DEEP EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING

The psychological need to be understood is universal and basic to who we are as human beings.   “Understanding” has important psychosocial functions and is one of the basic moves in the dance of social communication. And yet, understanding is a spectrum of experience, not one single ‘thing’.  One size does not fit all. We feel most deeply understood and "well met" in intimate moments of meeting when we feely deeply connected to another.

The prototypical "moment of meeting" is the one that occurs in the first moments after birth, when the new baby looks into the eyes of a mother who is looking back. Important moments of meeting occur in psychotherapy every time something is said and received in such a way that the client feels deeply seen, felt, accepted, and understood.  Though informed by concept and theory, deep emotional understanding is not only, nor primarily, conceptual. It is direct comprehension grounded in intuition and empathy.   

In addition to extensive clinical study and experience,  I have also spent years inquiring deeply about how deep emotional understanding lives in my own experience.  I offer the following ideas for your reflection:

• Understanding is a basic element of intimate connection and is what allows us to feel emotionally safe.   To the extent that we feel accurately and empathically understood, we can trust and feel close to another.
• Feeling understood is an important part of what makes it possible to learn to modulate our emotional states.  When we feel emotionally distressed, what we most need/want is to express our feelings and have them deeply received by an empathic Other.    To feel well-met by a trusted other is a soothing balm for painful feelings.   It is in safe connection with a trusted other that we are best able to relax and let go.  This is what can release us from the clutches of painful feelings.
• Conversely, lack of empathic understanding can be traumatic. This can easily occur when the need for understanding is urgent. Lack of attuned understanding on the part of a needed Other can re-trigger old developmental wounds.
• It is in the matrix of understanding between ourselves and others, especially in infancy and childhood, that we acquire basic learning about emotions and develop ways to cope with our feelings. Our experience with intimate others, especially in infancy and early childhood, is the template for our emotional personalities.
• It is in relationship with others that we learn how the human mind works. Through our interactions with others, we come to understand mental states and the emotional dynamics involved in them.  This understanding is the key to skillfully navigating the interpersonal domain.

For me,  deep emotional understanding is a basic relational aspiration.  Its essential ingredient is, I think, the intention to listen deeply to others, what they say verbally as well as nonverbally; both what they say and what they do not.  What we come to understand about another is not a fixed psychological reality but a dynamically changing function of the emotional interchange that unfolds between us.  

Deep listening is an art as well as a skill.  It develops in relation our empathy and curiosity, shaped by the questions we ask as well as what we learn from each subsequent experience.  Through this process, wisdom and compassion can unfold at the leading edge of our understanding.