Did you hear what you just said?

In Zen Buddhism, the term "monkey mind" is used to describe the mental chatter that goes on in one's head when your brain is over-full, unfocused, and, well, just plain noisy. I identified with the concept instantly, knowing that in my own head, when my thoughts are a tangle of what to pick up at the grocery store, whether I'm saying "yes" to my daughter too often, how I'm going to discuss a particular issue with a colleague, and what I'm going to write about later in the day, I literally can't even hear myself. It is the opposite of mindful.

But while I knew I sometimes failed to hear the important thoughts in my own head amidst too much mental noise, I didn't realize that people (myself included) can manage to actually miss very important things they say, until I witnessed it in my work as a therapist. In the midst of talking a blue streak, a client would make a profound and revelatory statement, only to keep on talking, often about far less significant things, without missing a beat. Later, it seemed like their epiphanies were lost at sea, never to be revisited. After witnessing this a few times with different clients, I began to engage in gentle interrupting. "Excuse me-- hang on a second-- Did you hear what you just said?"

Almost invariably, the client hadn't heard him/herself, at least not fully.  In the quiet moments after I interrupted, the previous words seemed somehow amplified. Often, a rush of emotion followed. "Oh my God-- Did I just say that? I didn't even know I felt that way about it." Often, upon being helped to hear their own voice and their own words, a positive shift happened. A decision was made. A resentment was released. A shameful secret loosened its grip.

Knowing how this has played out in my office, it only stood to reason that I could be equally  deaf to my own revelations. So I should not have been surprised when, while I was having coffee in a diner with a friend, she interrupted me and asked, in regards to a statement I'd just made, "Susan, wait-- Did you hear what you just said?"

I hadn't heard it, of course. Not when it was just in my head, part of my daily jumble of noisy, competing thoughts. Not even when I said it out loud and then kept hurtling toward small talk. Only in a space made possible by the deep and caring listening of a friend did my message find its most important audience: myself.

We need one another in more ways than we know.