I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to truly listen.
Not the kind of listening where you're nodding along while quietly forming your next sentence. Not the kind where you're scanning for the problem so you can jump in with a solution. I mean the kind of listening that is still, and patient, and genuinely curious about the person in front of you.
That kind of listening is rarer than we'd like to admit. And for many of the people I've had the privilege of supporting over the years, it has been rarer still.
Hearing and listening are not the same thing
We hear sounds all day long. Traffic. Notifications. Conversations in the background. Hearing is passive — it happens to us without effort.
Listening is something else entirely. Listening is a choice. It requires us to set aside our own agenda, our own assumptions, and our own need to be useful — and instead turn our full attention toward another human being.
When I think about the conversations that have mattered most in my work — the ones where something genuinely shifted — they were almost never the conversations where I said the right thing. They were the conversations where I said very little at all. Where I simply stayed present. Where I let the silence breathe. Where I asked one careful question and then waited, really waited, for the answer.
There is a profound difference between a person who has been heard and a person who has merely been spoken at. You can see it in their posture. You can hear it in their voice. Something in them relaxes.
Genuine listening is one of the most powerful things one human being can offer another. And it costs us nothing except our attention.
How rarely people with disability feel truly heard
For many people I've worked with, being genuinely heard has not been a regular experience. It has been an exception.
People with disability often move through systems — medical, educational, social, bureaucratic — where decisions are made about them rather than with them. Where their voice is filtered through a carer, a clinician, a form, a funding category. Where what they want is sometimes treated as secondary to what others think they need.
I've sat with people who have spent years being talked over in meetings about their own lives. People who have learned to stay quiet because experience has taught them that speaking up doesn't change anything. People who have been so thoroughly managed and assessed and categorised that they've almost forgotten they have a voice worth using.
That is not a small thing. That is a kind of quiet erosion of personhood. And it happens gradually, often without anyone intending it.
What it costs us when we are not heard
When people don't feel heard, they don't simply feel a little overlooked. The cost runs much deeper than that.
There is shame. A quiet, persistent sense that your thoughts and feelings don't really matter. That you are somehow too much, or not enough, or simply not worth the time it would take to truly understand you.
There is withdrawal. People stop sharing. They stop asking for help. They stop engaging with the supports around them — not because those supports aren't needed, but because the effort of trying to be understood has become too exhausting and too unrewarding.
And there is disengagement — from services, from relationships, from the possibility of things being different. When someone has been consistently unheard, hope itself starts to feel like a risk not worth taking.
I've seen people light up — sometimes for the first time in a long time — simply because someone sat down, asked them a question, and then actually waited to hear the answer.
The power of being truly listened to
Something shifts when a person feels genuinely heard. I've watched it happen, and it never stops moving me.
There is a kind of settling that happens. A person who has been braced for dismissal — who has learned to keep their guard up — begins to soften. They start to say the thing they actually mean, rather than the thing they think is acceptable to say. They begin to trust that this conversation might be different from all the others.
Being heard doesn't just feel good. It is genuinely healing. Research tells us that feeling understood activates the same neural pathways as physical safety. Our nervous systems are not designed to distinguish between being physically threatened and being emotionally dismissed. Both register as danger. Both put us on guard.
When someone truly listens to us, we feel safe. And from safety, so much becomes possible — honesty, vulnerability, growth, connection, the willingness to try something new. The willingness to hope.
Practical ways support workers can listen better
I want to be honest here: listening well is a skill, and like any skill, it takes practice. It doesn't come naturally to all of us, especially in a sector where we are trained to problem-solve, to act, to fill in forms and meet deadlines and get things done.
But there are things we can do — small, deliberate things — that make a real difference.
Put your phone away. Fully away. Not face-down on the table — away. The person in front of you deserves your undivided attention.
Ask open questions, then stop talking. "What's been on your mind lately?" "How has that been for you?" Then wait. Don't rush to fill the silence.
Reflect back what you hear. Not parroting — genuine reflection. "It sounds like that's been really frustrating." This tells the person you were actually listening.
Notice what isn't being said. Sometimes the most important thing is the topic someone keeps circling around but not quite landing on. Gently name it.
Don't jump to solutions. Resist the urge to fix. Often people don't need a solution — they need to feel understood first. Solutions can come later.
Check your assumptions at the door. You don't know what this person's experience is like. You can imagine, you can empathise, but you cannot assume. Ask instead.
Follow their lead on pace. Some people need time to find their words. Some people communicate differently. Slow down. Match them, not your own rhythm.
None of these things require extra funding. None of them require a new policy or a revised support plan. They require only our intention and our willingness to show up differently.
And the impact they have — on trust, on engagement, on the quality of the relationship — is immeasurable.
Every person I have ever supported has taught me something. But perhaps the most consistent lesson — the one that has come up again and again across years of conversations — is this: people don't need us to have all the answers. They need us to be genuinely present. They need to feel that their story matters. That they matter.
The greatest gift we can give is not a perfectly coordinated support plan or a flawlessly managed NDIS budget. It is the simple, radical act of sitting with someone and saying — through our full and unhurried attention — I hear you. I see you. You are worth listening to.
— Tracy Young