What is non-judgement?

Non-judgement is a way of listening to people (and even to ourselves!) where we remove agenda and opinion, all that’s left is pure listening. Learning non-judgement is deeply uncomfortable for most people, because most of our opinions and agendas happen without our awareness or even our conscious choice! So non-judgement requires lots of practice and reflection to develop. Like anything worthwhile, it needs plenty of both time and intention.

What are the benefits of non-judgement?

Countless industries have proven that any time people communicate (like in counselling, sales, leadership etc), non-judgement can offer the following;

• Removes barriers to empathy
• Encourages disclosure
• Destroys shame
• Creates psychological safety
• Fosters trust
• Brings role clarity
• Relieves distress
• De-escalates conflict

Is non-judgement effective?

Yes. Non-judgement has been proven to improve outcomes countless times in countless situations. As a form of listening to others and listening to yourself, cultivating non-judgement provides many benefits to mental health and when connecting with others.

How is non-judgement so effective?

People respond so well to non-judgement because they can be more honest and open. Even about things they might not realise they normally deceive on, for example how someone might say ‘I’m fine’ even when they’re clearly not. It might not be that they actively want to lie, but they might have complex thoughts, values and beliefs that won’t get revealed if they sense your agenda. Perhaps their Feeling Mind learned from a young age to hide or protect others from their emotions (very common in those who grew up with chronic invalidation).

When your counterpart can feel you don’t have an agenda or opinions, they feel more welcome to express themselves. Imagine sharing a canvas together. They have more room to paint on it as gently or as boldly as they like because there’s less of your paint (opinions and agenda aka judgements) on the canvas (aka conversation).

This makes non-judgement particularly important for any field where people help other people. For example coping with crisis, healing trauma, sales and leadership just to name a few.

Where does non-judgement come from?

Non-judgement comes from the world of counseling. Like psychology but very focused on connection in a ‘power with’ (new school) rather than ‘power over’ (old school) kind of way. The difference is clear when you imagine Sigmund Freud, sitting behind you with a pen and pad while you open up about your childhood. The dynamic is ‘top down’, where all the power is resting behind the expert and the patient is just a lowly sexually repressed peasant (no wonder why there’s a stigma to getting therapy!). Compare Freud to a therapist nowadays, you can see them directly and there’s much more chance for both of you to be real and therefore grow a genuine connection.

Non-judgement was started by people (like Carl Rogers) who basically said no to the psychiatric model. They were tired of thinking about people like patients, trying to squeeze them into diagnoses and label them as this or that. They believed that by treating people like people (complex, conflicted, emotional) and making sure the relationship with the therapist had the right signs – like openness, vulnerability, boundaries and trust – things would end up way better.

Why is it so hard to apply non-judgement well?

In order to do something about our judgements we need to become aware of them. This can be very uncomfortable and even distressing, particularly because we start to judge our judgements! The first layer then, is to notice our judgements and learn to accept them. It’s very normal for people to find this confronting and discomforting, but you probably know that as you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have (or want to have) courage. After learning to recognise and accept our judgements we can move deeper into acceptance of other stuff, and integrate the memories, projections and other baggage we uncover as we go.

A lot of people get burnt trying to go through this process because they just don’t have enough supports around them, or came at it with the wrong attitude (I should xyz).

If non-judgement is so good, why don’t medical systems practice it?

Simple answer is that organising principles like labels and diagnoses help systems run efficiently, in practice the system’s need for efficiency balances against our humanitarian capacity for empathy. Read on for more detail.

Let’s take a quick history detour and I promise it’ll give rich context for the answer.

Mental hospitals were amazing when they first happened because they gave society a way to cope with rising amounts of crime and insanity that made streets more safe. Not long after that people were getting the homosexuality electrocuted out of them… Solutions becoming problems.

Pharmaceuticals were amazing when they first happened because they gave therapists hope this mysterious, confusing thing (PTSD we now call it) could be cured! Now we have epidemics of addiction to pharmaceutical drugs… Solutions becoming problems.

CBT was amazing when it first happened because it moved us away from seeing people purely as the result of reward and punishment, and recognised that their own thoughts and cognition affect behaviour too! Now we have an ocean full of people drowning in shallow therapies… Solutions becoming problems.

One side effect of systems is they impose a way of thinking on professionals, same in any industry. In medicine though, if you want to help your patient, you might actually need to diagnose them before certain support can begin. Plus, legislation must hold you accountable if something goes wrong!

This affects how you see and treat people, who then feel like shit because they sense your agenda (eg. ‘Anyone else want to deal with the risky patient?’). Just ask anyone who’s tried to kill themselves how they felt being ‘processed’ by a hospital. Often times people struggling and those supporting them fall into a feedback loop of judgement and behaviour in a race to the bottom.

This way of agenda-driven diagnostic thinking in professionals makes testing, marking and educating way easier. Universities can scale education to more people. The cost is accidentally spreading ways of thinking and behaving that might not be ideal (usually called ‘pathologising’, basically treating people like their feelings don’t matter).

There’s been a paradigm shift in suicidology recently to move away from risk oriented frameworks toward coping oriented frameworks. This represents a massive shift in medical thinking which will take a while to filter through to the mainstream. For example government initiatives, projects and legislation takes years to get written and passed let-alone understood and implemented. So even though the cutting edge info is out there, change comes slowly.

Does non-judgement mean being a doormat?

Non-judgement doesn’t mean you don’t actively defend your boundaries, in fact it’s the opposite. The limits of what you are willing to tolerate are up to you to navigate. Whether it’s your partner raising their voice, your boss using intimidation tactics, or your client threatening with violence, finding the right balance of expressing versus defending your boundaries will rely on how well you can see yourself and how well you’ve defined the role you’ve agreed to play (counselor, coach, mentor, leader, psychiatrist, friend, crisis supporter, etc.).

For example, a surprising effect of learning non-judgement is often finding out how our lack of boundaries are a result of our own agenda. If we struggle to say no to someone in need and then feel resentful or burnt by helping, observing our deeply held beliefs may reveal our innate desire to fulfil a caregiver role. That desire will show up implied in everything we say and do, including the sense of not having healthy boundaries.

How can I get started learning non-judgement today?

There are some excellent resources out there! I’ll list a few here, if you want to sign up to my email list I’m also happy to share all the best ideas and lessons to help you apply non-judgement.

Blue Knot Foundation is a world class resource where you can learn about complex trauma. They have top quality information applying the cutting edge understanding of trauma and answering the critical question; how can we treat people with complex trauma better? Click here to see their resources page.

The Skilled Helper by Gerard Egan is a fantastic intro book to applying Non-Judgement. The ethos of the entire ‘person centred’ way of thinking is baked into it from top to bottom, it has macro concepts and zooms in all the way to micro-skills. If you want to develop your listening skills this will supercharge your progress and there’s also a workbook floating about online too.

MoodGym is a website where you can learn to observe your thoughts. It’s a gym for your emotions, applying the lessons of cognitivism and cognitive behavioural therapy to create a simple, free, online course people can access as they like. It was started by professors at Australian National University and if you’ve used it before 2019 I highly recommend putting aside another five minutes a day to revisit the content, it’s had big upgrades!

The Isha Foundation does incredible work across the globe teaching people to find a non-judgement of sorts through many spiritual practices. If wisdom and enlightenment do it for you, this is a great website for incredibly transformative meditations and so many other powerful resources. Click here to see the founder discuss closed mindedness from a fresh, surprising perspective.

The Gottman Institute is a powerhouse of marriage and relationship research, whose impact is basically immeasurable. Their work has impacted every relationship counselling office in the world and they have amazing resources on their website for free, such as the personal values inventory to help gain more self awareness amongst so many others. Click here for the FAQ about their research.

And of course, you can join my email list! I write about personal development and self awareness regularly because it’s my mission to help people remove excuses for shit communication.