Empathy – Necessary Whispers

The Courage to Be Seen Thinking: Speaking Through Fear

By Jill Szoo Wilson

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”— Eleanor Roosevelt

I teach communication courses. Public Speaking is my mainstay. I also teach theatre, but communication has taken the front seat in my heart because I can see—clearly, daily—that the younger generation longs to become confident and competent in their ability to connect with other people. It isn’t a weakness in them, as many older adults like to say. It’s a weakness in us if we don’t equip them now to adapt their unique voices to their audiences.

My generation shared this desire when I was in school, but the landscape has changed since then. We lacked information; this generation is drowning in it. Growing up, our question was “What should I say?” Theirs is closer to “Who will hear me?” They are not unsure of what to speak about as much as they are unsure whether anyone is listening in a world where voices collide, compete, and vanish into the noise.

Yesterday, as this semester wraps up, I asked my class, “Has public speaking gotten easier for you?” I fully expected the usual yes. For a couple of decades, I’ve almost always heard that answer. But this time, about 80 percent said yes, and the other 20 percent said they are more terrified than ever.

I stopped everything and asked them why.

When a student feels afraid, I take it seriously. I feel a brief window of responsibility to help them leave stronger than they arrived, so they do not carry unnecessary fear into the rest of their lives.

One student said, “I felt fine on my first speech. But then I had to miss one, and on the next speech, I felt like I was behind. My chest tightened. I felt like I needed to escape—run out the door—but I knew I couldn’t. So I felt trapped. Feeling trapped, my fear grew and soon it was like I couldn’t see anymore. It’s like my mind escaped the room, but my body had to stay here.”

What a remarkable way to describe panic:
“It’s like my mind escaped the room, but my body had to stay here.”

I won’t unpack the whole conversation we had afterward, but I share this because it highlights how essential it is to equip young people with the communication tools necessary not just to present information, but to remain present within themselves when they feel afraid. Even though these students know each other well by now, even though there’s camaraderie and safety (even in disagreement), they still confessed thoughts like:

Do I sound stupid?
Are they judging me?
What if I fail?
What if I’m not good enough?
Why didn’t I rehearse more? Now it’s too late. I’m going to crash out.
I want to disappear.

So I told them that if they remember anything from this entire semester, please let it be this:

There are always a hundred things happening at once in any moment. That’s life. It’s okay. You can’t control that part.
What you can control is your preparation and your focus—look outward to the audience you’re giving something to, not inward toward fear.
Adapt your message to your audience (using recency, locality, psychology, physiology, and economic factors), and speak from the heart as though you’re giving, not taking.

Fear lasts because communication touches identity. No teacher can remove that for another person; we can only help them learn how to stand in it.

Speaking always involves two kinds of work: thinking and being seen. When a student puts their ideas into words, they’re not only organizing their thoughts; they’re placing those thoughts into a space where others can evaluate them. That movement from inner reasoning to public expression activates the body just as powerfully as the mind. The student feels exposed because, in a very real sense, they are. Communication invites others to witness our thinking, and the body responds as though it must protect what has just been revealed. In this light, courage is not the absence of fear in communication, but the willingness to let one’s thinking be visible while learning to stay present in that exposure.

[C]ourage is not the absence of fear in communication, but the willingness to let one’s thinking be visible while learning to stay present in that exposure.

Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux demonstrated that the brain processes emotional threat more rapidly than conscious reasoning, producing instinctive reactions before the mind has time to interpret them (The Emotional Brain, 1996). When speaking, that instinct narrows attention and draws awareness inward. The student’s focus moves away from the audience and toward the self: What are they thinking of me saying this? In that moment, communication shifts from sharing ideas to guarding the identity that feels exposed. The body prepares to protect the thinker, even while the thinker is trying to speak.

To teach how to communicate through fear, then, is not simply to teach speaking. It’s to teach attention. Communication is an outward-facing act in which meaning is co-created between speaker and audience. The student is not performing for a passive group but participating in a shared moment of understanding. When fear sends the mind fleeing—“escaping the room while the body stays behind”—the pedagogical work is to help students return to that shared moment. This does not mean suppressing their anxiety, but retraining where they place their awareness. Instead of monitoring their own performance, they learn to notice the listeners they are addressing: how the audience responds, where clarity is needed, and where curiosity sparks. They begin to read the cues that help them stay present, such as facial expressions, body posture or stillness, eye contact, moments of confusion, or quiet signs of interest like leaning forward, nodding, or attentive silence. Attention becomes the bridge that allows the speaker to stay present long enough for communication to take shape.

You may wonder, Isn’t it scarier to notice the people in front of you? I would respond with another question: Isn’t it far more frightening to stand in front of others while constantly critiquing yourself in your own mind? When students shift their attention outward, they no longer face the audience alone. They begin to share the work of understanding with the people who are listening.

Educational theorist Parker Palmer writes that “we fear the live encounter” when speaking because we are culturally conditioned to treat knowledge as a possession to defend rather than a shared activity (The Courage to Teach, 1998). Many students come to communication believing that they must display what they know and protect it from critique. In that mindset, speaking becomes an act of performance: their ideas become something like personal property on a stage, vulnerable to judgment. Fear grows because the task feels like self-presentation rather than shared exploration. The speaker begins working to preserve an image—trying not to be wrong, trying not to be misunderstood—rather than working to illuminate a topic with others. Under this frame, communication is effort spent guarding the self rather than engaging with the subject or the audience.

Instead of treating knowledge as something we defend, we can help students see it as something we share.

A helpful metaphor I offer my students is to treat ideas like campfires. When students speak, they are tending a thought long enough for others to gather around it. The speaker’s work is to make that flame visible and to offer enough clarity for others to see by its light. The heat belongs to the concept, not to the student’s identity. Fear grows when a student imagines they themselves are being scrutinized or judged, as though they must withstand the fire. But when they learn to host others at the fire of an idea, the pressure shifts. They do not perform; they invite. Their task becomes to let the thought burn clearly enough for others to explore what its light reveals.

Hosting others at the fire of an idea becomes an act of generosity. Instead of guarding an idea to protect themselves, students learn to offer it for the sake of shared understanding. In this posture, ideas become contributions rather than possessions to defend. The goal moves toward clarity, shared reasoning, and insight that others can carry beyond the moment of speaking. The speaker intends to give something away: a perspective, a question, or an interpretation that helps others think more carefully.

This change in intention helps reshape the student’s internal experience. The audience is no longer a threat to self-image, but a group of learners who can benefit from the speaker’s effort. Fear loosens not because it vanishes, but because it now serves a different purpose. Anxiety becomes a form of care: a signal that the message matters. Instead of trying to perform without fault, the speaker begins to engage in the work of making ideas accessible to others by choosing clearer examples, inviting shared reasoning, and adjusting pace and language. The focus shifts from How do I look? to What might help them see this?

Such reframing is supported by Kenneth Burke’s foundational view of rhetoric as “the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols” (A Rhetoric of Motives, 1950). Burke’s definition shifts attention away from persuasion as winning agreement and toward communication as building shared understanding. He calls humans “beings that respond to symbols” because we think, interpret, and act through language. Words, therefore, do more than convey information. They invite people into a coordinated way of seeing. In this light, communication becomes cooperative work. As students begin to see their speeches as something they give rather than something by which they are measured, their attention turns toward building that shared understanding. Fear becomes manageable because their purpose becomes relational, and their speech becomes purposeful because it serves a common effort.

Anxiety, then, becomes not an obstacle but a cue that communication matters. It invites awareness rather than avoidance. As Susan Cain observes, “Fear is not a flaw; it’s a sign that something is worth doing” (Quiet, 2012). In a pedagogical context, this insight reveals fear as evidence of engagement, a marker that students are entering meaningful communicative work.

When communication is taught as outward-facing rather than defensive, students learn more than technique. They develop ethical habits of attentiveness, which are central to higher education and essential to public life. In an era marked by rapid exchange, polarized discourse, and performative speech, the capacity to direct attention outward becomes an act of civic responsibility. It equips students not merely to express themselves, but to interpret contexts, consider audiences, and contribute to understanding within complex communities.

Higher education, viewed through this lens, is not simply preparing speakers. It is cultivating citizens capable of relational inquiry. To help students remain present while speaking, to keep their “mind in the room” when fear urges retreat, is to equip them for the intellectual and ethical demands of adult life. They learn to see communication not as self-display but as participation in the shared labor of meaning-making.

This reframing transforms fear from a barrier into a catalyst. Students do not conquer visibility; they inhabit it. They learn to speak with others rather than at them and to stay present in the encounter rather than disappear into self-consciousness. In doing so, they acquire a communicative stance that extends well beyond the classroom, a stance defined not by performance but by presence.

When a student says, “It feels like my mind escaped the room,” communication education becomes a way of helping them return. We can teach them to stay present with others and to participate in meaning-making even when visibility feels risky. The work of public speaking becomes ongoing preparation for shared life: learning to offer ideas with clarity, to attend to others with care, and to keep the mind in the room where understanding can grow. This practice shapes how we show up in the world, cultivating attentiveness, generosity, and a readiness to learn in community with others.

Jill Szoo Wilson is an educator, speaker, and writer who teaches communication and theatre at the college level. Her writing explores the ethical and relational possibilities of speech in public life.

The Four Types of Listening: Understanding the Art of Attention

By Jill Szoo Wilson

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”
— Ralph G. Nichols, often called the father of listening research

Listening is the most underestimated of the communication arts. We are trained to write, to speak, to persuade, and to present, yet few are ever taught how to listen with intention. To listen well is not a passive act but an active form of attention that shapes meaning, relationship, and understanding. It’s the moment where perception meets interpretation and where human connection either succeeds or fails.

Communication theory defines this exchange as transactional, meaning that communication is not simply sent and received but created between people. As Adler, Rosenfeld, and Proctor describe, it is “the process of creating meaning through symbolic interaction.” Within this transactional exchange, listening becomes the point of highest concentration, where attention turns into understanding. Carl Rogers called it dangerous, precisely because true listening requires vulnerability; it asks us to suspend judgment and risk being changed by what we hear.

Listening, then, is not one behavior but many. Research by Kittie Watson, Larry Barker, and James Weaver III identifies four dominant listening orientations: time-focused, task-focused, relational, and analytical. Each reflects a distinct way of processing information and a different set of underlying values. This essay examines these four types of listening as a framework for understanding how we attend, interpret, and ultimately connect with one another.

Time-Focused Listening (Chronemic Listening)

Time-focused listening is driven by the belief that attention should move quickly, clearly, and without excess. It values brevity, structure, and the efficient use of minutes. In communication studies, this approach is linked to chronemics, the study of how time itself communicates meaning. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall observed that we “speak” through time as much as through language; we reveal respect, impatience, or control by how we manage it. To those who listen in a time-focused way, punctuality and precision are signals of competence. Listening, in this sense, is a tool for progress.

There are contexts in which this style works beautifully. In an emergency room, efficiency can save a life. In an executive meeting, it can save a company hour after hour of unproductive debate. A time-focused listener cuts through digression and demands the essential: What happened? What’s next? The conversation moves forward.

Yet the very strength of this style can also be its undoing. When efficiency becomes the highest good, conversation risks losing its depth. Meaning is trimmed, edited, and sometimes distorted in the rush to move forward. A dialogue that might have opened into understanding ends the moment it becomes inconvenient. The drive to stay on schedule can flatten nuance and quiet emotion, both of which need more time than the time-focused listener is willing to allow.

Chronemic listening reminds us that time is both a boundary and a message. The length of a pause, the patience of silence, and the willingness to let another person finish communicate as powerfully as the words being used. The discipline of listening does not reject efficiency, but it resists hurry. To listen well is to know when time serves clarity and when it threatens understanding. The best listeners master both.

Most people do not choose their listening style any more than they choose their accent. It develops quietly, shaped by what life has required of them. A nurse learns to listen for urgency. A parent learns to listen for need. An executive learns to listen for solutions. Over time, those habits start to feel like personality, when in fact they are responses to circumstance. Yet habits can shift. Once a person becomes aware of how they listen, they begin to notice the moments when that habit no longer serves them. They begin to recognize what once went unnoticed — the pause that deserves patience, and the silence that carries meaning — and in that awareness, the act of listening becomes less about efficiency and more about presence.

Behaviors you might observe:

Interrupts or redirects when conversation feels too slow or repetitive
Prefers summaries, timelines, and concise explanations
Checks the time or shifts body posture when discussions run long
Emphasizes deadlines and next steps over reflection
Speaks in short, efficient bursts rather than elaborating

Literary Reflections:

In Hamlet, impatience with words that circle without arriving at meaning captures the time-focused listener’s need for progress.
Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants turns brevity into both virtue and limitation; its spare dialogue mirrors the efficiency and avoidance of this style.
The clipped exchanges in Beckett’s Endgame reveal how the desire to finish speaking can become indistinguishable from despair.

Task-Focused Listening (Action-Oriented Listening)

Task-focused listening approaches communication as a means to an end. It listens for action, not for feeling, and measures success by what gets done rather than what gets understood. Communication scholars often describe this as action-oriented listening because it privileges the completion of tasks over the exploration of emotions. Its central question is simple: What are the steps?

This listening style is common in professional and technical environments where precision matters. Engineers, coaches, and project managers often exemplify it. They listen for data, instructions, and solutions. They want structure, not story. The speaker who wanders into emotion or ambiguity risks losing their attention, not because they lack empathy, but because their focus has already shifted to implementation.

There is an undeniable efficiency in this approach. It brings order to complex projects and gives structure to communication. Teams stay aligned, and goals become measurable. A task-focused listener reduces confusion and promotes accountability, turning discussion into direction. Meetings that might once have drifted end with decisions. In a culture that prizes productivity, this kind of clarity can feel like mastery, the mark of someone who not only listens but delivers.

Yet the strength of this style can slip into excess. When listening becomes purely instrumental, every exchange is measured by its outcome. People start to feel like problems to be solved rather than voices to be heard. A colleague seeking understanding may receive a solution instead. A partner expressing worry may be met with advice. The task-focused listener hears information but misses emotion, and what is efficient begins to feel detached.

Good communicators learn to adjust. They sense when a conversation needs movement and when it needs mercy. In a crisis, this style can bring direction and calm. In a moment of fear or doubt, it can create distance. The art lies in knowing the difference. True listening asks for patience, for the courage to stay with what is unresolved. The task-focused listener grows when they learn that not every question requires an answer, and not every silence demands a plan. Sometimes the most skillful action is to wait, to hear fully, and to let meaning unfold on its own.

Behaviors you might observe:

Asks solution-driven questions such as “What do we need to do?”
Takes notes or creates lists while others are still talking
Moves quickly from discussion to implementation
Rephrases statements into actions or instructions
Struggles to remain engaged when the conversation turns emotional or abstract

Literary Reflections:

In Kafka’s The Trial, listening collapses into procedure. Every response is measured against a task no one fully understands.
George and Lennie in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men illustrate how pragmatic listening preserves survival but erodes tenderness.
Camus’ The Stranger exposes the sterility of communication reduced to function, where understanding gives way to process.

Relational Listening (People-Oriented Listening)

Relational listening is the art of hearing people, not just words. It centers on empathy, emotional nuance, and the subtle cues that reveal what someone truly means. Communication scholars describe this as people-oriented listening because it prioritizes understanding the person behind the message rather than the message alone. The relational listener’s guiding question is not What happened? or What should I do? but How does this person feel?

Where time-focused and task-focused listeners aim for progress, relational listeners aim for connection. Their attention is tuned to tone, pacing, pauses, and body language — the invisible grammar of emotion. They notice when a voice tightens, when silence stretches too long, or when laughter masks discomfort. To them, listening is a form of care. They listen to affirm dignity, create safety, and remind others that their experience matters.

The strength of this style lies in its generosity. When people feel heard, they relax into honesty. When they sense genuine empathy, they risk saying more. In counseling, teaching, and ministry, relational listening is often the bridge that allows difficult truths to surface. The listener’s patience becomes a kind of hospitality, a quiet invitation that says, Go ahead, and finish your thought.

Even empathy needs structure. When relational listening stretches too far, compassion can turn into depletion. The listener begins to carry emotions that do not belong to them, mistaking absorption for understanding. Out of kindness, they may soften hard truths or avoid conflict altogether. What begins as care can quietly become a burden. Over time, the constant pull to soothe and affirm leaves the listener weary. True empathy does not require taking on another person’s pain; it asks for presence without possession. Skilled relational listeners learn to stay open without being overtaken.

To listen relationally is to recognize that communication is not merely an exchange of information but an encounter between human lives. It transforms listening from a polite gesture into a moral act that honors both the speaker’s story and the listener’s limits.

Behaviors you might observe:

Maintains gentle eye contact and open posture
Uses verbal affirmations such as “I understand” or “That sounds difficult”
Allows silence to stretch without rushing to fill it
Mirrors emotion through tone or facial expression
Notices changes in energy, mood, or body language and adjusts response accordingly

Literary Reflections:

In Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, characters listen less to words than to the emotional current beneath them. Connection emerges in the space between sentences.
Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard depicts the fatigue of constant empathy; everyone listens, yet no one is truly heard.
In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s insight arises from learning to listen without projection. Misunderstanding gives way to recognition.

Analytical Listening (Content-Oriented Listening)

Analytical listening seeks to understand before it judges. It is a methodical and often contemplative way of attending to information. Communication researchers describe this as content-oriented listening because it focuses on ideas, evidence, and reasoning rather than emotion or efficiency. The analytical listener’s question is, What is true here, and how do I know?

This orientation thrives in environments that prize depth of thought such as universities, courtrooms, laboratories, and newsrooms. Analytical listeners are comfortable with ambiguity. They prefer complexity to certainty and are willing to hold competing ideas in tension until clarity emerges. Their patience for uncertainty can feel unsettling to those who want quick answers, yet this restraint is precisely what allows analysis to deepen understanding.

Analytical listeners excel in situations that demand discernment. They attend to structure, logic, and supporting detail. They look for patterns in language, for assumptions buried inside arguments, and for evidence that distinguishes opinion from fact. They are often the ones who pause before responding, not because they are disengaged, but because they are still listening, not only to the speaker but to their own developing understanding.

Still, this style carries its own risks. The analytical listener may appear detached or overly cerebral. In a commitment to objectivity, they can miss the emotional undercurrents that shape how meaning is received. A purely analytical approach to human conversation can flatten what should be relational. Understanding the content of a message is not the same as understanding its impact.

The discipline of analytical listening reminds us that comprehension and empathy are not opposites but partners. Thought without empathy becomes sterile; empathy without thought becomes unmoored. The most effective communicators are those who can think critically without ceasing to care.

Behaviors you might observe:

Asks clarifying or probing questions before responding
Takes time to process before speaking
Analyzes the logic or structure of what is being said
References evidence, examples, or inconsistencies in arguments
Appears calm or neutral even during emotionally charged discussions

Literary Reflections:

In Twelve Angry Men, Juror Eight models analytical listening as moral discipline, withholding judgment until comprehension is complete.
T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock portrays a mind so devoted to precision that it loses the ability to act.
Orwell’s 1984 presents analytical listening under constraint, where discernment itself becomes an act of rebellion.

Conclusion

Listening represents a continuum of attentional choice. Each orientation, time-focused, task-focused, relational, and analytical, highlights a distinct way of organizing perception and constructing meaning. Together, they illustrate how listeners shape understanding through focus, habit, and value.

Within the transactional model of communication, meaning arises through interaction. Listener and speaker participate equally in that exchange, shaping one another’s interpretations as the dialogue unfolds. Listening functions as the center of communication, the place where awareness becomes understanding and understanding becomes relationship.

To study listening is to study connection itself. Every exchange of attention expands the shared field of meaning between people, allowing communication to do what it was designed to do: create understanding that endures beyond words.

Tag: Empathy

The Courage to Be Seen Thinking: Speaking Through Fear

Further Reading

The Four Types of Listening: Understanding the Art of Attention

Time-Focused Listening (Chronemic Listening)

Task-Focused Listening (Action-Oriented Listening)

Relational Listening (People-Oriented Listening)

Analytical Listening (Content-Oriented Listening)

Conclusion

Further Reading