The Power of Presence (Episode 90)

Brent and Janis look at the negative impact of our busy, disconnected culture and how with some simple things to focus on we can make a significant difference in the lives of those we encounter each day as well as our own fulfillment and peace.   

Transcript:

Welcome to Life & Love Nuggets, where licensed therapists Brent and Janice Sharp share how you can thrive in your life, your love, and your relationships. Hello friends, welcome back to Life & Love Nuggets. Today we're going to look at just the simple idea of the power of human contact, of being present with each other, and how this very simple but often hard thing to accomplish can really enrich our lives if we're paying attention. It seems harder and harder because of all the distractions that we have right now in our culture that keep us really disconnected from one another. Distractions could be as simple as just busyness. You know, the first thing I hear when I ask people, how you doing? Busy. I mean, it's just like a little merit badge we have to just keep things moving and fast paced, and it just causes us to move past those human connections.

It might be our phones, maybe, huh? What? Think of that. Not with me, certainly. No, no. No, no, no. Yes, this is things that we observe in other people, honey.

Phones that kind of grab our attention almost to an addictive level. You know, we've done some research lately that they're actually, we're really seeing, and I think we'll know this, you know, not too long from now that many people literally are addicted to their phones. Where instead of sitting at a soccer game and just visiting with our neighbor and connecting, everybody's looking down on their phone, scrolling, and fixed attention on these phones. It might be simply our differences. We're so divided in our culture, and so it seems like that early in conversations, people start picking up, oh, I wonder what you are, you know? And whether, again, it's a political view or we're in different social groups or we go to different So, oh wise one, should we be concerned about this? Is this causing harm, or are we just in a new season of culture that is just simply more disconnected?

Well, I didn't realize I was, oh, wise one. Oh, wise one, you are, of course you are. Oh, I'm willing to take that, yes. Can we have that in all areas? Yes, absolutely. That I'm wise in all areas. Absolutely. So, I always get my way. Yep. But I do think this is causing us harm.

This disconnection that we're having in so many ways. Have you ever been in a situation like maybe going to the doctor where you tell them what you're dealing with, and it feels like they just didn't see you or didn't hear you? I remember going to an appointment one time, and my doctor was spending so much time looking at her computer while I was talking that I wanted to go, hello, I'm over here. I'm in the room. I should have just Googled my symptoms rather than coming in. Right. But I think in this world that we're in with all the technology, we are losing connection with people, and we need to pay attention to that.

The people around us need to be felt, they need to feel like they're people, and not just tasks or projects that need to be done. We've all had that feeling where you're talking to somebody, and in just moments they start staring over your shoulder, and it's like, I think you've just stopped listening. I might as well stop talking, because I don't think you're hearing anything, either you're completely distracted, or you've made a certain opinion about what I'm saying, and you're formulating a response. Doesn't feel very good. It doesn't feel like we're being seen, and what we have to say is of much of any value. The emotional impact of being seen, researchers are saying, causes people to feel like they have dignity, understanding, and purpose. So when they're not seen, what does that say?

They don't feel good about themselves. In a medical setting, a physician's research shows that when you're not seen, you tend to not even follow the advice that you're given, even if it's good, because it's like, what do you know? You know, we don't want to feel like... I'm not sure you even heard what I said, so... Exactly, so why should I go along with what you said that I should do? Allison Pugh, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, and author of the book, here's the long title, The Last Human Job, The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World. She's looked at the psychological benefit of what she calls connective labor.

Now, being connected is obvious in what we do as therapists. We know that the fit we have, or the connection the client feels, is crucial to how they will respond in therapy. But what she's suggesting is that it's also critical in being a salesman, a lawyer, a judge, a detective, a teacher, and of course, there's a lot of research in the medical field about the importance of that connection, but the studies have even shown that for a hairstylist, it's important that the client feels heard or seen, or they're not going to be as happy with their haircut. So even in those professions, we need to have that connection. And it goes back to, we want to be seen as a human. We don't want to be seen as just the job that they need to do with us. Yeah, and so when you look at all those, I mean, we listed out a whole bunch of general kind of things.

I mean, you could probably put most everybody's life in the midst of that. And so, it really affects all of us in some ways. And in her research, she shares that a common response that people describe when they are seen and feel like that they're heard, they use this word, and she was kind of fascinated by it. And you and I have been fascinated by this in counseling, is they respond and say it's like magic. It's like amazing. I mean, it's like miraculous almost to them that I'm seen, I'm valued here, I'm significant. And we've shared previously in a previous podcast as counselors, we are just always amazed at what happens in a first session.

So this person has come in, they don't know who we are, they don't know how we're going to respond to their situation. They're oftentimes a little bit nervous about sharing their real life with us. And sometimes they don't even go totally deep because they're checking us out. But they've oftentimes shared something they've never shared with anybody else. And we are just amazed at the responses that we get after, at the end of that session, where we're just listening. We're just trying to say, okay, now, this is what I think I'm hearing you say that you need, and this is what you're dealing with. And maybe we even give a little bit of a vision for what we might do to deal with that.

And it's just amazing to me how people go, I just feel so much better. I just feel, you know, it's, I appreciate your response to that because I feel like you heard me and nobody else has heard me yet. And I think they would, it's kind of magical. It's like, and we're like, wait a second, we haven't even done anything. You don't know the brilliant technique I'm going to teach you. We haven't imparted our great wisdom to you yet. But so much healing, so much magical, miraculous kind of stuff happens in the middle of those moments of where somebody feels really listened to.

They feel the words that they're saying are important enough that the person is taking time to make sure that they understand and they feel heard. Yeah. And so what could happen in just our daily interactions? Yeah. There was one study that validated being seen and feeling heard really impacts our emotions. We see that all the time. The relief that people have that we've heard them.

We hear their story and we accept them. But in this study, they had people kind of pair off and one person, excuse me, one person in the study was a storyteller and the other person was the listener. And it showed that when the storyteller felt really heard, their emotions were peaceful and calm. And when the listener added things like good eye contact and making verbal noises such as, oh, wow. Yeah. Leaning towards them, being attentive, that it increased the positive emotions that the storyteller had. It's that what you talk about so often is validation, just sharing something, whatever it is, when you really are paying attention and you act like you get it, it feels good and we feel safe.

Yeah, I think in that study, they even talked about the. The receiver, the person that's listening as the storyteller calms and you can tell there's a connection, it actually creates warmth and positive feelings in the receiver. So it's a it's a real shared kind of a powerful thing. We're made as humans to have that connection. And it feels so good to have someone that really gets us. Alison, in her study, shares about.

Are you guys close? You call her Alison now? Well, yeah. Yeah, I think I call her Ali. No, she's at John Hopkins.

So that's OK. We would call her Dr. Dr. Pugh. Yes. So she in her study, she shared a story about a nurse who was working and there was a patient, it was an older gentleman, and he was being intubated and it was. Horrible feeling, he did not want this, he was fighting it, he was resisting it, but the doctors were like, he's not going to make it if we don't intubate him and do this procedure.

And she could tell how stressed he was and he couldn't talk because he had all this stuff, you know, down his throat and everything. And because of his illness, he couldn't write because of what he was going through. So he couldn't communicate. And and she felt led to just go to him, she kind of grabbed a hold of his arm and said, here, I can tell how upset you are.

Here's a Kleenex box. Do you want to just throw it, just throw that thing against the wall? Because I know how horrible this is. And just that move now, she sat with him, he kind of pulled her in and she sat with him for 10 or 15 minutes and just they couldn't talk. I mean, just presence there. So a few days later, after he had had his procedure and he was doing better and so forth, he talked to her and he said. You do not know how powerful that was to be dealing with the worst experience of your life and to feel seen and that somebody understood and back again to validation and recognized what I was going through.

Thank you so much. I mean, it was healing, you know, just that presence and just recognizing what another person was going through. Again, she was a nurse. She couldn't she didn't do the procedure. She wasn't the surgeon. She didn't do anything, you know, tangibly to fix the situation. But a lot of healing happened in that moment. Yeah. There was a huge study that was done of three hundred and fifty five thousand students showing that the student teacher relationship has a significantly higher impact than any other educational intervention.

Now, we know that with counseling, you know, that relationship with a client has a higher impact. But it's very interesting to see it as a teacher. And, you know, you think about it and I can see that being in the kindergarten or, you know, grades or it's like, oh, she feels so safe.

OK, I feel better here. But what was so interesting in this study was even in the upper grades, there was an even higher impact of the relationship of the teacher with the student on the outcomes. I thought that was amazing because you think teenagers, if you're teaching them, they're going to be rolling their eyes the whole time or like, what am I even doing here? But I thought that was a very interesting study. And another yet another medical study showed that the doctor patient relationship has a higher impact on physical well, excuse me, physical well-being than taking an aspirin daily to help ward off heart attack. I mean, how many people take aspirin daily? And when you most most guys, most guys our age do.

What an impact that has. Yeah. And we could go on and on. And, you know, I don't think everybody needs to be convinced of this. I think we all pretty much feel it. But we wanted to give you some research to know this isn't just Brent and Jenna Sharpe thoughts, OK, that it's something that's really pervasive, you know, that's happening. And so what do we do? What are some things that we can do in our busy, harried lives to not miss these important opportunities of connection? What can we do to help kind of connect more deeply and help those very important in our life to feel seen?

And I would just say. Let me speak to the dudes out there just for a minute. I tell guys every day that some of the things that I'm going to be encouraging them to do to try to validate their wife's feelings, to connect with them emotionally, to even open up emotionally themselves, to share more deeply. And I said, I know you're going to look at me and go, we don't do that. You know, this is what is this touchy feely stuff you're talking about? But I see over and over and over again that even though this is not a natural intuition for guys, it is more natural for women, I think, way generality. But but I found that as guys move this direction, as they learn how to kind of slow down and connect with others again, it could simply be a friend over coffee or children or spouse or whoever, co-workers that we actually get a benefit out of this too.

When we connect with people more deeply and when we help people feel seen, there's a benefit in it. And so even though it's going to feel a little unnatural, some of the things we're going to share here, I just encourage you to try it. And the cool thing about guys I have found is that even if it doesn't really make sense, but but if it's something that at least we see the value in it, even if we don't feel like doing it, yeah, we can actually do it. Yeah, we can go, OK, I can try to do that. So I'm just encouraging the guys out there, you know, women, too, but particularly guys to to try this and just see what might happen. And so, well, it gives you something tangible to do. Oftentimes I'll hear husbands say, just tell me what to do and I'll do it.

I just don't know what to do. And wives go, well, if I have to tell you, it doesn't count. But this is one of those things that you can do. You can really work on paying attention, looking them in the eyes, nodding, smiling, responding. And that helps build that connection. Yeah. And so we're for women.

It might be more intuitive. But I would also say what we're about to share, I think, can help women, too, because I think women can be quick to try to fix, try to give people answers and all those kind of things. And so so one strategy is to simply slow down our response to what we think people are telling us. We usually have a pretty immediate judgment of what they've said. You know, we say, oh, this is what they're saying and what they're thinking and what it is that they're trying to communicate. However, in our haste, we oftentimes miss it. And so saying things like, well, it sounds like you're thinking this, that, you know, you think that that your office needs to make some decisions about a new person over here that you think could make a huge difference in the business plan.

And just stopping and saying, that's what I think I'm hearing you say. Can make a huge difference. First of all, it allows. Correction, if we miss it, yeah, because. Because we're so fast to do this, oftentimes we say that and they're like, no, no, I don't think we need another person. I think we just need to be more effective, you know, in what we're doing. And then we're able to, okay, so you don't think there needs to be a new hire.

It's just, we need to, you know, our staff meetings need to be more effective or, you know, we need to have more clear, you know, plans or this long range or short term plans or whatever. And what's been shown is that when we come back and acknowledge the correction, that's one of the most significant positive, it has one of the most significant positive impacts on the person. Because we've, again, listened enough to say, this is what I think you've heard, you said. And then when they correct it, we don't go back to, no, I think you really were saying this, you know, it's, oh, I missed that, you know. And the fact that we're listening close enough to have missed it. And admit that we missed it. And admit it and then hone in on what they're actually saying, that that is huge for people.

And so, you know, sometimes I think we expect that we should be perfect at this, that we should always know exactly what people are saying and everything. And so it's actually a stepping into working with, working together with the person to make sure that we have clear understanding that that's one of the most powerful things we can do. Yeah, that's good. Another thing we can do is trying to hear what they're not saying. You know, the emotions that may be behind the words that they haven't been able to say or whatever, for whatever reason. And just responding with, gosh, it sounds like you really feel misunderstood by your supervisor or by something else, someone else. Or, oh, you're feeling nervous about that meeting tomorrow.

Acknowledging that feeling, whether they have said those words or not. And again, they can confirm or clarify. So they may go, I'm not feeling nervous, I'm feeling this. So it helps in that as well. Or even something like, gosh, you must be feeling really proud that you got that done or that you achieved that. And it's particularly important if, or effective, I should say, if they haven't even said those emotions. Because it really does convey, oh, you were really listening.

You get me. You understand. And then they feel seen. And that's that feeling of feeling valuable. And what you clarified there is it's not, these aren't just negative feelings. Right. It can be positive feelings. Yes. But for somebody to feel seen that you recognize the positive, the excitement or the proud or whatever, goes a long ways.

I remember really early in our journey as therapists, I think it was the first year or so, I had a woman come in and she had been through a horrific experience. And she was sharing everything with me. And just spontaneously, I went, I am so sorry, that is awful. And then inside, you know, as a new therapist, I'm panicking, like, am I supposed to say that? Are they supposed to just go, mm-hmm, mm-hmm? And she looked at me and she had tears in her eyes and they started streaming down her face and she goes, thank you. You're the first person.

Now she'd been to the hospital. She'd been to police. She goes, you're the first person that said that to me. Thank you. Because she felt seen. She felt heard. And that was early in your career.

That was early. Of course, we've had this on and on and on. On and on and on. I had this yesterday with a guy. And so, you know, it was a pretty overwhelming story of what he's going through. And I just like, oh my gosh, that's overwhelming. And he just, it caught him off guard and he was like, thank you for saying that.

Thank you for recognizing, because this feels like a lot to me. I feel overwhelmed. And again, as guys, we feel like we should be able to handle everything. And so the fact that it was overwhelming to him and somebody noticed that was huge. Well, I think so many people have people in their lives that try to fix them or try to minimize something because they want them to feel better. But sometimes to feel better. You're going to be fine.

You're a strong guy. You know, you just hang in there. You'll be fine. Yeah. But we need somebody to say, oh, that's terrible. To validate how we're really feeling. It's also been noted in the research that even if we miss something in an encounter and we thought in our conversation with somebody that they just kind of like checked out, you know, and they were the storyteller.

I mean, they were telling us something and they just all of a sudden kind of shut, stop talking, shut it down. That research says that if we even go back to them later, could even be the next day and say something like, you know, when we were talking yesterday, I, it just felt like to me that something disconnected us, you know, and I just would was, was that just me reading into this, you know, something I did, I don't want to pry too much, you know, but I just would like to know if there was something that happened and, and for them then to be able to, again, recognize that you care that much and that you were watching and notice something. Now they may still say, well, yeah, it just, it kind of hit a soft spot and, you know, it's, I'm not necessarily comfortable sharing all that yet. Okay. We respect that. And we're not, again, we're not prying, but the research shows that that can make a huge difference. So the point is here, we're not expecting to be perfect.

We're not going to get this all the time, but if we just keep moving towards people. And it's even that, I think I kind of cut you off when we were having that discussion yesterday. I'm sorry. I didn't realize it till later. Can we pick back up on that? Because I really do want to hear everything you have to say. So we're in an interesting season and culture.

We all, I mean, at the time that we're recording this, we've just had a Pope die, Pope Francis, and just elected, a new Pope was elected, Pope Leo. And you know, whether you're in that, you know, spiritual heritage or not, a lot of it, I mean, what is it, 1.4 billion people? Pope is a pretty big deal. Kind of a big deal in our culture. And some of you may have seen this story. There's a video of this that even talking about it makes me emotional. There was a story of Pope Francis going to a prison, a woman's prison, and he was in a wheelchair.

And so they were kind of wheeling him. This was just last year. Yeah. So he was old. Yeah, it was just months ago before he died. And there were 12 women there, and he went there to wash their feet. And you see in the video as he's going from woman to woman to woman, he washes their feet, he kisses their feet. And these are people that have not been seen, that of all people in our culture feel like I'm not important, I'm not valuable. I'm rejected.

And to be seen by somebody like that, and you can tell in the woman's faces, they're just overwhelmed. You know, they're just quailing, just in tears. It was obvious that being seen like this was a deep, deep healing in their life. Again, he just washed their feet, he kissed their feet. He didn't say anything. He didn't give a great sermon, and they were just overwhelmed by the message. It was that power of connecting and feeling like they were a human being.

That power of connecting to another human, you're saying you have value. It confers dignity and humanity to both participants. What the research shows and what we are suggesting today is the most important thing that we can do in life, encountering other humans, is to be present. I think a lot of people don't know what to say to people, particularly if they're going through difficulties or whatever, but they just don't know what to say to people, so they shy back, they hold back. And it ends up doing just the opposite. People don't feel valued enough for us to even stumble through, you know. And I notice in the examples today, what the listener does is not having the answers for the person or to fix the problem.

It is to simply make sure those that we are with are seen by us. Yeah. Henry Nowen in his book Out of Solitude says it this way, when we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it's those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in moments of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. I think we often shy away from others or listening to others because we don't know what to say. We don't know how to listen without fixing them. It's hard for us.

I couldn't help but think when you were talking about when we had our last miscarriage and for whatever reason, I felt like I had to go to the church picnic and right afterwards. I went to the church picnic, I think it was a day or two after, and I didn't want to see anybody because I knew at church the crowds parted when I came because they didn't know what to say because we'd been through so much. As I was walking across the field, there was an old man that met me. We didn't know each other that well. We knew of each other. He stopped and he looked at me. I'm going to cry.

He got tears in his eyes and he said, I'm sorry about your baby. And it meant more to me than anything anybody else said. It's just that empathy. I see what you're going through and I'm sorry you're going through it. We make a difference when we acknowledge where people are at. So I think I'm ready to leave today or we can leave today with a quote from Brene Brown. And it says, when you're truly present, you light up the world around you.

Being present brings healing. So as we go today, know that your presence is powerful in those lives around you. So how do we simply, I think hopefully we're all going to leave this moment with how do we simply give the gift of presence in our life today to those that we encounter. So for today, go in peace. Blessings as you go. The Life and Love Nuggets podcast is a 501c3 nonprofit and is supported by gifts from people like you. To donate, go to lifeandlovenuggets.com slash donate.

This podcast is produced by Clayton Creative in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The content should not be considered or used for counseling, but for educational purposes only.