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Key points
- Being a good listener can be a blessing or a curse.
- Making space for others can lead to burnout.
- Isolating yourself is not a solution.
- Embracing your own discomfort is important.
You’ve heard iterations of the same thing for most of your life: You’re such a good listener. I feel like I can trust you. Your friends call you first. Your co-workers turn to you to resolve their conflicts. Your family members lean on you to discuss sibling rivalry, challenges with their children, or marital conflict.
Strangers share deeply personal things after you start a conversation in the produce section of the grocery store. Uber drivers, waitresses, the person next to you at the salon: They all confide in you.
They often laugh and say, “Why get a therapist when I have you?” And maybe you used to think it was funny and even flattering, but now you’re tired of dealing with everyone’s issues, annoyed that they never take your advice and hurt that no one ever checks in to see how you’re doing.
But instead of sharing how you feel, you ignore everyone for a few days, which brings temporary peace. But then the frustration subsides, and you feel guilty, so you go back to answering phone calls, responding to texts, and listening to strangers because you just can’t help it.
Why do you listen anyway?
Maybe you are genuinely curious, and listening helps you better understand the “why” behind people’s choices. Maybe you have a deep desire to make the world a better place, and making space for others is a way to make an impact.
Maybe you were taught that you’re responsible for how other people feel, and that you should put others first and do everything you can to make them feel better, especially when they confide in you.
Maybe you have your own issues to resolve, and you avoid them by diving into the challenges people bring to you. This pattern of avoidance is very common. By always putting yourself in the role of listener, you avoid having to share or explore your own stuff.
Lastly, maybe you love identifying and solving problems because it just makes you feel good; it gives you a sense of purpose. And so when someone comes to you in distress, you listen, ask all the right questions, and then immediately offer solutions.
What leads to burnout has nothing to do with your ability to listen. Burnout happens when you believe that your role is to make other people feel better, when you believe that solving problems for others makes you an epic human.
It happens when you realize that no matter how well you listen or how good your advice, people will do their own thing, a fact that makes you feel like you wasted your time.
In short, the reason why being a good listener backfires has nothing to do with others. It has everything to do with you.
Listen and trust
Therapists enter the field out of a desire to help others. Our training emphasizes the importance of listening without making judgments, of withholding our opinions. We use active, supportive, and empathic listening to foster the trust necessary for a therapeutic bond.
Nowhere in our Code of Ethics does it state that our responsibility is to resolve our client’s challenges; this is disrespectful because it violates a client’s right to self-determination. Instead, we encourage clients to evolve at their own pace, not ours, and we do not offer solutions because we trust they already have the answers.
I knew none of this before I entered the field. I thought my job was to listen, give suggestions and/or advice, and essentially make other people feel better.
To say that becoming a therapist has humbled me would be massively understating it. At first, listening to others express their sadness, fear, or hurt triggered in me a great deal of discomfort and anxiety because I just wanted to fix it, to make it go away — and quick. With practice and supervision, I learned to embrace this discomfort and see it for what it was: an opportunity for growth. And this growth helped me truly grasp the importance of allowing others to experience their own distress.
Today, whether I am teaching Pastoral Care and Counseling to permanent deacons in the Catholic Church, basic skills in clinical social work to graduate students at Boston College, or communication skills to parents eager to support their teenage children, the message is the same: Listen, and trust them to figure it out.
What you can do
Isolating yourself from others when you’re burnt out is a reaction, not a solution. It may buy you some peace in the short term, but it is not sustainable in the long term.
But you don’t need to shut people out; you just need to change what you perceive to be your role, and this is a process. Following are some ways you can develop a new way of showing up in relationships and interactions.
Develop awareness. Do you automatically slip into “problem-solver” mode? Do you get annoyed when someone takes up your time and then ignores your advice? Do you hold resentment and anger toward others for never checking in with you? Identify, accept, and forgive all the ways you’ve played a part in creating this dynamic.
Be a feeler, not a fixer. Empathy trumps solutions. Empathizing with what someone is feeling is more helpful than offering a solution. “I’ve never been in your exact situation, but I do know what it’s like to feel sadness.” Encouraging them to look at the bright side or to focus on the positive helps never. Just let it be, and share the emotion.
Offer perspective, not solutions. Sometimes people just want to know what you think, and that’s not criminal. Offer your perspective and clarify that it’s based on your own experiences, and that in the end, only they know what is best. “Offering” implies that the person has choice in the matter, and prevents you from developing any kind of expectation about the outcome.
Embrace your discomfort. If you’ve gotten used to being the “fixer,” you’re going to feel uncomfortable changing your approach, and maybe a little guilty. When I say embrace this discomfort, I mean wrap your arms around it, give it a huge kiss, and thank it for giving you a chance to grow. This discomfort is your deliverance.
To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
