How to Listen

So the people you love feel truly heard

A mother leaning in close, listening to her daughter

Do you ever finish a conversation with someone you love and feel a quiet, unsettled sense that it didn't quite connect? Most of us are listening to respond. We do it out of love, because we want to help. But the person on the other end feels something we never intended, and it is very hard to feel close to someone who hasn't heard you.

About an hour 13 page workbook Watch anytime Yours to keep

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Someone you love has felt a little far away lately.

Maybe the conversations in your house have gotten shorter than you want them to be. Maybe there's a child who used to tell you everything and now gives you a shrug and a closed door.
Maybe it's your partner, and you finish talking with that quiet, unsettled feeling that something didn't land. Nothing went wrong exactly. It just didn't connect.
And the strange part is that you were trying. You were listening. You were waiting for the ask so you could help with it, which is the most loving thing you know how to do.

The shift

The work of a conversation belongs to the listener.

We tend to assume the effort sits with the person doing the talking. Their job is to explain themselves well, and our job is to come back with something useful. Carl Rogers spent a career studying what actually helps people and concluded almost the opposite. The work is on the listener. Your job is to understand so well that the other person feels it.
There's a reason this is harder than it sounds, and it isn't willpower. You have a downstairs brain that handles survival and an upstairs brain that handles reasoning and empathy. When something feels threatening, and criticism from your teenager absolutely can feel threatening, the downstairs brain takes over and the door upstairs closes. So instead of listening, you defend, or you fix, or you go quiet.
Which means the first skill of listening is not a listening skill at all. It's keeping your own body calm enough that the upstairs brain stays online. That is a lot to ask of a depleted mother, and it is exactly why this workshop starts with you rather than with technique.
There's a beautiful side to it too. One steady nervous system helps settle another. Your calm is what makes your child or your partner feel safe enough to open up.

We have all been here

Six habits that pull us out of listening.

Every one of these comes from a good-hearted place. We want to help, we want to fix it, we don't want to watch someone we love have a hard time. There's no blame in finding yourself here, and you will. Once you can name your pattern, you can catch it.

The Fixer

Hears a problem and goes straight to the solution. The advice is usually good, which is what makes this one so hard to catch. But a person who wanted to be understood and got handed a plan instead walks away feeling more alone, not less.

The Judge

Decides whether she agrees or disagrees before she has finished understanding. The moment a conversation becomes a verdict, the other person stops explaining and starts defending.

The Interrogator

Asks so many questions from her own agenda that it begins to feel like a cross-examination. The questions are real, but they are steering rather than opening, and a child can feel the difference immediately.

The Mind Reader

Assumes she already knows what's happening. Sometimes she's right, and it still costs her, because a person who has already been told what they think and feel has no reason to keep sharing.

The Smoother

Rushes to make a feeling go away before it has been felt. It comes from not being able to stand watching someone you love hurt. A feeling that gets resisted holds on. A feeling that gets allowed can finally settle.

The Redirector

Turns their story into her own. "That happened to me too." It is meant as connection and it lands as a change of subject.

And here's something worth carrying out of this section. If those habits come from a good-hearted place in you, they probably do in the people who don't listen to you as well as you'd like.

What you'll learn

Settle. Seek. Stay.

Three moves, in that order. This is not an hour of me talking at you about theory. I stop and ask you to practice, to write things down, to notice what happens in your own body. The moms who do the small practices are the ones whose conversations actually change.

Settle yourself

A ninety second reset you can run before any hard conversation. Feet on the floor, an exhale longer than the inhale, eyes around the room, jaw and shoulders soft. We do it together in the workshop so it's in your body rather than on a list. And when you don't have ninety seconds, you have one breath. The goal is catching your stress at a three, when your shoulders are just beginning to tighten, rather than at a nine when you've already snapped.

Seek to understand

Stay curious one moment longer than feels comfortable, then tolerate the silence rather than filling it. Count to five. That silence is where someone decides whether it's safe to say the deeper thing. Then reflect the feeling underneath the words before you offer anything else, and ask whether you got it right.

Stay open

Allow the feeling instead of arguing it down. The words that do this are simple. I hear you. That makes sense. I'm not going to argue with how you feel. That last one is disarming with a teenager in a way almost nothing else is.

What you get

A workshop that walks you through it, step by step.

The recorded workshop

Watch it in one sitting or whenever you have time. I stop along the way and ask you to try things, so you finish having practiced.

The 13 page workbook

Where you write down your own pattern, your own feeling words, and the one person you most want to reach this week. Keep a pen next to you.

Where you actually are

The five levels of listening, from ignoring all the way to empathic. Most of us sit at selective or attentive with the people we love and call it good listening. You'll work out honestly which level you're at with each person in your house.

The ten minute exercise

Adapted from John Gottman's work with couples. One person, ten minutes, four rules: don't fix, don't judge, ask open questions, and reflect back what you heard before you add anything of your own. It's simple and it's surprisingly hard.

How it changes by age

Elementary children open up side by side rather than face to face. Teenagers give you tiny windows that never open on your schedule. Adult children need asking instead of telling. And your partner, where most of us do our worst listening.

The repair

What to say the moment you notice you've stopped listening. Because you will, and repairing it is itself one of the most powerful forms of listening there is.
"Her approach has been both insightful and compassionate, helping me navigate through situations with clarity and reassurance. Leigh's kindness and gentle suggestions have made it easy to explore changes without feeling judged or unheard."

A.S.

Is this the right thing for you right now?

Yes, if

✓A child who used to tell you everything has gone quiet
✓Conversations with your partner end and something still feels unfinished
✓You catch yourself solving when you meant to be curious
✓You want the practice, not just the idea
✓You're willing to be the one who changes first

Probably not, if

•You want a script to read rather than a skill to build
•You're hoping this will get someone else to listen to you
•What you're carrying right now deserves more than a workshop, and therapy would serve you better
Leigh Germann

Who's teaching it

I'm a therapist and a mom of five.

For more than 30 years I've helped women and families become calmer and more sure of themselves. Thousands of mothers, hundreds of families.
I'll tell you where I actually am with this one. I have all this training, and I will still finish a conversation with my husband and realize I did not listen well at all. It's a little embarrassing. This is a human tug of war, and we are up against a brain wired to scan for threat and defend.
So if you catch yourself doing it, you're not failing. You're a person with a completely normal brain, and now you have three moves to come back to.
What I teach isn't a set of tips I collected. It's the Resiliency System, a methodology I built over those 30 years, and it starts with understanding before it ever gets to strategy.

Calm your body. Direct your mind. Parent with a plan.

Resilient moms raise resilient kids.

Get the workshop

Free

$97 after October 1

$97 one time

Included in the Resilient Mom Membership.Already a member? It's in your library.

✓The recorded workshop, practiced along the way
✓The 13 page workbook
✓The ninety second reset, done together
✓All six habits, named, so you can catch them in yourself
✓The ten minute exercise and its four rules
✓What changes at every age, and with your partner

Tell me where to send it and it's yours.

Send me the workshop
Get the workshop for $97

Or get this one and every other workshop.

The Resilient Mom Membership includes this workshop, the whole back catalogue, a new workshop every month, and a weekly live call with me. It's also where the 5 Pillars of resilience live, the work that makes staying settled possible in the first place. Members pay $39 a month at the founding rate.
See what's in the membership

Before you sign up

Questions moms ask me

Is this only about listening to my children? No. It works the same way with your partner, and there's a section on each stage: elementary, teenagers, adult children, and your partner. The relationship most of us listen worst in is the one with our partner, because we're tired and tangled up in the logistics of a whole shared life together.
What if I try this and get it wrong? You will, and I want you to know that before you start. You'll jump in with a solution, or miss the feeling completely, or catch yourself three sentences into fixing. That isn't the end of anything. The repair is one of the most powerful forms of listening there is, and the workshop teaches you exactly what to say. Your family doesn't need you to be a perfect listener. They need to see that when you miss them, you come back.
My teenager barely talks to me. Will this help? That's who a lot of this is written for. Teenagers open on their own timeline, late at night or in the car, and advice is the fastest way to close the window. There's one sentence in the workshop that changes those conversations more than anything else I teach, and it's a question you ask before you say a word of your own.
How long is it, and when do I watch it? About an hour, recorded, with nothing to attend. I stop several times and ask you to practice, so give yourself a little longer than the runtime if you want to do the work as you go. Keep a pen and the workbook next to you.
Do I need to have taken your other workshops? No. This one stands on its own. If you've done Same Team Parenting you'll notice how well the two fit together, since listening is a lot of what standing beside your child actually looks like.
Is this therapy? No. This is education. It isn't therapy and it doesn't create a therapeutic relationship. If what you need is treatment, I'd encourage you to work with a licensed provider in your state.

Your next step

Let's be students of listening. The people you love can feel it the moment you start.

The workshop is free through September 30. Pick one person, pick one practice, and try it today. That's how this begins.Pick one person, pick one practice, and try it today. That's how this begins.
Send me the workshop
Get the workshop for $97

Already a member? It's waiting for you in the membership library.

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