How to Meditate Without "Meditating"

Last Friday during a training, we were paired up and asked to do therapy on each other.

The main goal for that particular day was very simple: get comfortable sharing raw parts of yourself that you feel sensitive talking about, and get comfortable holding space for others to do the same.

I felt pretty comfortable talking about my stuff.
But then it was time for me to listen.

And I got nervous.

What if I don't have the right things to say?
What if I can't make this better?
What if this person trusts me with a part of themself and I can't fix their situation?

Because mindfulness is a part of the field I work in, one thing I've heard maaaany times over the years is:
when someone talks, be completely present and fully there with them.

I understood it, and liked the idea of it,
but it didn't fully click for me
until we learned in therapy training about the power of true listening.

If we care about someone and want them to feel better when they share things with us, there are two main ingredients involved:
listen and validate.

But it goes beyond just listening.

Here's how my teacher explained it; it lit up all kinds of lightbulbs for me:

Listen without judgment and without an answer.

I'll rewrite that second part because I believe it's extra important:

Listen without an answer in mind.

So often, in an attempt to make the people we care about feel better, we think we need to have answers.

Give advice or come up with magical solutions to seemingly impossible problems.

Isn't that why they reach out to us in the first place?
So we can help fix it?

No.

It turns out that's not always what really drives us to share and express.

A big part of it is driven by the soothing, comforting power of being seen.
Truly seen and heard.
With no judgments, no attempts to fix.

Just an: I see you and I recognize you're dealing with something challenging and I'm here for you.

And it works wonders.

It's SO powerful.

We ran out of time in class and I ended up listening attentively without having much time to actually say enough things to "help."

But what really inspired me was how my partner expressed feeling better after that.

Just by opening up and being heard with zero judgment.

Why do I call this a meditation?
Because it requires us to be completely present.

In every interaction we have, the common tendency is for our minds to create a story about what the other person is telling us
based on our perception of the world.

The "advice" and answers we give are driven by that.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing,
there's a time and place for sharing advice and giving perspective
but when we do that we're doing less seeing the other person and more reflecting on our own views and preferences.

There's sometimes an implicit judgment beneath the advice we give (although we do it with the best of intentions).

However, when we listen without looking for answers, we give the other person the gift of our full attention and presence.

No drifting to the past or jumping ahead to the future.
Just complete presence.

And that is meditation.

The crazy thing is, when we stop coming up with answers while we hear someone talk, we end up listening on a deeper level, and the answers that may eventually emerge come from a wiser, more intuitive place.

When we don't inject our own story into theirs, we give them the power to own their story and find the power within themselves to remember what truly matters to them.

We're not here to "fix" or change.

We're just here to hold their hands along the way *literally or figuratively*,
and that, I'm finding, is the most powerful support we can offer.

Have you ever tried this type of "interpersonal" meditation? If so, how did you find it?