Speaker: Being heard vital

Humans have a need to be listened to.

This is the main point psychiatrist Mark Goulston wanted to convey at the latest SCV Suicide Prevention, Postvention and Wellness Committee meeting Thursday.

Speaking emphatically, Goulston talked about using intuitive listening to better get through to those feeling lost and disconnected.

The committee invited Goulston, a nationally renowned psychiatrist from UCLA published in Psychology Today, Fast Company and Harvard Business Review, to talk about ways to connect with individuals struggling with suicidal thoughts.

Goulston was there to address mass school shootings and their relationship to suicide, said Larry Schallert, chair of the committee and assistant director of Student Health and Wellness/ Mental Health at College of the Canyons.

Goulston emphasized that humans have needs that must be expressed. One of those is listening.

“People just want to be listened to,” he said. “They don’t want to feel close to shattering all the time. Sometimes they’ll fixate on something, and that becomes their way of saving themselves.”

The key, Goulston said, was to go in with “targeted empathy.” Making strong eye contact with a person and asking them to talk about their pain could increase their oxytocin levels, he said. This neurotransmitter could regulate social interaction and help the individual feel connection again.

Goulston’s feedback was wellreceived by those attending, and Schallert thanked him for speaking on the field.

“My big takeaway is there are ways to get through to people,” he said. “And we can stimulate the oxytocin in them.”

Goulston is pioneering a field of psychiatric study called empathology, he said, which would emphasize refining intuition and people’s ability to relate to each other to better study psychological phenomenon.