You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

by Kate Murphy

In the book There Is No Good Card for This: What To Do and Say When Life Is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People You Love, authors Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell indirectly identified another kind of shift response that arises from just this kind of avoidant behavior. Derber characterized the shift response as a narcissistic attempt to redirect the conversation back to one’s self. But the shift response Crowe and McDowell described occurs when people, uncomfortable with others’ emotions, respond by trying to solve or explain away problems rather than listening and letting the upset or aggrieved feel what they feel and, through dialogue, find their own solutions.