Active listening Active listening is a technique of communicating acceptance, empathy, and understanding for the experience of another person. Rather than judging, reassuring, criticizing, suggesting, minimizing, analyzing, diagnosing, praising, questioning, or humoring somebody when they present us with a difficult feeling or thought they are having, active listening suggests that we simply empathize and validate that we accept the other persons feelings. Often this does much more to bring about a resolution much faster than any positive or negative reinforcement. for example (this is a story from a parent who used the technique with his daughter) : -------- Michelle, aged three and a half, began to whine incessantly when mom left her in the car with dad while she went shopping. I want my mommy was repeated dozens of times. Dad reassured her that mommy would be back in just a few minutes, but she was inconsolable, and began to cry loudly, now asking for her doll (which was not in the car) and clutching her blanket. After every reassurance failed to pacify her, dad remembered the technique of active listening. You really miss mommy when shes away. Michelle nodded. You dont like it when she goes places without you. Michelle nodded again, still clutching her blanket, looking scared and huddled like a lost kitten. When you miss mommy, you want your dolly. Vigorous nodding from Michelle, who grips he blanket less tightly. But you dont have your dolly here and you miss her too. Then, as if by magic, she stopped crying, dropped her blanket, and came to sit in the front seat with dad, pleasantly asking questions about the other people she saw in the parking lot. (From the book Parent Effectiveness Training) -------- When people feel as if their emotions are being validated and accepted, they can much more quickly move past them and grow from them. When others try to divert or deny our emotional experience, it only strengthens our resolve in its reality and importance. I feel as though this basic principal also applies when we are dealing with our own emotions. We need to be active listeners when it comes to how we are feeling about something, rather than dictators. Rather than judging, reassuring, criticizing, suggesting, minimizing, analyzing, diagnosing, praising, questioning, or humoring ourselves, we simply need to accept out emotional experience as it is, whether we believe the reasons for it are ultimately rational or not. Only by accepting its reality can we learn from it and move past it (if it is indeed an unpleasant emotional experience we wish to move past) This is what I was getting at in my earlier threads about the value of feeling anger. We need to be realists when it comes to our emotions. By fully accepting and allowing myself the space to be angry when I am indeed angry, Ive found that anger is now a much smaller part of my life. Its no longer a thing I run from, but an experience I sometimes have, and acknowledge and honor, before going back to my generally happy state. A happy state which, I am convinced, only exists because I have given myself the space to experience unhappy states as well, and have that be okay.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 18:38:22 +0000
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