Talking heals. Even if you’re not talking about your actual pain. Simply talking and knowing you are heard, truly heals. Feeling heard is a basic human necessity that we will all always need, no matter how much we continue taking pride in our own listening skills.

I personally thought I had a problem opening up to people because I had stopped doing it for such a long time that I did not understand how it works anymore. It was not that I didn’t have things to say, but rather that I didn’t know a way for them out. Throughout my journey, I started realizing it was all mostly happening because of a little voice at the back of my head, one that had existed all my life and somehow managed to constantly keep my mouth shut. A voice so loud that it was able to silence me for years, yet so quiet that it never actually felt like it was taking up space inside. I know I always heard it, but I never really paid enough attention to what it meant. It just somehow managed to convince me that a) I was not worthy of being heard and b) I was going to be so badly judged for anything that slips out. I literally used to scare myself. (And some people’s unexpected judgmental stares used to scare me too but oh well). I eventually got so used to swallowing in the words, that I slowly started knowing no other way out. I would feel guilty every time I take up more than 10% of my conversations with people. I would always try to fill in my chats with questions instead of having to give answers. And I unconsciously ended up building so many walls between the world and myself.

Until I met my beautiful therapist. whom I realized was completely ready to listen. to me. talking about absolutely anything. for one hour straight. every single week. without once making me feel like she was doing it because she had to. She genuinely listened. She knew her way around all the right questions. And she genuinely helped me connect my dots. She never judged any of the things I used to so harshly judge myself for. She allowed me to experience what it means to really be heard. So I started hearing more of my own thoughts voiced out loud. Thoughts I wasn’t able to share with anyone, and thoughts I never even realized existed inside. It didn’t happen all at once, but it did quickly turn into an addiction of mine.

I realized that the voice inside my head only needed to feel safe so it could calm down. I didn’t even need to talk back to it so it could shush. All it needed for a start was to be around safe faces and be heard by safe ears, so it could change the way it thought about myself. For a) every single person out there deserves to be so attentively listened to no matter how trivial their thoughts might sound, and b) we happen to judge ourselves way more than anyone will ever judge us when we actually deserve to go a lot easier on ourselves.

I later realized that all the listening I had been doing throughout my life might have largely been out of me having no other option but to direct the conversation back to the other side. Yet the listening I started being able to do after personally feeling heard, was of some other realm.