nobody listens to me

When nobody listens to you, this prayer can help you find God’s help and guidance to feel heard.    

It is extremely frustrating when you feel like nobody listens to you. There are many times when we feel we’re not being heard by doctors, bosses, coworkers, family members, friends, repairmen,  technicians, government workers, classmates and neighbors.

Nobody Listens to Me Prayer

Dear Lord,

I feel like nobody listens to me.  It’s so frustrating and I’m desperate to be heard because I feel that  what I have to say is important. 

I feel isolated, depressed, worried, rejected and helpless.   Sometimes I feel like giving up trying make somebody listen. 

Thank you for listening to me right now.  It’s great that you always hear me, no matter what.  I know you’re listening because the Bible says, “Before they call, I will answer; while they are still speaking, I will hear.”  (Isaiah 65:25 NIV) 

You understand how I feel because there are times when nobody listens to you, either.    

That seems strange, but the Bible tells us, “For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes.  Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”  (Acts 28:27 NIV)

I now claim the grace of listening hearts in my life.  I stand firm on the healing power of being heard.  I affirm the ability of others to respond and act on what I say.   

Please guide me how to best communicate.  Show me one person I can talk to who will listen to me, someone who will get what I’m saying. 

I pray that you will give me the strength and determination to not give up until I’m finally heard. 

Give me wisdom about what to say, where to say it and when to say it.

When my emotions get out of hand when I’m trying to be heard, settle me down so my words will come out right.  Keep me from being too loud, saying things I will regret or clamming up and running away. 

Improve my ability to listen.  Help me welcome and encourage others who are struggling to be heard.

Thank you so much for listening, God.  I now sit quietly ready to hear your wisdom.

 Amen.

About This Nobody Listens to Me Prayer

My nightmare about nobody listening  

I wrote this prayer out of my own frustrations about not being heard.  In fact, the situation got so bad that one night I had a nightmare that woke me up sweating. 

In my nightmare I saw kids darting back and forth across a busy superhighway, playing “chicken” with the cars.  I was speeding along in a car, scared to death we were going to hit them.  I tried telling the other people in the car that this was a horribly dangerous situation and someone was going to get killed.  Nobody listened.  I got out my cell phone trying to alert the police.  It wouldn’t work.  I asked a lady on the roadside to help and she acted like the kids were just having fun.  I awoke in a terror and couldn’t go back to sleep.

My real life problem that felt like no one listens to me.  

Although it was only a dream  I realized that my subconscious was trying to work out something upsetting that was happening to me in real life.  I was having serious technological problems affecting the ability of our visitors to find the Prayer Ideas website and our outreach was tanking.   This had been going on for months.    

I’m not a techie, so I was at the mercy of an outside contractor to the fix problems. 

I kept sending the contractor alarming emails we were getting from Google about all kinds of site errors.  They did things, but the problems didn’t go away.  I kept telling them it wasn’t fixed.  They kept telling me it was OK.      

It was like going to a doctor with a set of strange symptoms and they tell you there’s nothing wrong.  You go home and symptoms are still there.  You go in again and you feel like the doctor’s not really listening to you because they have already decided they know better than you do what’s wrong. 

The things that made it hard to be heard

In my tech problem, there were a lot of barriers to communication.  Here’s a list of the types of communication problems you might experience.    

Communicating entirely by email.  I didn’t have a chance to ask questions and techies are very brief in their emails back. 

I only partially understand websites.  I had a lot of gaps in my understanding of how websites work and they, being the experts, seemed to disregard my ideas and thoughts because of it.   

I knew when something was wrong with my website better than they did.  I had worked with my website every day for years and I kept trying to tell them to look at the long term statistics, how things had plunged not just the past week which happened to be just a bad as the week before when the same problems were going on.

They seemed to get tired of my constant emails.  Maybe they thought I got a little pesky with my repeated emails.  I guess when you keep saying “listen to me ”over and over people stop listening.

I was communicating with multiple people.  The emails were being copied to 3 or 4 different people and everyone had a specialty so they only looked at the problem from their own narrow viewpoint and figured somebody else would answer me.        

They seemed busy with other things.  I felt they didn’t take the time to really read and understand what I said.  They were too busy.   

Other reasons that nobody listens to me.

This is only a short list of reasons nobody listens.  Here’s a sample of a few others. 

People feeling you or your message aren’t important. 

People not accepting what you’re saying because it would prove them wrong. 

What you’re saying would make them do something they don’t feel like doing.   

In the case of the Bible, people didn’t listen to God because people wanted to run their own lives the way they wanted to.    

Secrets to getting God’s help when nobody listens to me

Make an honest cry for help. 

I began my prayer process that eventually solved my problem at 2 AM after my nightmare.  I told God that I desperately needed his help.  I have found that’s the only authentic place to start, upset, fearful, angry, in great need of help.   That first prayer was more like, “I can’t handle this, nobody is listening and I’m feeling awful.”   In fact, during this time I often found myself praying a one sentence prayer, “God, I’m a mess” about my emotions and feelings of helplessness.

Meditate on what God can do. 

I found that before I could pray thoroughly about not being heard I needed to look at what I believed God could do in the realm of enabling listening. 

A few days earlier my friend had asked me to pray for her when she went to a cardiologist concerning some severe problems with breathing.

Following her appointment she emailed me the following praise report, “The doctor took 35 minutes to really listen to me.  I had typed up one and a half pages of questions for him and he patiently answered each one.”    

Although the doctor’s visit ended with a “wait and see” diagnosis, my friend felt great after the appointment.  Why? Not because she had been cured, but because she had been heard. 

Write it out logically

I work out my problems on paper in my journal, so I recorded the whole story of my friend.  After I wrote it, I had reaffirmed in my heart and mind that listening is indeed healing and it can indeed take place.

After this God seemed to bring to mind Bible verses to me about how he always hears us.  I used it in the prayer I wrote for you.

See your problem as one we all share.  

After recording my friend’s story I realized that if I was having this problem, others might be having problems being heard, too.  So I decided to write a prayer in my  journal that I could use in the future and that I could share with you.

Keep praying

I started by telling God about my feelings, claiming promises from the Bible and asking for help in being heard.  The prayer you see here is a polished version.  The one in my journal had things marked out and didn’t even come to a good solid resolution. 

Actions to consider after your prayer that nobody listens to me. 

Don’t give up trying to be heard.  

Keep trying!  In my situation, I stopped thinking about what I did or didn’t know.  I trusted my feelings that things still weren’t fixed.   I sent out more emails and asked my tech team to send me a list of everything they had done so far.  I asked them to set up a conference call with me so we could get on the same page.

Find someone who will listen

My son runs a successful website.  I don’t like to take up his time, but I decided to ask him if he would be willing to look over the “symptom list” of my site and tell me what he thought needed doing.   He came up with a list of things that I sent to my tech team.  They hadn’t tried any of them yet.  And one turned out to be key to solving a good percentage of the problems.

Another of my sons became a huge asset to me by helping explain to me things like search consoles I didn’t know anything about.  I was able to run ideas by him to see if they made any sense. 

Seek more information for other sources  

I went online asking questions about specific issues involved.  I upped my understanding of website trouble shooting.   I upped my understanding of technical terms. 

I would add a word of caution to make sure your source is legit.  When we go online to self-diagnose our illnesses, we need to keep in mind we could be wrong in our conclusions and also the source we’re reading may not be reliable.    

Be hopeful    

As a result of prayer I felt like God had guided me to take some simple steps to help me not only feel heard but to also be able to hear back more actively, with more knowledge and with more confidence.  When my son came up with several things my tech team tried with success, I felt like I had been let out of a mental prison of worry.

Improve your communication skills

There are many ways you can work on improving your communication skills.  These include classes and webinars, self help books and organizations such as toastmasters.      

Learn to communicate with God

Prayer is excellent way to feel heard since God is always available to listen.  In addition to saying things to God, learn how to hear his replies and directions.

Improve your listening skills

Practice really listening to others.  Good listeners set aside whatever they are doing when someone is talking to them.  They make eye contact and add feedback such as nodding of the head or making appropriate comments or asking relevant questions.

I always love it when a certain woman is in a group I’m speaking to.  She smiles and frequently nods her head and I feel like she’s really hearing and appreciating what I’m saying.   

Join a support group or a small sharing group

Support groups are places where people struggling with similar issues go to be heard and to hear others.  People in support groups listen better because they understand from their own experience where you’re coming from.    

Small groups in churches are places where people can relate to each other on a deeper level by sharing their thoughts and feelings with each other.   

Overcome loneliness and isolation

If you live alone or are isolated from others at work, you may be experiencing unmet needs for someone to talk to.  Everyone needs a sounding board.  Sometimes you just need to say things out loud to help work through them.  Ask God to show you someone to communicate with on a regular basis.  And sometimes pets can stand in when there’s no one else to talk to.     

Seek professional help when needed  

If you are in a situation where communication has completely broken down and no on listens to you, it’s time to seek professional help.  In business situations this might mean working with a supervisor or a mediation expert to help both sides hear each other.  In personal situations, a psychologist, counselor or clergy person might give insights into solving communication problems.

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Copyright Karen Barber 2019.  All rights reserved.