When We Feel Heard Quotes & Sayings

Sam tapped her hand on the steering wheel. Patrick held his hand outside the car and made air waves. I just sat between them. After the song finished, I said something.
'I feel infinite.'
And Sam and Patrick looked at me like I said the greatest thing they ever heard. Because the song was that great and because we all really paid attention to it. Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spent, and we felt young in a good way. I have since bought the record, and I would tell you what it was, but truthfully, it's not the same unless you're driving to your first real party, and you're sitting in the middle seat of a pickup with two nice people when it starts to rain. — Stephen Chbosky

Our feelings about menstruation are the image of what it is to be a woman in this culture. While menstruation and the fear of revealing evidence of loss of body control bear possibilities of humiliation for women of which men are not aware, it is humiliating too to be that sex whose voice and presence carry less significance. It is humiliating to speak the same words as a man and have his heard, and not yours. It is humiliating to feel invisible when God gave you a body as solid as his. It is humiliating that women are accorded little dignity unless they are married. We twist these humiliations around, of course, and say it is glorious to have a man fight our battles for us, put us on a pedestal, take care of us. It is, if you enjoy being dependent on someone else. — Nancy Friday

He stopped when he heard Wellsie's voice coming out of the study. ... some kind of nightmare. I mean, Tohr, he was terrified ... No, he fudged when I asked him what it was, and I didn't press. I think it's time he sees Havers. Yes ... UAH-Hugh. He should meet Wrath first. Okay. I love you, myhellren . What? God, Tohr, I feel the same way. I don't know how we ever lived without him. He is such a blessing. — J.R. Ward

When people see my images, a lot of times they will say, 'Oh my God.' Have you ever wondered what that meant? The 'oh' means it caught your attention, it makes you present, it makes you mindful. The 'my' means it connects with something deep inside your soul, it creates a gateway for your inner voice to rise up and be heard. And God, 'God' is that personal journey we all want to be on, to be inspired, to feel like we are connected to a universe that celebrates life. — Louis Schwartzberg

I once heard a writer say, 'It's easy to write a novel, you just slit your wrist and let it bleed on the pages.' She was right...Sophocles and Freud believed that we are defined by our fears. There's a lot of truth to that. When you share your greatest fears, your vulnerability, we bond in that honesty. We connect with each other and we don't feel so alone. And that's what books are really about. Connecting. — Richard Paul Evans

The people are supposed to read books in these times of the School Board and, therefore, they do not need living speech. We are glad that the people should read, but much of what they read which is best worth reading was first heard from the pulpit! We know of no rivalry between the printed word and the preached Word - it is often the same thing. But I reckon that the most of you who have been converted to God will say that it was not what you read, but what you heard which was used of the Holy Spirit for your conversion! When heart speaks to heart with accents of emotion, it is somehow different from the paper. Some Brothers read their sermons and I do not condemn them, but I know that most of the people feel a kind of chill creeping over them as they hear the leaves rustle. It may be a prejudice, but I know that nine out of 10 are numbed by the foolscap for the reading. — Anonymous

We know that when people learn to communicate effectively with each other, their lives and their relationships can be truly transformed. This book gives people both a way of expressing their needs congruently and non-blamefully and a way of listening so others feel not just heard, but understood. — Thomas Gordon

It's completely unsexy [Yello, "Oh Yeah" 1985]. It does capture that weird '80s materialism and "We're gonna get it on now" vibe. But it's a very juvenile approach. It also became a weird signal for comedy, in the sense that when you heard the song, it meant comedy was happening on screen. I feel like this song was probably done in a couple of minutes in a studio. — Margaret Cho

I was interested in a whole range of music that I used to play, popular music
particularly American music
that I heard a lot of when I was a teenager," "I think at a certain point it dawned on me that myself playing this music wasn't very convincing. It was more convincing when we played music that came from our own stock of tradition ... I certainly feel a lot more comfortable playing so-called Celtic music. — John Renbourn

And if the child feels loved, the body is relaxed, the eyes are bright, there is a smile on the face; in some way the flesh becomes "transparent." A child that is loved is beautiful. But what happens when children feel they are not loved? There is tension, fear, loneliness and terrible anguish, which we can call "inner pain," the opposite of "inner peace." Children are too small and weak to be able to fend for themselves; they have no defense mechanisms. If a child feels unloved and unwanted, he or she will develop a broken self-image. I have never heard any of the men or women whom we have welcomed into our community criticize their parents, even though many of them have suffered a great deal from rejection or abandonment in their families. Rather than blaming their parents, they blame themselves. "If I am not loved, it is because I am not lovable, I am no good. I am evil. — Jean Vanier

We might feel that we must demonstrate explicitly when we're upset, or not upset. This perceived need may stem from our family of origin, from how we learned to be heard when a simple "no" wasn't enough. We may have learned to mask certain feelings, or portray feelings that weren't ours. But as adults we each need to learn to state our personal truth without having to prove it or shout it. — Alexandra Katehakis

Knowing someone's story helps to make the patient more real, and it makes the job more personal. The shared narratives of others' lives incorporate and become stories about us. I feel myself to be a part of a stranger's story, when it is shared with me, and passing it on feels like my sharing of a parable we've all heard- we know the plot, even the climax and the ending. Only the names have changed, or the costumes, or the settings, but the story is the same and is this: we are all vulnerable; we are all a little bit crazy; we are all funny, entertaining, delicate, bold, horrible, and fantastic. We are all, in our unique and individual ways, as equally and universally fucked up as the next person. Every one of us. Theres comfort in knowing this. — Pamela Baker

I know what you mean about wishing somebody wasn't there, though. It's just usually it's myself that I wish I could get away from. Seriously, think about this. I have never been anywhere that I haven't been. I've never had a kiss when I wasn't one of the kissers. Y'know, I've never, um, gone to the movies, when I wasn't there in the audience. I've never been out bowling, if I wasn't there, y'know making some stupid joke. I think that's why so many people hate themselves. Seriously, it's just they are sick to death of being around themselves.
Jesse: Let's say that you and I were together all the time, then you'd start to hate a lot of my mannerisms. The way every time we would have people over, uh, I'd be insecure, and I'd get a little too drunk. Or, uh, the way I'd tell the same stupid pseudo-intellectual story again, and again. Y'see, I've heard all those stories. So of course I'm sick of myself. But being with you, uh, it's made me feel like I'm somebody else. — Jesse

The experiment shows that individuals feel relieved of responsibility when they know that others have heard the same request for help. Did the results surprise you? Very probably. Most of us think of ourselves as decent people who would rush to help in such a situation, and we expect other decent people to do the same. The point of the experiment, of course, was to show that this expectation is wrong. Even normal, decent people do not rush to help when they expect others to take on the unpleasantness of dealing — Daniel Kahneman

I still wanted to see the family come back to life. And when that didn't transpire from the music, it kinda made me feel like I was bein' taken advantage of. I thought, when people heard '8 Diagrams,' they'd be like, 'Oh, Wu-Tang is a wrap now - they've lost it.' And I know that we didn't lose it. — Raekwon

Now don't run away." "I'm not. I learned to see beyond the soles of these shoes. I learned that behind this wretched life we lead there is a great ideal, a great hope. I learned that each individual life should be guided by that hope and by that ideal. And people who don't feel that must have died before they were born." He smiled and added, "Those aren't my words. It's something I heard someone else say years ago." "In your view ,then, I belong to the group who died before they were born?" "No, you belong to another group, the ones who haven't yet been born." "Aren't you forgetting about all my experience of life?" "Not at all, but experience is only worth anything when it's useful to other people, and you're not useful to anyone. — Jose Saramago

GOD COMMUNICATES WITH US in many ways. But prayer is a special time when God's voice is often heard most clearly because we are giving God our undivided attention. Whether in Ignatian contemplation, lectio divina, the colloquy, the examen, or any other practice, the "still small" voice can be heard with a clarity that can delight, astonish, and surprise you. So when you pray, however you pray, and feel that God is speaking to you - pay attention. — James Martin

The typewriter is neat and compact and sturdy and blue, just the right machine to pound out a missive of love. When you strike the keys it's a sound that hasn't been heard in the qorld world for thirty years (we are so far away from a time when typewriters won world wars). When you strike the keys they make a sound like a pistol shot, a sound so definite and sure you feel like a genius, or an orayor orator, or a beat poet. When you strike the keys you just want to keep on fucking writing. You have to wrestle with the thing, like I am doing now, steer it like an old manual car, keep the words together and right and on the page, but the blood and muscle of a typewriter, it is a beautiful thing. — Yvette Walker

I just want [my daughter Isabelle] to know that she's heard. Really heard, because I feel like that is what we all really want. When I think about any of the missteps in my life that I've made, all of which I'm grateful for, it's because I just so wanted to be truly seen and heard for who I am and was afraid I wasn't or wouldn't be. I see you, I hear you, I'm with you as you are. — Kerry Washington

Contrary to what you may have heard or been taught, your ego isn't a bad thing. It means well. The ego wants to keep you safe, secure, protected and accepted. The problem comes in because it usually attempts to do this by keeping you in the same small, reclusive orbit that you've always gravitated toward. Life, on the other hand, is about change, growth and unfolding ever-greater aspects of the self. We all know the pain that is experienced when life decides to change even though you don't want it to. The harder you try to hold on to the comfort and safety of "what was" or "how it's always been done," the more pain you feel. — Charles Holt

It is tormenting to live life with a burden of guilt. Jesus bore our sins and the guilt associated with them, and in reality, once we have received forgiveness for any sin we have committed, there is no longer any guilt. When sin goes, guilt goes with it. Jesus not only forgives sin, He removes it completely. He remembers it no more, and to Him, it is as if it never happened. When we feel guilt after we have confessed and repented of a sin, we should tell the feeling that it is a lie. Don't let your feelings be the ruling factor in your life. The Bible says that we are justified in Christ, and I heard one theologian say that means that we stand before God just as if we had never sinned. Even if our feelings can't believe it, we can choose to live beyond our feelings and we can honor God's Word above how we feel. If we make right choices according to the Word of God, our feelings will eventually come in line with our good choices. — Joyce Meyer

I'm speechless. But my dick has plenty to say. I'm already hard at the idea of Wes being prepped and ready for me. I drop my mouth onto his and he moans again. My tongue glides across his piercing and we're off to the horny dog races. We kiss as if there's a meteor heading straight for the Toronto metropolitan area. Wes's eager hands roam my ass while I suck on his tongue. His eagerness is like a drug, and I want hit after hit. I can feel how hard he is, even through all of our clothes. He wants me to fuck him, and he's all primed and ready? "Mmm," I moan into his mouth. Sexiest fucking thing I ever heard. That's when the doorbell rings. "Hold that thought," I say, pushing up on one arm. "Nooooo!" Wes lifts both his legs to trap me in them. "No." Kiss. "No." Kiss. "Don't even think about it." Pinning his hands to the quilt is easy, because he's horny to the point of distraction. "Stop it, baby. It's the couch delivery. We're paying seventy-five bucks for them to show up on a Saturday. — Sarina Bowen

Four years ago the clocks started turning back. I open my eyes and see nothing. I feel nothing below or above me. I feel the absence of things. The absence of my flesh, my bones, my body, my mind. All that is left is awareness. I see nothing but the absence of colour. It's not a black darkness. It's simply nothing. The interior of a black hole. I recall news of a black hole lingering along the edges of our solar system. All that time ago. Four years ago. When the clocks started turning back. I hear nothing. Until there is a something. A small thing. A voice. I listen. There are more voices. The sounds are human. How long has it been since I've heard a human? The sounds scratch along my now present attention. They carve into my hearing. They are horrid, wretched things. Voices screaming. Growing loud and desperate. How many voices? Billions. This is the birth of our species. We are born screaming. It's all we know to do. We have screamed for eternity. Within this empty space. — F.K. Preston

I've heard people say that they cling to their painful thoughts
because they're afraid that without them they wouldn't be activists for peace.
"If I feel peaceful," they say, "why would I bother taking action at all?"
My answer is "Because that's what love does."
To think that we need sadness or outrage
to motivate us to do what's right is insane.
As if the clearer and happier you get, the less kind you become.
As if when someone finds freedom, she just sits around all day
with drool running down her chin.
My experience is the opposite.
Love is action. — Byron Katie

I know exactly how you feel," Schmendrick said eagerly. The unicorn looked at him out of dark, endless eyes, and he smiled nervously and looked at his hands. "It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is," he said. "There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that unicorns when time was young, could tell the difference 'twixt the two - the false shining and the true, the lips' laugh and the heart's rue. — Peter S. Beagle

I had a dream about you. Again. In fact I've had so many dreams about you that I can almost feel your skin under my fingertips and your breath every time we kiss. This time when you pulled me closer, even though I couldn't see you, I knew it was you. I've heard your footsteps, and recognized them instantly. I'd recognize them anywhere, among many others. The way I yearn for you, you are always expected. And now I expect you to do just that. Kiss me. This time I am asking for it, because I need to make sure I am awake. — Aleksandra Ninkovic

To enable consensus politics to develop we need to empower people where they live. This means devolving financial resources and political power down to the community level. One of the greatest blocks to movement is fear. This fear can only be removed when people feel their voices are being heard by government and when they have a say in their own lives and communities. — Mairead Corrigan

It was the kind of magic that comes after a lifetime of searching, when you stumble upon something so perfect, you stop looking, and you say: Yes. This. I know this. I feel this. I've heard its footsteps echo down the hallways of my soul. We — Leylah Attar

Most of us avoid telling the truth because it's uncomfortable. We're afraid of the consequences - making others feel uncomfortable, hurting their feelings, or risking their anger. And yet, when we don't tell the truth, and others don't tell us the truth, we can't deal with matters from a basis in reality. We've all heard the phrase that "the truth will set you free." And it will. The truth allows us to be free to deal with the way things are, not the way we imagine them to be or hope them to be or might manipulate them to be with our lies. The truth also frees up our energy. It takes energy to withhold the truth, keep a secret, or keep up an act. — Jack Canfield

All I'd ever heard my entire life in my family was, "Nobody wanted you, and we took you in." When you get that into your head at a tender age, you really feel like you are an unlovable human being, and then you behave like one. That's exactly what I had done. It took me many years to deal with my own violence and find my own niche. — Sam Hamill

I bunched the squirrel-fur hat up under my head and left the pack for Mal to use as a pillow. Then I pulled my coat close around me and huddled beneath the new furs. I was nodding off when I heard Mal return and settle himself beside me, his back pressed comfortably against mine. As I drifted into sleep, I felt like I could still taste the sugar from that sweet roll on my tongue, feel the pleasure of laughter gusting through me. We'd been robbed. We'd almost been killed. We were being hunted by the most powerful man in Ravka. But we were friends again, and sleep came more easily than it had in a long time. At some point during the night, I woke to Mal's snoring. I jabbed him in the back with my elbow. He rolled onto his side, muttered something in his sleep, and threw his arm over me. A minute later he started snoring again, but this time I didn't wake him. — Leigh Bardugo

At that moment, when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn't feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting - do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it 'absence of appropriate affect.' So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair. So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who's smart has emigrated, don't you think? — Philip K. Dick

You see, team," Dan said passionately, "our problem is negativity, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. I believe where there is a void, negativity will fill it. And, unfortunately, within every organization you get voids in communication between leaders and their employees and between different teams and team members. It happens everywhere: with sports teams, work teams, family teams. Within these voids, negativity starts to breed and grow and, eventually, like a cancer it will spread if you don't address it. As an executive team it's up to us to do everything we can to prevent these voids from occurring and when they do occur, we must quickly fill them with positive communication and positive energy. People don't just want to be seen and heard. They want to hear and see, and if they don't feel like they are part of the company then they will assume the worst and act accordingly. — Jon Gordon

We've heard a lot in recent polemic about how to win the fight for the corner office. But pushing up against a glass ceiling is practically a luxury when you consider the millions of women who can feel the floor dropping beneath their feet. — Tina Brown

Empathy occurs when we suspend our single-minded focus of attention and instead adopt a double-minded foucus of attention. When our attention lapses into single focus, empathy has been turned off. When we shift our attention to dual focus empathy has been turned on. Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to there thought or feelings with an approriate emotion. Empathy makes the other person feel valued, enabling them to feel that their thoughts and feelings have been heard. — Simon Baron-Cohen

When we fear what other people think about us, we are frequently more focused on 'being interesting' and less focused on 'taking an interest.' That's why many people talk a great deal when they are anxious and why many people never feel heard. If both people and conversation are trying to be interesting, there is no one left to genuinely listen. — John Yokoyama

Let me first state forthright that contrary to what we've often read in books and heard from preachers, when you are a woman, you don't feel like the Devil. — Orhan Pamuk

So that still freaks you out, huh? That might be proof that it needs to happen.
His eyes locked on hers, refusing to let her look away. And when she swallowed, it was so loud, she was sure the whole world heard it.
Or, he said. We could skip the talking.
And do what? She asked, hating her voice for cracking.
Any ideas?
He was so close now, she could feel his breath warming her cheeks. He leaned a tiny bit closer and someone cleared his throat, very loudly. — Shannon Messenger