What is Brain-Informed Active Listening?
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Kelli Murgado-Willard reminds us that a neurodiverse couple is no more assured to fail because of brain differences than NT partners are to succeed because of their brain similarities.
It’s true that couples therapists spend a great deal of session time teaching some version of Active Listening. The problem is that the “best practices” of couple communication is marinated in neurotypicals values and sensibilities.
For example, the notion of “whole body listening” (WBL) can rise to be oppressive as it relies upon rigid NT standards of comportment. But using WBL as a dictionary of NT thought forms is a helluva reframe, isn’t it?
Privileging NT communication norms may distract and frustrate their ND partner. The consequences of this might be an inability to focus, access thoughts or feelings, understand their partner’s facial expressions, and consequently fail to connect emotionally. All of this resulting from the privileging of norms as “best practices.”
What is Brain-Informed Active Listening?
Brain informed Active Listening doesn’t prioritize spoken language. It is not inordinately “paragraphy.”
Any helpful modalities of communication can be recruited.
In Brain informed Active Listening, one partner doesn’t snap at the other “stop fidgeting!” because it’s understood that some humans need to pace or fidget it some way in order to access their best thinking. Each human moves their body as need be in this model.
Rules involving eye contact, and what constitutes comfortable proximity must be established. A neurodiverse couple should never be required to sit closely together, hold hands, or maintain eye contact during an effort at Brain-Informed Active Listening.
The role of a therapist in a session of facilitated Active Listening would be to point out the moments when a skill might be acquired. It might be:
How to notice a physiological feeling.
How to choose an appropriate feeling word.
How to rephrase what your partner said.
How to assess that you’re having a feeling.
How to protest a partner’s statement and ask for a do-over.
Brain-Informed Active Listening Interventions: the Trying My Best (TMB) Rule…
“TMB” is an interesting couple code. It stands for “I Tried My Best” or “I’m trying my best, right now.”
The TMB intervention has a multitude of applications, but the most essential is to convey one’s own attempts made with a clean heart.
This is a primary intervention because NT partners live in a world of their own design. They have difficulty groking the limitations of their partner’s neurotype. They can be skeptical, and imagine that the partner in their head is not putting forth a sold, good faith effort.
The importance of the “TMB” code articulating a personal best is that it becomes part of an ever-expanding shared language. This intervention acknowledges that every human in an intimate bond, no matter what their neurotype, deserves to be taken seriously when they say that they’ve reached the limit of their best effort.
Because NT’s tend to live in stories of negative alternative explanations, they often doubt their partner’s motivations or intentions regardless of neurotype.
NT’s, under interpersonal stress, may invalidate and play-down their partner’s efforts, or those same efforts might go completely unseen because it failed to meet a particular NT standard of behavior.
What I like about the TMB rule is it’s attempt to define sacred relational ground. TMB must mean something. It can not be used inauthentically or capriciously.
The user of the TMB Code is not making an excuse, or seeking to manipulate their partner.
And the hearer of the code leads with trust, validation and curiosity.
Example without use of the TMB Rule…
ND Partner:
“ I tried my best, but I couldn’t get the garage cleaning finished today. I’ll get to it tomorrow.”
NT Partner:
“ You had plenty of fu*king time to get this done. I’m so pissed. How could you possibly tell me this is your personal best? Why should I believe you when you say you’ll get it done tomorrow?”
Example with use of the TMB Rule…
ND Partner:
“ I tried my best, but I couldn’t get the garage cleaning finished today. I’ll get to it tomorrow.”
NT Partner:
“ Even though it’s hard for me to accept that, because I didn’t directly supervise your work, I’m going to cut to the chase, and believe you when you say that you genuinely tried. Thank you for recommitting to finishing the garage tomorrow. On a scale of 1-10, it’s a 10 for me in importance that this gets done.”
Other Dimensions of the Trying My Best Rule…
TMB is an effective couple code of personal responsibility, and occasionally healthy, regulated confrontation:
“I’m TMB.. are you?”
The TMB code is perhaps most wisely used as a firm standard of personal, and inter-personal accountability:
“Am I really TMB here? If I’m not, can I be curious enough to trust my partner and explore why? Am I stuck here? What do I need to improve?”
The TMB can also be a yardstick for acceptance, by that I mean, with clean hearts, TMB can help a couple sift through the changeable from the unchangeable.
“ This issue has been getting my personal best for years, but this particular thing seems not to be changing about me. Can you accept that this will be something I may not be ever able to do to your expectations.. can you tell me if you can cope with that?”
Final thoughts…
Brain-Informed Active Listening is as sacred as it is concrete. The TMB Rule can achieve real utility in science-based couples therapy because it is so reflective of what Gottman called “enduring vulnerabilities.”
What I’ll be thinking more about is the distinction between “good enough”, and “trying my best.”… And the critical importance of a clean, authentic heart.
Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed.
