 |
Feedback. Where do you learn it?. Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks, Absolute listening. How to help with the other person’s process
|
|
|
|
Feedback
When, by mutual agreement, the listening has stopped it is time for feedback. This means that each person takes a few minutes to say what it was like. The listener says something about what it was like to listen, and the talker says something about what it was like to be listened to. This is an important part of the process because valuable learning takes place here. Both listener and talker can check out what was helpful and what was not. It is surprisingly easy to misjudge how an experience feels to another person, and the feedback gives each one a chance to find out what was going on in the other while they were listening or talking.
After feedback, the roles are reversed so that the listener now becomes the talker and the first talker now listens. During the initial learning of the process this reversal is especially important so that the mutuality of listening is fully experienced. It is also good to do listening with many different persons so that its availability from lots of people is actually experienced, and so that the great variety in styles and possibilities of both listening and talking can be appreciated and learned about.
Where do you learn it?
A good place to begin to learn listening is in a beginning group with one or two experienced leaders (as we say more about in this section). The leaders explain the process, demonstrate listening, and give each person a chance to both listen and be listened to and then to give feedback to each other. In a group, a lot of learning takes place by watching others and from others' comments and questions as well as your own. After a few times in a beginning listening group most persons are ready to go into an intermediate group or an on-going listening group. In these groups, there is opportunity for intensive listening and talking, both in the group and in pairs, and for sharing more difficult issues and personal reactions. After some experience in an intermediate group, persons are usually ready to make individual arrangements on their own for listening and being listened to. Individual arrangements can and do occur, though, at any point in the learning process. Also, anyone with a pressing need to be listened to has an opportunity for that at any point, so that getting help has precedence over the usual learning activities.
Eugene Gendlin and Mary Hendricks, Absolute listening
How to help with the other person’s process
Absolute listening: this is not laying trips on people. Set aside a period of time when you only listen and say back the other person's thing, step by step, just as that person seems to have it at that moment. Never mix into it any of your own things or ideas, never lay on the other person anything that person didn't express. (If you do say anything people didn't tell you, make it clear that it's yours, not theirs. )
How to do that: either show that you understand exactly what the other person said or meant, or ask for a repetition or for clarification.
|
|
|
To show that you understood exactly: make a sentence or two which gets exactly at the personal meaning this person wanted to put across. This might be in your own words, usually, but use that person's own words for the touchy main things.
People need to hear you out loud, they need to hear that you got each step. Make a sentence or two for every main point they make, for each thing thy are trying to get across. (Usually, this will be for about every five or ten sentences of theirs. ) Don't just " let them talk, " but get with each thing that they feel and mean to say. Forget about whether you like what they feel or not, whether it's good or bad, and don't try to fix or change or improve it. Try to get the crux of it just exactly the way they mean it, and feel it.
Sometimes what people say is complicated, and you can't get what they say, and also what it means to them, all at once. First make a sentence or two about what they said (the crux of it as they meant it), and check that out with them. Let them correct it and add to it if they want to. Then also take in, and say back, what they have changed or added, until they agree that you have it just as they feel it. Then make another sentence to say what it means to them, or how they feel it.
Example: a person has been telling you about some intricate set of events, what some people did to them, and how and when, to put them down.
First you would say one or more sentences to state in words the crux of what they did as the person sees it. Then they correct some of how you said it, to get it more exactly. You then say back their corrections, for instance, " Oh, so it wasn’t that they all did that, but all of them agreed to it. ” Then they might add a few more things, which you again take in, and say back, more or less as they said them. Then, when you have it just right, make another sentence for the personal meaning or feeling, which that whole thing has. For instance, " And, what's really bad about it is that it's made you feel very put down. "
Other times what people tell about is obvious and all you need is one sentence which both sums up what they said, and the personal point of it. (For instance, " So the way they told you to go away made you feel very put down. ”)
If you don't understand what the person is saying, you get mixed up, or lost: there is a way to ask for repetition or clarification. Don't say, " I didn't understand any of it, " as this requires lots of hope and energy for the person to start all over again. Rather, take whatever bits you did understand, even if it was very vague or only the first bit, and make a sentence such as, “I do get that this is important to you, but I don’t get what it is, yet…", or, “I do get that this guy came in, and starts talking, but I lost you after that, can you tell me again from there? " Then say back bit by bit what the person now tells you, and don't let the person say more than you can take in, and say back, bit by bit.
How you know when you are doing it right: when people go further into their thing. For example, if the person says, " No, it's not like that, it’s more like… uh…", and then feels further into it to see how it actually feels, then you did it right. Your words may have been wrong, or may now sound wrong to the person even though they were very close to what the person said a moment before. But what matters is that your words led the person to feel further into the thing, so your words had the right result. Whatever the person then says, take that in and say it back. It's a step further into the thing.
|
|
|
Or the person may say, " Yes, that's right, and another thing is…” Again, here, what you said enabled the person to go further into the thing. Or, the person may sit silently, satisfied that you got everything up to now.
Or, the person may feel a release, a relaxing, a wholebodied " Yes, that's what it is, " a deep breath, a sigh, etc. Such moments occur now and then, and after them new or further steps come.
Any of these show that you are doing it right.
You can also tell when it is going right, by whether the person feels the slight but visible relaxation which comes whenever something one tries to say got across so one doesn't have to say that anymore. While a person is laying out a thing, or part of a thing, there is a tension, a holding of breath which may remain for several interchanges. When the crux of the thing which is being tried to be expressed is finally both said and exactly understood and responded to, there is a relaxation, like an exhaling of breath, as the person doesn't have to hold the thing in their body anymore. Then something further can come in. (It's important to let there be the silence which can come here for that seems like a long time, a minute or so, as they now have the inner body peace to let another thing come up. )
How you know when you did it wrong, and what to do about that: if a person says nearly the exact same thing over again, it means they feel you haven't got it yet. See what about what they are now saying differs from what you said. If nothing feels different, then say it again and add to it, " But that's not all, or that's not right, some way? "
If, as you respond, their face gets tight, tense, confused, they are trying to understand what you are saying (and you're only trying to say what they meant), so you must be doing it wrong, adding something in, or being too complicated, or not getting it. Stop and ask them again to say how it is, as they feel it.
If they change the subject (especially to something less meaningful or less personal) it means that they gave up on getting the more personal thing across right. You can interrupt and say something like, " I'm still with what you were just trying to say, about… I know I didn’t understand it right, but I want to. " Then say only the part of it you're sure of, and ask them to go from there.
If they get involved in what you said, or begin to speculate and discuss generalities, bring them back to the personal point they were at before. (You can first respond to the generalities if you like. ) Say something like, " You were saying. …, and I was trying to feel what it felt like to you. Tell me again. ”
You get no credit for saying something right, only for helping a person get further in touch with their thing, just as they feel it. This may occur when you don't get it right. Of course, as they correct you and go further into it, you will get it right sooner or later, it doesn't matter when, it can be the third or fourth try. People can get further into their things best, when another person is receiving or trying to receive each bit exactly as they have it, without additions, elaborations, or trips on it. There is a centeredness which is easy to recognize after a while, like a train on a track. It's easy to know when you're off, everything stops, gets tight or lost or confusing, what is said is up in the air instead of connected to how they feel it. If that happens, go back to the last point where the person was on solid track inside, and ask them to go from there.
|
|
|
When you first do this, repeat almost word for word what people say. This helps you see how powerfully helpful that is for people, how it lets them get deeper into their things than they can alone. It also lets you see how hard it is at first, to get what a person is trying to say, without messing into it, adding to it, fixing it, putting your own things into it. When you can do that, then you can omit repeating much of what they say, and mostly say back the crux only, and the personal meaning or feel of it.
To make it possible for yourself to get another person's thing without mixing your own into it, stop for a second and sense your own whole tangle of personal feelings, tensions, expectations, which are hovering all around you like an aura. Then clear this space. Collect each and every one of all that mass, and put it all in a bag, and then put the bag over to one side. This leaves a totally clean, open space. Out of this space you can listen. You will feel peaceful, waiting, alert, and probably slightly excited. What will the other person say into this waiting space which exists for nothing except to be spoken into? The space has no features, no landmarks, no colors, no decoration. It will be featured and shaped only by the other person. It will get the other person's colors, history, and shapes. The other person will word in the mountains, rivers, and valleys of his or her own intensely private existence, for you to hear. Very rarely is anyone offered such a space by another person. People hardly ever move over in themselves enough to let there be the space a person could exactly and clearly come into.
|
|
|
