The Listening Book: How to Create a World of Rich Connections and Surprising Growth by Actually Hearing Each Other

292 Pages·2023·2.774 MB·English

by  Robin Ticic, Elise Kushner, Bruce Ecker

“At once simple but profound, humble but sophisticated, unassuming but gently
compelling, and subtle but absolutely riveting, this volume offers finely honed
pearls of wisdom for implementing growth-promoting and loving connection.
… A magnificent piece that will most certainly prove to be an invaluable
resource for anyone with a heart and the desire to forge more meaningful
connectedness with others.”
– Martha Stark, M.D., faculty at Harvard Medical School and award-
winning author of nine books on psychoanalytic theory and practice
“If you thought you knew what listening is and does, get ready for a mind- and
heart-opening journey of discovery. This remarkable tour through the universe
of listeners’ responses comes alive with the visceral impacts of attuned versus
misattuned listening. The Listening Book is a potent, unique, and inspiring guide
for enriching and deepening your experience of human connection.”
– Diane Poole Heller, Ph.D., psychotherapist and author
of The Power of Attachment: How to Create Deep and
Lasting Intimate Relationships
“With charming stories, practical suggestions, and deep insights, this beautiful
book shows us how to truly listen – with profound benefits for others, and
oneself. It’s really a gem, a delightful and comprehensive guide to one of the
most important human skills.”
– Rick Hanson, Ph.D., author of Hardwiring Happiness: The
New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence and
Making Great Relationships: Simple Practices for Solving Conflicts,
Building Cooperation, and Fostering Love
“When I was training counselors my repeated advice was ‘stop and listen.’ If
the professional listeners needed reminding, how much more the rest of us!
Ticic, Kushner, and Ecker have given us the essential and pragmatic guide to
listening for a world that has, to a large degree, stopped listening. But with
active listening and empathic responding we can change the world, and The
Listening Book will equip you to do just that.”
– Matthew Dahlitz, MC, editor-in-chief of The Science of
Psychotherapy and co-author of The Practitioner’s Guide
to The Science of Psychotherapy
“The Listening Book is a great way to unpack what listening is all about. Whether
you are a good listener who wants to get better, or a not-so-good listener who is
perplexed about why your conversations invariably hit walls, this book is for you.
This book is also a dream book for therapy students and therapists, especially for
those early in their path. Regardless of the model you are practicing, this book
will show you, step by accessible step, what to do and also very importantly,
what not to do so that your clients feel heard and understood – because once
they do, then you can use all the other fancy techniques you are learning, and
they will work. Finally, this book is for your inner nerd who wants to have the
science behind listening and its transformative powers.
All this is accomplished through ordinary and relatable stories of people in
different interpersonal situations: The dialogue is broken down, line by line,
into connecters and disconnectors: The reader gets to see so clearly how certain
comments help people feel understood, while other seemingly innocuous
responses alienate and distance. We get a kind of x-ray of people’s inner
thoughts and inner experience where the protagonists tell us their experience
of the comments they receive in such a way that we know exactly why they felt
understood and ‘gotten’ or, alternatively, painfully misunderstood, dismissed
and turned off to that relationship.
Add to this the cutting-edge neuroscience of memory reconsolidation that
explains how feeling heard can be a life-changing, transformative experience,
particularly for those who have not felt heard in this way, and you’ve got yourself
a gem of a book: super accessible, easy to read, easy to understand and most
important of all, easy to apply. The Listening Book is a how-to guide for being a
good listener and making those around you, be they family, friends, lovers or
clients, feel heard, gotten and understood.”
– Diana Fosha, Ph.D., developer of AEDP, founder of the
AEDP Institute, and editor of Undoing Aloneness and the
Transformation of Suffering into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0
The Listening Book
Satisfying, secure connection with others depends heavily on how well we listen to
each other and respond to what we’ve heard. The Listening Book lays bare the key
elements of both deeply attuned and badly misattuned listening in vivid scenes of real-
life interactions that capture the emotional impact and give the reader an illuminating
“aha” experience. Added to that is a mind-opening account of psychological processes
and principles that normally operate from outside of awareness, showing how skillful
listening can reveal those dynamics. Beyond even that, such listening can produce
interactions that unlock lifelong emotional conditioning to yield liberating change
through one of the brain’s most remarkable processes, which neuroscientists call
memory reconsolidation. Whether read solo, with a partner, or in a reading group,
The Listening Book is for everyone who yearns for deeper emotional connection and
closeness, everyone who is at a loss to understand what is interfering, and everyone
who is fascinated by the subtle and manifold factors involved in interpersonal
communication.
Robin Ticic, B.A., HP Psychotherapy (Germany) is director of training for the
Coherence Psychology Institute and co-author of Unlocking the Emotional Brain:
Memory Reconsolidation and the Psychotherapy of Transformational Change.
Elise Kushner, B.A., HP Psychotherapy (Germany) is therapist, coach, and supervi-
sor, as well as trainer of coherence therapy and coherence coaching for the Coherence
Psychology Institute.
Bruce Ecker, M.A., L.M.F.T., is co-director of the Coherence Psychology Institute,
co-originator of coherence therapy, and co-author of Unlocking the Emotional Brain:
Memory Reconsolidation and the Psychotherapy of Transformational Change.

The Listening Book
How to Create a World of
Rich Connections and
Surprising Growth by
Actually Hearing
Each Other
Robin Ticic, Elise Kushner, and Bruce Ecker
Designed cover image by Elise Kushner
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Robin Ticic, Elise Kushner and Bruce Ecker
The right of Robin Ticic, Elise Kushner and Bruce Ecker to be identified as
authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-1-032-25646-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-25645-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-28858-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003288589
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Access the Support Material: https://resourcecentre.routledge.com/
books/9781032256450
Dedicated to
meeting the need of the entire human family
for living together with kindness and mutual understanding

Contents
Foreword xi
Martha Stark, M.D.
Preface xiv
Acknowledgments xvi
About the authors xvii
Prologue xix
Introduction: we change our world by listening xxi
PART 1 Listening in: 52 revealing experiences of attunement and non-attunement 1
Directory of personal stories 2
The accounts begin 3
PART 2 It’s all about connection 145
Connectors illuminated 146
Disconnectors laid bare 170
PART 3 The path to profound change 209
People’s stories continue 210
Listening in order to connect deeply 227
How connection results from assuming emotional coherence 227
What happens when connection is missing 230
Discovering and understanding our emotional coherence:
the how-to of high-quality listening 233
Opening the way for transforming troublesome emotional learnings:
memory reconsolidation in action 238
ix