A Summer Letter on Deep Listening
"Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another that both attracts and heals." — L.J. Isham
Dear Hope+Wellness Family,
I hope you are doing well and having a wonderful, restorative start to your summer!
Congratulations to Our Seniors
It’s a bittersweet time of year as we celebrate our graduates and say goodbye to the end of a chapter. Time flies so quickly! One day they are 14 and struggling with anxiety, and the next thing you know, they are a young adult ready to head off to college.
As a clinical psychologist with a specialty in working with kids, I’ll never forget a moment I shared with a high schooler who struggled with anxiety and ADHD. For years, her parents put in exhausting, around-the-clock effort to keep her on track. They navigated the endless daily battles of homework reminders, worked through obtaining a diagnosis, found the right medication, and helped her wake up and get to school on time.
Then, suddenly, four years later, we looked up to find a self-sufficient senior sitting before us. She was now driving, working an independent job, and confidently sharing her college plans. As she spoke to her parents and I, sharing her plans for college with us, we all got a little choked up, tears filling our eyes.
I looked over at her parents. They looked visibly older, carrying the collective fatigue of everything they had done to get her to this successful place. Her father and I caught each other’s eye in a silent acknowledgment of the marathon we had run together over the years. He smiled and said, "Thanks for the help, Dr. Victoria."
We had been in it together. It was a beautiful, slightly humorous, and deeply bittersweet moment—as we felt ancient, she was flourishing, and every ounce of effort that was expended was entirely worth it. So to all the parents who are exhausted but bursting with pride as you head into this next chapter: Congratulations! We are incredibly proud of you child and family.
The Intersection of Leadership and Mental Health
I am deeply fascinated by leadership and its profound relationship to mental health. While the psychology of leadership is incredibly rich, the critical role mental health plays in it, is so rarely discussed. What does it mean to be a leader? What are the qualities of a strong leader? How do we teach kids and teens that true leadership begins with self-attunement and emotional regulation?
This curiosity has led me to Harvard Business School’s Program for Leadership Development (PLD) this year. As this part-time program begins this July, I’ll be taking you along for the journey to share what I learn. I believe it is vital for us to have deeper discussions around cultivating inner resilience and leadership, especially as we all navigate the chaos, division, and pressures in the world today. Although "leadership" can sometimes feel like a mysterious, distant term that doesn't apply to everyone, the truth is, that it applies to all humans. After all, we each have an inner leader within us, one that is in charge of directing our own lives. I feel that my role as a psychologist ultimately, isn’t just to help my patients with symptoms of depression or anxiety, but to make deep contact with this inner leader within them — to build an authentic and deeply meaningful life.
Deep Listening: a mental health and leadership skill
In last month’s Mac + Cheese article, I introduced the practice of deep listening. Deep listening is the active art of slowing down enough to hear what another person is saying, sometimes entirely beyond words. It is a mental health skill, a social skill, and perhaps surprisingly based on what we see in the media today, a core leadership skill.
In our fast-paced modern society, listening has now become a lost art. That's why it is extremely important to help our kids and teens understand the transformative power that occurs simply when a human being feels genuinely and deeply heard. They will, afterall, be guiding us to create the future.
I absolutely love this powerful story shared by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: From the young age of four, she was humorously elected "president" of her family every single year. Her parents would regularly sit down on the living room couch, as she stood above them, guiding discussions on topics such as where they would have family vacations that year. They would allow her to make the final decision. Her parents would sit and listen with absolute seriousness while a four-year-old led a strategic discussion on where they would travel, what they would need to pack, and when they should leave.
The message they sent her—simply by listening—was profound: Your ideas matter. They showed her that leadership starts with listening. This early baseline of trust gave her the resilient confidence and strong judgment she used throughout her life, directly shaping her ability to make tough decisions as a leader.
The Dialectic of Parenting: Knowing When to Direct and When to Listen
As parents, we have a difficult job because we must constantly have to balance two completely different jobs: instructing and listening. In psychology, we call this a dialectic, where two completely opposite things can be true at the exact same time. Here is the dialectic every parent has to hold:
Truth #1: Kids and teens need direct instruction, boundaries, and authority.
Truth #2: They also need dedicated pockets of time where you step back, let them lead, and listen to what they think without fixing it.
You must walk a tightrope and create a space that integrates both even if they seem paradoxical. Honestly, it can be incredibly anxiety provoking to just sit back and hear what your teenager truly thinks. To balance listening with guiding, you have to manage your own natural urge to jump in and protect them from making mistakes. It is definitely not easy!
If you want to practice true deep listening with your child this week, try these three simple steps:
Take their thoughts seriously: There is always a deeper reason why your child thinks the way they do, one that makes sense to them. Let them process it and think it through before you jump in to fix it.
Pause the immediate correction: Stop yourself from correcting them right away. If you wait, a natural moment will come where they stop, look at you, and actually ask for your advice. Give your guidance then.
Ask reasoning questions: Ask open-ended questions to stretch their critical thinking. Kids are much less likely to think about their values if we are always lecturing them. Instead, let them tell you what they value, and help them shape it from there.
Thank you for being a part of our community, and for the honor of walking alongside you.
With gratitude,
Dr. Victoria Ranade, PhD, MBA, ABPP
Board Certified Licensed Clinical Psychologist + Founder, Hope+Wellness
