“Let me hear myself first “

I was on the train back from London today, sitting opposite a woman who had her headphones on and was eating a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

I could smell them before I really noticed them.

And then there was the crunch.

Very loud.

Not ridiculously loud, but loud enough that on a quiet train it suddenly became the main event.

Crunch.

Then another.

Then another.

For a moment I was slightly irritated.

And then I became interested.

Because she had headphones on, and I started wondering whether she had any sense of how loud the crunch actually was.

And then I started thinking about food itself.

We don’t only taste food.

We hear it.

The sound becomes part of how we experience it.

That crunch is part of what tells us something is fresh, crisp, satisfying. Food companies know this. The sound of the crunch is part of the experience they are creating for us.

So I started wondering what happens when another sound gets in the way.

If you are wearing headphones, perhaps the body still wants enough of that internal sound to register the experience.

The crunch inside the head.

The resonance of it.

And somehow that took me straight into voice.

Because when we speak, we are doing something similar.

Even now, when I speak into my phone, I am listening to myself while I am speaking.

I am not always sitting here with the complete sentence worked out before it leaves my mouth.

I am hearing myself arrive at it.

I say something.

I hear it.

Something else becomes available.

Then the next thought comes.

There is a feedback loop going on.

And it made me think about something I hear people say quite often:

“I lose my train of thought when somebody interrupts me.”

Maybe there is more happening there than simply forgetting what you were going to say.

Maybe the interruption has stopped you hearing yourself.

That interests me.

Because sometimes we speak as though speech is simply the delivery of a finished thought.

But a lot of the time, the speaking is part of the thinking.

You don’t fully know what you mean yet.

You can feel something.

There is the beginning of it.

Then you start speaking and, somewhere in the sound of your own voice, the thought starts to take shape.

I know this very well in myself.

Sometimes I hear myself say something and I think:

Ah.

There it is.

That is actually what I mean.

And if somebody comes in too quickly, finishes the sentence, gives advice, changes the subject, or responds to the first half of what I am saying, the whole thing can disappear.

It is quite strange.

You were somewhere.

Then suddenly you are nowhere.

And perhaps this is also part of what it means to feel listened to.

We often think listening means:

You heard what I said.

But I wonder if good listening also gives somebody enough room to hear themselves.

That is slightly different.

Someone pauses.

We leave the pause there.

They search for something.

We don’t immediately go in and find it for them.

A sentence comes out slightly wrong.

They get another go.

They hear themselves.

They adjust.

And then maybe something arrives that would never have arrived if we had been too quick to help.

I think about this in workshops all the time.

Sometimes you can almost see the moment somebody is finding something.

Their eyes change.

Their breath changes.

They go quiet.

There is something happening.

And the easiest thing in the world is to fill that space.

Ask another question.

Explain.

Encourage.

Rescue the moment.

But sometimes the moment is doing the work already.

The person is listening.

To themselves.

And this is where voice becomes much bigger than speaking well.

For me, voice is also the space I need in order to stay connected to what is actually happening inside me while I am expressing it.

Sometimes that space is a breath.

Sometimes it is silence.

Sometimes it is someone giving me five more seconds.

Sometimes it is being allowed to finish a sentence badly before I find the better one.

And perhaps this is why interruption can affect different people so differently.

For one person, it is nothing.

They jump straight back in.

For somebody else, the whole internal thread has gone.

The room gets louder.

Another person takes over.

Their attention travels outward.

And suddenly there is less of them available.

That is the bit I am interested in.

What happens when the sound around us becomes louder than the sound we need in order to hear ourselves?

And how much of listening is actually about protecting enough space for that inner hearing to continue?

So next time somebody is speaking to you and there is a pause, maybe just stay there for a second.

See what happens.

They may have finished.

Or they may still be arriving.

And if you are the one speaking, perhaps there is something useful in saying:

Give me a moment. I’m still hearing myself.

I like that.

There is something very human in it.

The thought does not always arrive first.

Sometimes the voice carries us there.

Let me hear myself first.

Remember you.