never really have enough energy, but it seems to be in particularly short supply during the winter months.  And when the world around me begins to buzz in cheerful anticipation of the holiday season, I prefer to stay at home.  I used to revel in the spirit of Christmas.  Then, my grandmother died in 2003, just a week after Christmas.  For me -- and for much of my family -- my grandmother was Christmas.  She led the family festivities every year.  It was her holdiay.  Now, I miss her terribly and grieve her most during the Christmas season.  When I feel her absence so acutely I begin to wonder if I'll see her again someday, when my life is over.  Then I start thinking about death.  This leads me down a path of rather morbid thoughts; I end up feeling depressed.

Of course, I'm not the only one who struggles with mood and energy during the winter.  Studies suggest that approximately 10% of American adults experience negative changes in their mood and energy during the winter months that are significant enough to interfere with daily functioning. 

When a person has a history of feeling tired and depressed every winter, he eventually comes to expect it.  He may begin to anticipate the onset of depression and fatigue at the end of summer, long before any symptoms are present.  He begins to monitor his mood and energy level more closely, vigilantly looking for even very slight changes to either.  His hyper-vigilance makes him more sensitive to fluctuations in mood or energy, causing him to notice changes that others probably would not.  (Perhaps he notices changes that even he would not notice if they took place in the spring or summer).  Thus, if he wakes up one November morning feeling a bit down, he might see it as a sign of worse things to come.  "Well, here it is again," he might say to himself.  "Now I'll be depressed until spring comes around."  It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. 

This is just part of the story; there are a number of factors that cause a person to feel depressed when the seasons change.  Still, one's thoughts and beliefs can contribute signficantly to the maintenance of such problems.  This has been the subject of growing interest to mental health professionals in recent years.  Reading some of the literature helped me to identify some of my own unhelpful beliefs about mood and energy during winter.  I thought I'd share some of the more common unhelpful beliefs (taken from the "Seasonal Beliefs Questionnaire"):

"I am worried about how bad I will feel this winter."
"I am dreading the next few months."
"No one else feels this way every year."
"I'm going to be depressed until spring."
"I need sunshine to feel happy."
"Dark, gloomy days are depressing."
"The weather should not affect me."

Even if your mood and energy have tended to change with the seasons in the past, it doesn't have to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.