THE SUBTLE ART OF INFERENTIAL LISTENING

When it comes to inferential listening, you cannot not infer. It’s part of how your brain works and how language works and so is inevitable. What is not inevitable, however, is the quality and precision of your inferring. In fact, behind mind-reading as a cognitive distortion is inferential listening. It happens that as you listen to someone and interact with them, you draw conclusions about what they are thinking and feeling, what they are intending and wanting, and then you start a sentence with “you.”

“You are trying to put me down, you always have to win.” “You are not listening to me, you only think about yourself, you are very selfish!”

In these mind-reading statements, the speaker is telling the other person what he or she is thinking, feeling, wanting, intending, etc. And several things make this “mind-reading.”