Listening

How Can I Help? is the title of a very concise and profound book for people who want to know and understand what constitutes helping another person. We all face the question at many points during each day. What is needed in this situation? What can I do? How can I help?

There is a chapter on listening. The power of simply being present, taking in what is being shared by another person and allowing it to permeate one’s own being. I believe it is in the sharing of the experience that help comes. Mostly we think we have to solve the problem, or make it better, or make the feelings go away. We seldom recognize that “being with” the emotion, or “holding space” for the person experiencing the feelings, is helping in and of itself.

I once held my daughter after she fell off a playground structure. She was crying intensely. Screaming for her mother. Couldn’t stand the pain; was squirming and shaking. I checked for any serious trauma that would warrant the hospital and in the absence of broken bones and impaired breathing capacity, I held her. I listened to the cries. I did not pat her back or even tell it would be okay. I shared the space with her, loving her through my touch. Sure enough, she found her way through the pain and it began to subside. As she slowed her breathing, stopped the tears naturally, she spoke. She said, “I’m done”. A moment later she was back in action, attempting another time to navigate the very same swing from which she had just fallen.

This is the paradigm of trusting in people’s capacity to navigate and process their emotional life. We have the natural skill within. Sometimes, many times, listening with care is the ultimate help we can offer.

TRY: Listen to another’s emotion without doing anything to take it away. Let it fill the room. Allow yourself to be touched by it. Breathe. Trust this person to navigate their way through to the other side.