I Hear You. I See You. I Feel You.

A reflective writing practice can strengthen our relationships.

Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

Key points

• Effective communication requires an equitable give and take.
• There is scientific evidence of our ability to connect with each other through story.
• Reflective writing helps us gain insight and perspective which we then bring to our relationships.

My husband and I used to own a sailboat together with another couple. We spent many happy weekends sailing from our boat’s mooring in Marblehead, Massachusetts down to Gloucester for lunch or to Boston to shop and dine in the South End. On one occasion, our friends invited an internist friend of theirs along.

We hadn’t been sailing long when this physician fielded a call from a patient.

“Go to the ER,” the doctor said within the first five seconds of the call.

“Go to the ER,” he repeated several more times, rolling his eyes and sighing dramatically. No follow-up questions. No explanation for his advice. Just “Go to the ER.”

Now, in his defense, his advice may have been perfectly reasonable and justified. Perhaps his patient was having chest pain at the gym. Maybe her labor pains were seconds apart. But his sighing and eye-rolling belied an annoyance at the intrusion of a patient into his day on the sea…and suggested a deeper cynicism invading his work. I doubt that his patient felt very listened to or heard in whatever their complaint or symptom was.

There is a give and take to our interactions: I talk. You listen. You talk. I listen. You share with me your story. I pledge to hear it, and to handle it with the same care and intention with which you gave it to me. These are the inherent promises we make to each other.

We Are Connected Through Our Stories

I learned a long time ago that stories resonate. That shared narrative heals. After my teenage son was hit by a drunk driver in a crash that left him with a traumatic brain injury, I became an ambassador for the Brain Injury Association. My job was to put a human face on what can sometimes be an invisible disability. I was also an advocate for safety and TBI prevention. I spoke with high-school students during prom week, and with college students during Alcohol Awareness Week, about the dangers of driving drunk. After my talks, invariably audience members would approach me with their own connection to brain injury: Someone’s sibling suffered a TBI snowboarding. Someone took care of a parent who had a stroke. We were traveling a path together, maybe each of us lightening our load a little by sharing our stories.

This connection through story has biological underpinnings. In an elegant study done at Princeton University, functional MRIs were performed simultaneously on people who were telling a story and others who were listening. During the telling of this story, the same areas of the subjects’ brains lit up, whether speaker or listener. These so-called neural couplings reflected the quality of communication. The more extensive the areas involved in neural coupling or mirroring, the more effective the communication, and the greater the understanding. This research was so impactful to me. Our brains literally interact! We neurologically, organically connect, and on a deep, physical level. I knew this instinctively through my experience giving speeches and hearing from audience members. But here was proof that we are deeply connected by the stories we tell.

Reflecting on Our Relationships Can Strengthen Them

Writing reflectively can achieve this connection. This is one of the many reasons I am such a big proponent of reflective writing—of journaling to understand ourselves on a deeper level and reflecting on our relationships and our interactions on the page. When Werner Heisenberg put forth his Uncertainty Principle stating that the act of measuring an object always disturbs the object being measured, he was referring to quantum physics. But we can think of our own deep personal inquiry as a sort of uncertainty principle unto itself. The kind of reflection we engage in when we write necessarily affects the objects or persons or relationships we are delving into. Simply by writing about the nature of a relationship, we alter our perception of it.

When I write about my patients in my reflective practice, I will necessarily see them differently the next time I meet them. If we are writing as administrators, we are putting a human face to abstract concepts. If we write about colleagues, we come to see their side of things. Indeed, writing places us squarely in other people’s shoes, walking with them on their illness journeys or through their clinic days. We see similarities in our paths.

Reflective writing enhances relationships by helping to clarify our own feelings about particular issues. Having a sharper sense helps us to better express ourselves in our interactions. Writing is like a test run or a dress rehearsal for conversations we may have later on. With our own feelings and values clarified, with our self-knowledge well-founded in our reflective practice, and with new insight and perspective, we are ready to forge new connections in our personal and professional lives.