Dying for Attention
Yesterday I talked with (at?) a man who is writing a book that could help teachers understand adopted kids and their particular needs. We’d set up a brief Zoom so he could ask me a couple of questions, and I found myself flying down the verbal River of Me minutes after we first met because he was present and curious. I felt there was no way he was going to drop his eyes to check his phone. I felt there was no way he was going to interrupt me to tell me about his life. He was all mine, and I felt lit up inside. I felt like I wanted to tell him everything.
You know when you’re driving and you hit black ice? If you don’t, do you know when you try to dance on a gallon of spilled oil? What I’m asking is, do you know what it’s like to lose physical control and have zero ability to stop the forward movement? That’s how I felt yesterday. I couldn’t have stopped talking about myself if I’d been choking on my own saliva. I would have talked through the coughing. When we were done with the call, I thought of all the places I could have asked him question. All the places I could have turned the focus from me to him. I struggled to keep in the delight of the gift I’d been given, hoping he didn’t feel ripped off or vomited on.
Sharing of yourself can be so complicated when you don’t have a sense of what the rules are. The easiest rule to follow is to be the witness for everyone, listening listening listening and not claiming any space for yourself. Like a vomitorium, only cleaner. Listening always and not sharing of your self would be like being Santa without the elves or Mrs. Claus or cookies and milk. Your job is to show up and give and not expect anything in return. It might sound generous, but generosity based on fear is fear, and fear is not the most attuned, loving listener.
One of my less favorite things is to be in conversation with someone and have them say, “As you were talking, I was thinking about…” I say this a lot, and I don’t mind at all when I say it, but to hear it means, “I was thinking about myself as you were talking about your self, so let’s move on to me now.” One of my really less favorite things is to have someone look at their phone while I’m talking to them. If there is a room to walk out of at that point, I’d like to walk out of it. However, when I look at my phone when you are talking, it’s not a big deal. It just means I believe I can do more than one thing at a time. While I’m listening to you, I have so much attention to give, I can pay good-enough attention to you AND other things at the same time.
One of the lessons I struggled with the most in Martha Becks’ Wayfinder coach training was to listen without having an agenda. The idea is that the other person contains deep knowing of themselves, so if they are offered the opportunity to talk with someone who asks good questions, anything they need will arise from within. As a bossy oldest sibling and born-in-New Yorker, I think I can see people better than they can see themselves and that I need to tell them what I think because they need to hear it. But to listen without an agenda, I am learning, feels like deep breathing. It feels like flying. It feels, I think, like trust. I am getting addicted to that thing, to being a witness to someone’s unfolding without thinking I know what they need better than they do.
To stay with the theme of “one of”, one of the things I loved most about being listened to yesterday was that while the judgmental and tight part of me felt like a traffic accident waiting to happen, the freer part of me felt like it was flying. To be asked a question and then to be honored by deep witnessing presence is maybe one of the most magnificent things you can experience with another human being. I felt love for the man who was listening to me and asking such good questions. I felt very, very alive.
Over the past ten years, I have worked with hundreds of adopted people. I call myself a writing coach, but so much of what we talk about has nothing really to do with writing. People often feel they want to write, I believe, because they don’t feel heard, and since talking hadn’t worked out, they are turning to another form of communication. One where there is potentially more control because when you are in a room alone with pen and paper or a computer, the only person’s lack of attention you have to contend with is your own. It’s later when it comes time to share your writing that you have to deal with whether your heart is going to break from lack of being seen and heard or not. If you had found when you were were alone that you could not bear not listen to yourself, then your heart broke even earlier.
“This sounds like therapy,” I’ve heard over and over again as people talk over their stories with me. They say this apologetically, as if the only place they can talk about things that matter to them that may be labelled as personal is in a therapist’s office. When you aren’t allowed to talk about the truths about yourself as a child, talk becomes confusing. Can I say this? Can I say that? Will this upset someone? Will this make them walk away? To have these questions while you are going about your life makes talking not as simple as simply saying what’s on your mind just as walking across a field isn’t that easy when land mines were planted and unmarked years earlier.
To listen to someone tell you things they don’t tell everyone feels like a holy thing to me. I love listening. I feel like my body was born to empty itself so it could experience the feeling of hearing another. I also feel like my body was made to talk and talk and talk.
I am learning to balance these things. I am learning as a coach to put my need to insert my beliefs and ideas aside with the faith the other person already knows their heart’s desires—they just need a witness to offer the space for their parts and Self to relax and emerge and speak their truths. There’s a marvelous interior trust I feel getting stronger in my body that even if I don’t insert myself into a conversation, I’m still real to the other person. I am also learning to seek out good listeners as friends. When you are adopted and conditioned to not expect to be heard, it’s easy to find people who want to tell you about themselves without having much interest in you.
That previous paragraph is beginning to feel like an overstuffed suitcase. Too many ideas are flooding my brain and instead of heading to a conclusion, I just discovered a new wing to the house of this essay.
Fuck.
This is why talking can get complicated, too—the more freedom I give myself to let loose, the more I have to say, and the more I can end up flooding the person I am with, or anyone reading what I’ve written, or myself. Oh! To have the freedom to express yourself and to also know how to honor both your own dignity and that of your witness.
When we are born, I think we are balls of unregulated energy, like suns spewing light all through the universe. Our mother, sweating and bleeding from the effort of bringing us into the world, holds us, and her gaze and her touch help us understand we are in a body that has a boundary of skin. She helps us understand we are here to connect, that we aren’t suns spewing light, that we are part of something that has our back. We are talking through our eyes and our skin as soon as we come into contact with her. We are learning how to be.
Her gaze and touch teach us we are here for a reason. To be seen. To see. To be heard. To hear.
Is there any wonder why it can feel like you are dying when you are talking and the other person checks their phone?
