Are You Really Listening? Three Questions That Can Change Your Relationships

One of the most painful things a partner or friend can say to someone with ADHD is this. You do not listen. You do not care.

The hard truth is that for many adults with ADHD those two things have become tangled together in the minds of the people who love them. Not listening reads as not caring. And that is a wound that goes deep, especially for someone who does care, deeply, but whose brain makes sustained attention genuinely harder than it looks.

If this sounds familiar you are not alone. And there are real, practical skills that can help.

A Book That Made Me Think Differently About Listening

Kate Murphy's book You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters is not a book specifically about ADHD. But when I read it I kept thinking about my clients. Murphy makes the case that listening is one of the most undervalued skills in modern life. We live in a culture that rewards talking, performing, and broadcasting. Actually attending to another person, with curiosity and without an agenda, is rare. And it is a skill that can be learned.

Murphy offers three questions to ask yourself after every conversation. Simple questions. But for an ADHD brain they can be genuinely transformative because they give you something concrete to focus on during the conversation and reflect on afterward.

The Three Questions

How did that person feel about what we were talking about?

This is the emotional attunement question and it is the hardest one for many people, not just those with ADHD. Attending to someone's emotional state while also following the content of what they are saying requires a kind of divided attention that does not come naturally. But noticing even one emotional signal, a tightening around the eyes, a drop in energy, a sudden brightness, can change the whole quality of a conversation.

What was most concerning to that person?

This is the empathy question. If you cannot answer it, the other person likely did not feel heard. For adults with ADHD who are often told they are self centered or checked out, this question is a quiet corrective. It redirects attention outward. What matters to them right now? What are they worried about? Just asking yourself the question during the conversation begins to shift where your attention goes.

What did I just learn about that person?

If you cannot answer this after a conversation, one of two things happened. Either you were not listening, or you did not give the other person enough space to talk. For ADHD brains, conversations can move fast. Your own thoughts arrive quickly, sometimes before the other person has finished speaking. Slowing down enough to actually learn something new about the person in front of you is a practice. And like all practices it gets easier with repetition.

Why These Questions Work Especially Well for ADHD Brains

ADHD affects working memory. That is the brain's ability to hold information in mind while doing something else with it. In a conversation this can mean that what someone said thirty seconds ago has already faded, making it hard to track the thread, respond thoughtfully, or remember what was discussed afterward.

Murphy's three questions work as a scaffold. They give your attention somewhere specific to land during the conversation. Instead of trying to hold everything at once you are listening for three things. What am I learning? What concerns them? How are they feeling? That structure helps a brain that struggles with open ended attention find its footing.

I also recommend keeping the three questions on a post it note. On your desk, your bathroom mirror, or somewhere you will see it before conversations that matter. For ADHD brains novelty helps. The first few times you use this it will feel fresh and interesting and that is exactly when ADHD brains are most engaged.

One More Skill Worth Adding

Russell Barkley and Christine Benton, in their book Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, describe another powerful listening strategy. After your conversation partner has finished speaking, pause and paraphrase what you heard before you respond.

This does two things. It slows you down, which gives a slower processor more time to catch up and respond more thoughtfully. And it signals to the other person that you were actually listening. That signal alone can begin to repair the damage done by years of feeling unheard.

Together these two approaches, Murphy's three questions and Barkley's paraphrasing practice, give ADHD adults a concrete, practical way to show up differently in their relationships. Not by trying harder in a vague general sense. But by having specific tools to reach for.

What I Have Noticed Personally and in My Practice

Kate Murphy makes a fascinating point in her book. All of us, not just people with ADHD, have a tendency to go on autopilot in conversations, particularly with the people we hear from most often. Our brains nonconsciously conserve energy by reducing attention to what feels familiar, and the result is that we can find ourselves physically present in a conversation while mentally somewhere else entirely. This is not laziness or indifference. It is simply how the brain manages its resources.

I notice this in my own personal life with the people closest to me, and when I make the effort to come back to these three questions I find myself genuinely more present with them. The difference is not just internal. It shows up in the quality of the conversation and in how connected the other person feels afterward.

That is also what I see happening with my clients when I introduce these questions. Something shifts in the room. They feel hopeful, not because the skill is sophisticated or difficult to learn, but because it is concrete and immediately usable. For adults with ADHD who have spent years being told they do not listen or do not care, having a specific and practical tool to reach for is not a small thing. It is a genuine pathway back into connection with the people who matter most to them.

A Note on Relationships and ADHD

The strain that listening difficulties put on relationships is one of the most common things I see in my practice. Partners feel invisible and unheard. Friends begin to wonder whether the person with ADHD is truly interested in them. And the person with ADHD is often genuinely surprised by this feedback, because in their own experience they were present. They were there. They simply did not catch everything, and nobody ever gave them a concrete way to change that.

These skills do not resolve every relationship challenge that comes with ADHD. But they open a door that has sometimes been closed for a very long time. And occasionally opening that door is enough to remind both people why they wanted to be in the room together in the first place.

Ready to Try It?

After your next conversation try asking yourself three questions. What did I just learn about that person? What was most concerning to them? How did they feel about what we were talking about? Write them on a post it note and keep it somewhere visible. Practice the paraphrase before you respond. Notice what shifts.

If you are curious about ADHD therapy and how it can help you build practical skills like these while also addressing the shame that has built up around them over the years, I invite you to reach out for a free 20-minute phone consultation. You do not have to keep navigating this alone.

Sources

Barkley, R. A., & Benton, C. M. (2010). Taking Charge of Adult ADHD: Proven Strategies to Succeed at Work, at Home, and in Relationships. Guilford Press.

Murphy, K. (2019). You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters. Celadon Books.