👂Active Listening Skills

24 Jul, 2025

Learning Active Listening Skills is such an important and beautiful intention. It means you want to make someone else feel truly heard and understood. Many people go their whole lives without really experiencing that.

Here's a guide, starting from the basics, on how to practice active listening and emotional validation, even if it doesn’t come naturally yet.

🧠 1. What Is Active Listening?

Active listening is more than just hearing someone’s words. It means giving your full attention, noticing what’s underneath their words (emotions, needs), and showing them you get it. It’s a skill, and it can be learned.

👂 Core Active Listening Skills

1. Give your full presence

• Put away distractions (phone, thoughts about what you’ll say next).
• Make eye contact (if culturally or personally appropriate).
• Use open, relaxed body language: nodding, leaning slightly forward.

💡 You’re saying with your body: “I’m here with you. I’m not rushing. You matter.”

2. Reflect what they said

• Repeat back a summary or key phrase to show you heard them.

  • “So it sounds like you felt really overwhelmed today.”
  • “You’re saying it hurt when she didn’t text you back.”

💡 This helps people feel “seen” and also lets them correct you if you misunderstood.

3. Name the emotion (even tentatively)

• Try to identify what they’re feeling and gently say it out loud.

  • “That sounds really frustrating.”
  • “I imagine that felt really lonely.”
  • “Were you scared?”

💡 Even guessing helps them feel more understood. If you're wrong, they’ll often correct you—and even that can deepen connection.

4. Validate the emotion (not the situation)

You don’t have to agree with their logic or actions to validate how they felt.

Examples:

• “It makes sense you’d feel that way after what happened.”
• “Anyone in your position might feel the same.”
• “That really is a lot to carry. I get why you’re so upset.”

💡 Validation = “Your feelings are real and make sense.”

5. Ask curious, gentle questions

If someone wants to keep talking, ask open-ended questions, not solutions:

• “What was the hardest part about that?”
• “How did that make you feel?”
• “What do you need right now?”
• “Do you want to talk more about it or just have company?”

💡 You’re showing: “I want to understand you more deeply.”

6. Don’t jump to fixing

Avoid saying things like:

• “Well, at least…” or “Try not to think about it.”
• “You should just…”

💡 Even with good intentions, this can feel like you're minimizing or skipping past their pain. Instead, just stay with them in the moment.

7. Use silence

Silence can be powerful. People often open up more if you allow a pause instead of rushing to fill the space.

💡 Your calm, patient presence can feel incredibly safe.

❤️ Emotional Validation Cheat Sheet

🔄 Example in Action

They say:

“I don’t know why I’m so upset about this. I feel like I’m being dramatic.”

You could say:

“You’re upset for a reason. It sounds like this really hurt you. You’re not being dramatic—it makes sense you’d feel this way.”

💡 That response helps them feel safe, valid, and less alone.

🧰 Extra Tips

• Practice on yourself too: “What am I feeling? Can I accept that it makes sense?”
• Apologize if you miss it: “I realize I cut you off earlier. I want to hear what you were saying.”
• Practice empathy: Try to feel what they might be feeling, not what you would feel in their shoes.

🌱 Final Thought

Making someone feel heard doesn’t require the perfect words. It’s about the quality of your presence. If you’re curious, nonjudgmental, and stay with them emotionally, that’s more healing than anything you could say.

Would you like to practice with a real or imaginary example? I could show you what active listening and emotional validation might look like in a specific dialogue.