We've all been there. You're sharing something important, like a frustration, an idea, or a vulnerability, and the person across from you is doing "all the right things." They're nodding. They're making eye contact. They're interjecting with timely "uh-huhs."

And yet, you feel completely unheard. Lately, I have found myself asking a provocative question in my seminars and workshops: Why do we need the adjective "active"?

Consider this: We never talk about "active speaking." So, why do we use it for listening? Because we have a misperception that speaking is an active process, while listening is passive. The term "active listening," therefore, reveals a deep-seated linguistic bias. It implies that the default state of listening is passive, that unless we add a qualifier, listening is merely the act of silently receiving information, which confuses listening with hearing (whereas the latter is indeed passive).

This misconception, that listening is a passive state requiring "activity" to be effective, has turned the concept into a behaviorist checklist. We teach people to look active rather than be present. If Carl Rogers, the eminent psychologist who, along with Richard Farson, coined the term "active listening" in 1957, were alive today, he might be horrified by what his concept has become. Here is how the modern "technique" of active listening contradicts Rogers' original intent:

Rogers Loathed "Parroting": In modern listening training, "reflection" often devolves into mechanically repeating the speaker's words (e.g., "I hear that you are sad"). Rogers despised this, calling it a "wooden mockery." He didn't want you to be a tape recorder; he wanted you to be a mirror that reveals the speaker's internal world, not just their syntax.

"Active" Meant Internal, Not External: Today, we interpret "active" as visible busyness: nodding and leaning in. For Rogers, the "activity" was the intense, invisible labor of "getting inside" the speaker's frame of reference. He believed you could be perfectly still yet listen more "actively" than someone nodding frantically.

Congruence........

© Psychology Today