The Skill of Listening

As a Gestalt psychotherapist in training, i find the following as a most useful tool in all the relationships i have in life, and a reminder of the skill which it seems most people lack -

The Skill of Listening.

When i ask you to listen and you start giving advice you have not done what i asked.

When i ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why i should not feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings.

When i ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me - strange as that may seem.

Listen! All i ask is that you listen - just hear me. I am not helpless. Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.

When you do something for me that i can and need to do for myself, you are contributing to my fear and weakness.

But when you accept as a simple fact that i do feel what i feel, no matter how irrational, then i can quit trying to convince you and actually get to the business of understanding what is behind my feeling.

When that is clear the answers will come to me eventually and i don't need advice. Feelings make sense when you know what lies behind them........

oh wifey..... do you see this thread....


My wife hears me, but she doesn't listen :shk:

I tell her things and then a week or month later it comes up again and I'm like.. we had this discussion, I told you ... blah blah blah...

It doesn't matter though... in the end, everything works out.