Improve Your Relationships by (Really) Listening (as published in Medium at

Three top tips from a Gestalt Psychotherapist

So many relationships come unstuck. Not only romantic, but those shared with family, friends, and colleagues. Often, we don’t know what — or where it — went wrong until the bond has broken beyond repair.

My gut feeling is that the cause of many relationship breakdowns is that we don’t know how to communicate with one another. We’ve never really been taught. And so the connection is poor, communication is shaky — if it’s there at all — and people get lost in their own worlds.

It’s an easy pattern to fall into and before you know it, the early bad habit turns into everyday behaviour. After years of this, a relationship can really fall apart.

Does the following sound familiar?

What people tend to do — the bad habit they slide into — is half-listening: ‘listening’ while you are busy doing something else.

Picture this. Your partner comes home from work and begins telling you what happened to them — a significant thing that is troubling them — and you are busy washing the dishes and so you are distracted. You aren’t looking at them and you are barely taking in what they are saying.

Or this (this is something we are especially guilty of when our children are trying to talk to us). Your child comes home from school, animatedly trying to describe what happened to them in the playground that day and you start moving around the house while they run around after you in a sort of interrupted way, eager to finish their ‘story’. We don’t give them the fullness of our attention and so we are only half listening; busy with something else rather than devoting our time to the actual hearing.

And even if we are not occupied with some task or another, what we tend to do — another bad habit — is compare our day to theirs; interjecting or interrupting with “well, this is what I think” and “why don’t you do that?”

None of this can be described as good listening.

Ok, so how do you really listen?

Some years ago I took early retirement from medicine as a practising GP and Gestalt Psychotherapist and set about exploring alternative healing methods — other ways to heal people mentally and emotionally. I created a modality, QEC, that works with the subconscious mind to heal past traumas and change limiting beliefs permanently.

For this method to be effective, our practitioners need to (really) hear the client’s story. We need to hear what has been going on, and what has been troubling them. And so one of the things I teach them is the Gestalt dialogic process; dialogic means “to listen”.

I will now share with you the top-line components of that same process. The three steps you can follow to really hear your partner — or your child, your friend — and therefore improve your relationships.

Sit up to attention

The first thing to do is to sit comfortably.

You are relaxed, you are not busy doing something else like writing or paying attention to the paper or looking at the TV (you get the idea). No, instead you are paying full attention; you are granting your partner, or your child, your teenager, your full attention.

This in itself is so respectful that you will have earned their attention. They will be so delighted when you do that. I promise you, from experience, it has a powerful effect.

The second thing you need to do is hear them. Don’t interrupt and maintain visual contact (if it is comfortable for them); look at them. And then simply listen. Only speak if you need something to be expanded a little bit — if they say, “I’ve had a bad day at work” and then pause, you might say “well tell me more, what was bad about it”.

Ask questions to expand the topic when appropriate, but other than that, you don’t interrupt, you don’t get involved, you just sit back, and you respectfully listen. You listen and when they have finished sharing, you feedback on what you have heard. This shows that you have heard them. You were tuned in.

Feeding back is important. Unless we do that, how do they know that we have really heard? Your mind might have been off somewhere else altogether.

If relevant, you could say something along the lines of, “you know I really see; I see the trouble you’re in. I’ve really heard what you’ve shared with me and what I understand is that this is a repetition of a situation that’s been happening at school almost every week isn’t it?”

By saying “I see” “I hear you” and “I understand” you will be offering the person you are listening to a gift; you are showing them that you care. And what you will notice is that they come to you more often, they will want to share because they know you are really listening. You really have heard them; you care what they have to say.

That is what listening does, it shows you care.

It says, “I think you are valuable; you are worth hearing and I care”. It is the strong foundation for any relationship, from intimate partners to employer and employee, between mum and child, and between friends.

So, to recap:

1. Sit comfortably, give them your undivided attention
2. Hear them, don’t interrupt, but listen to their cues
3. Feedback on what they have just said to you once they have finished sharing

Try it out. See if you can stop doing whatever it is you’re doing, give your attention fully for the few minutes it takes to hear the conversation — or longer (you may find that the conversation, once you’ve been present for this person, will evolve into a much more in-depth discussion) — and then you really are being of service, you really are being of help.

If you’d like to know more about QEC, click here.

If you’re interested in becoming a certified QEC Practitioner, bookings are now open for our September training, accredited by the International Institute for Complementary Therapists. CPTSD Foundation readers receive 10% off using discount code: CPTSD2022

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

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Dr Melanie Salmon

Medical doctor, Gestalt psychotherapist, TRE trainer, trauma specialist and teacher, I have committed my life to the exploration and practice of healing.

During my 40 years in medicine, I became increasingly frustrated with the limited ability for pharmaceutical drugs to treat the cause of health issues including psycho-emotional conditions in my patients. To me, it became clear that these problems were related to a dysfunctional nervous system caused by unresolved and unhealed trauma. This understanding led me to leave medicine to seek out a better way.

In 2008 I found it. Combining the best from many modalities including Gestalt psychotherapy, neuroscience, and epigenetics – drawing inspiration from both the traditional and modern – I created Quantum Energy Coaching (QEC), revolutionising the way we approach healing. A simple, yet profoundly effective method that works with the subconscious mind, QEC is a clinically usable tool that heals the effects of past trauma and changes limiting beliefs rapidly and safely.

Following early success, QEC soon established a global following, inspiring me to offer training in the methodology and to build a team of practitioners who today, use it to heal thousands all around the world from the most traumatised to those simply wanting to live their fullest lives.

My debut autobiography, There Has to Be Another Way, is available to buy at all good online retailers.