20 May 2023
At a recent meeting for AFMs (affected family members) an interesting distinction arose. Does one have to buy into what one is hearing in order to respect and accept what is being said? As most of us know, it is painful to converse with a person who is high on any psychoactive drug. It is often challenging to speak to addicted users of these drugs, even when they’re not high, because their lives are centred on getting more and getting high at obvious and considerable costs to their well-being—and sometimes ours. These situations make it trying for AFMs to empathize with their addicted loved ones.
The distinction that arose is the fact that you don’t have to buy into a narrative in order to respect it and listen carefully. In fact, this is probably a skill that would serve international relations well, too. The point is that the second step in skilled listening is to understand what the speaker is saying and what that speaker means by what she’s saying. (The first step is having the intention of full understanding.)
In one of my most read volumes, The Daily Stoic, January 11 and 12 are entitled, respectively, If You Want to Be Steady and If You Want to Be Unsteady. Both passages are prefaced by quotes from Epictetus regarding our reasoned choice. I understand Epictetus to mean that our fundamental decision concerns acceptance and directed effort. While reality dictates that we accept the existence of things inside, and outside, of our control, reason dictates that we are responsible—and therefore should direct effort toward—only those things within our control. SMART Recovery uses a simpler description, those things inside of your hula-hoop (your mind and actions) and those things outside of that plastic ring (the minds and actions of all others).
If we listen to the intoxicated drug user and feel angry, frustrated, and sad, I suspect we are not using Epictetus’ reasoned choice well. For well-deployed reasoned choice would first tell us to accept things as they are, not wishing (or trying) to change what is outside our control. Can I change how the sober people around me are going to vote in the next election? No. Can I change how an intoxicated person sees her addiction and her priorities? An even more emphatic no. So the issue becomes a question: Can you control your reasoned choice long enough to carefully understand what’s actually happening around you? At the same time, understanding that each person, regardless of sobriety, training, or background, sees the world as they do for their own reasons. To accept that difference is not the same as agreeing with their point of view. To accept what they are saying is to respect reality enough to know that this is the best that person can do, at this moment in time.
To believe that I can or should change that person’s view of the world, is to fail to respect the nature of reality. That person’s (possibly deeply mistaken) view is her best shot today. And to listen like a scientist (or phenomenologist), is to suspend judgment completely—at least long enough to hear and understand that person’s words—as they arise from that person’s present experience and context.
So how does this work with being steady or unsteady, per The Daily Stoic? The explanation they use is (wait for it!) a Greek word, eustatheia, which, my training in philosophy and architecture helped me understand. The prefix, eu, in Greek, is good or well and, as I intuited from the word statics, the study of fixed (non-dynamic) forces on structures, eustatheia is a state of good, balanced steadiness. Another blogger revealed the Latin translation as constancy but the best definition I know for eustatheia is keeping calm and carrying on.
With this in mind, we can link the listening skills above and the Daily Stoic’s explanation. If we listen intently—to first understand—that objective understanding allows us to weigh information in terms of our own priorities (keeping calm) and then continuing to move forward toward our own steadily pursued values (carrying on). Probably because I so strongly associate the late Queen Elizabeth II with WWII, each time I see or hear the expression, keep calm and carry on, I think of her. Imagine the kindness and courtesy she brought to listening to the thousands of people whose opinions she probably disagreed with—she just kept smiling and moving forward being the sort of Queen she wished to be. That’s eustatheia.
Dan Chalykoff is (finally!) a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.
Holiday, R. & Hanselman, S. (2016). The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. Portfolio/Penguin.
I think this is an amazing blog. You can’t change the way people think, even about you, nor their opinions. You can change how you think about the way you think. You can change the way you think about your doc but you can’t change the way others think about their doc. Just listen. Why can’t we all be like this? Imagine the peace we would all experience. I guess I can only start with me.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Sue. The short answer to “Why can’t we all be like this?” is because we don’t study philosophy or take our cultural environments very seriously. One of the many reasons I like working in the addictive community is that they do both, in very practical and important ways. Be well.