Transformative Listening
Spring 2025
Welcome!
This is a leadership group for transformative listeners.
We will meet every Wednesday from March 19th to April 23rd at 3 pm PT/ 6 pm ET at this link.
To add this to your Google calendar, please use this link.
A summary topic for each session is outlined below. Resources and recordings will be available within 2 days of each meeting.
Program Details
Your power comes from creating the conditions that help people meet their goals–not fixing other people’s problems.
This group introduces a framework for creating change by teaching you to apply trauma-informed methods to hear the belief and emotion beneath a story. You’ll learn to identify habits of attention that are often the residue of prior pain, such as sexism, racism, discrimination, violence, poverty, or grief, even intergenerational.
Humans decide who and what to pay attention to based on our perception of threat. This program invites you to imagine:
What does it feel like to be in an environment where we do not feel threatened?
What does it take to create a non-threatening environment?
What becomes possible in the absence of threat?
Session 1
March 19th
How to apply a trauma-informed lens to what you hear
Resources
NICABM Details on Trauma (for the more research-focused side)
Sagely-Created resources
Relevant podcast episodes: On the Inner Critic, On Identifying What is Mine
Recording of our meeting for those who missed or for review
Session 2
March 26th
Asynchronous work due to schedule conflicts
Please review the videos in this section in preparation for our meeting on April 2nd.
Extra resources referred to in the videos are below:
Click here to read about compassion-based trauma healing therapies by the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine.
To explore more information about trauma and memory, see this page from NICABM: Trauma and Memory
Session 3
April 2nd
How to identify the presence of prior pain based on habits of attention
Summary of Today
We talked about the themes of balance and how to feel confident when dealing with a lot of emotion. We talked about what it takes to cut through the details to get to the core underneath. And we discussed three habits of attention - fixer, pilot, and judge. Here is a link to the quiz.
You had great questions, which is what these extra resources should respond to.
How do we not respond with a habitual or patterned perspective?
For this week, you can focus on just noticing the habit. Your own inner critic will likely show up and tell you you're right or wrong for feeling a certain way. That's fine, just don't listen to it as if it's a helpful or sophisticated voice. Also, there is a way forward from this work by doing somatic grounding work, so take a look at the grounding exercise in this section, recorded by my friend and colleague Robyn Smith, LCSW.
How do we deal with needing to show details and discuss details in our job but still focus on the core emotion?
It's not so much that we don't need details, just that they aren't the source of resolution. It's also possible to help someone feel love, compassion, and connection without knowing all the details of their prior trauma. In fact, the more you heal from a similar issue, for example, feeling excluded as a kid, the more other people with similar experiences will show up to learn from you how to heal.
How do I feel more confident in doing this work?
This is a matter of practice. Take a look at the video here that is a conversation with me and Robyn. She explains how a practice of paying attention to emotion works no matter what field you're in. You can get quite adept at it and, as you do, your confidence increases.
How to Think Like a Therapist - and why it's so useful!
Give yourself 10 minutes during the week and practice this grounding exercise. You are offering your body a felt sense of non-activation. Often, getting ourselves out of patterned responses involves body awareness.
Session 4
April 9th
How to apply your own healing in order to listen more deeply
Podcast Recommendations
1 - A link to our first podcast on grief. If this feels resonant to you, enjoy the 20 minute chat about deliberately and intentionally working with our own loss so that we are better at inclusion.
2 - The Gold Mine: What is mine? Remember this is a skill many of us don’t get a chance to develop and use. It’s not a norm but using this skill is something you can make normal.
3 - A link to our podcast about not punishing ourselves. This is about getting past the judge and how prior trauma, including intergenerational, might be the source of our confusion about punishment being necessary.
Session 5
April 16th
How to invite redirection without judgement
Themes:
Not fixing, judging, what it is to judge the judge
Experiences of noticing someone’s traumatic experience and working with it
Summary of questions about IDEAA and the transformative justice model
Session 6
April 23rd
How to encourage the imagining of new solutions
Themes
You can release reliance on other people's perception of you as a guide to determine if you are doing it right.
A focus on myself is primary. This helps me ask the question - what wants to be seen?
Having a network of peers helps us reduce the feeling that it's all on us to get it right.
When I have a lot of things to do, my inner critic is louder.
When Energy Runs Out
There are several fundamental tenants of the transformative listening approach. In this chapter, we offer you a brief explanation of each.
In this audio recording, we explain how the energy needed to push something away eventually runs out. Please listen and take a few moments to reflect on your experience.
Reflection Questions
Have you ever experienced a moment (either yours or another's) when the energy to keep avoiding something ran out?
Take a moment to write your thoughts on the concept of energy running out.
What makes you feel stable when you witness some type of “unraveling” or realization?
You, the Student
A second fundamental tenant of the transformative listening approach is to work as if a situation is teaching you. In this short audio, we explain how this keeps you in an open and curious position where it is easier to maintain a lack of judgement. You can more easily maintain an awareness of your own experience and you are less likely to feel victimized by what you witness.
Reflection Question
Name a moment when you learned from someone you were supposed to be helping.
A Method to Find Answers
How focusing on the process rather than the solution helps us arrive at more effective answers.
Reflection Questions
Have you ever thought you knew how something should go and then realized you were totally off? How did this feel?
What if it takes a miracle?
This is a last lesson on the idea that what we are healing from might, in fact, be so big that it takes a miracle. This isn't a miracle defined by some random or unpredictable act of a divine force, but rather an idea, a feeling of love, a sense of connection or belonging, or an experience that is so deep and transformative that we have yet to imagine it. There are many benefits to working in the world this way, which is why I end the Transformative Listening program with this short message. :-)
Agreements
Sagely agrees to keep all information you share confidential.
Sagely uses visualizations, meditations, and case studies that are specifically designed for our groups. They build off of each other and require some instruction before use. We ask that you not share these materials. If you feel that a particular item might be of use in your organization, please contact us about adapting it for your setting.
Sagely keeps recordings of sessions on this password-protected site. We ask that you do not share recordings with anyone outside the group. We ask that you keep all information that your group members share confidential. Thank you.