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2. Getting lost. 3A. Adding, and 3B. Not correcting
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2. Getting lost
George: " It seems like my life these days is just a total jumble. There's my schoolwork - I'm depressed about all the work I have to do because I'm not sure whether I want to stay in school. And my dorm isn't helping any - the people there are really cold and distant. And this girl I'm involved with… God, I just don't know. Sometimes I really enjoy being with her and sometimes she just turns me off, and I don't know why. "
Patsy: " Uh… you… uh… I am afraid I've lost that - could you repeat it? "
There are several parts to this problem. In saying afterwards how she felt being the Listener, Patsy reported feeling confusion about what she should do: " He was going on and on and I didn't know whether I should stop him. I was losing what he said but I thought maybe he needed to go on. " George said: " I didn't know whether I should stop and wait for a reflection or what. " It's not easy to say what went wrong here.
One thing that could have happened was, George could have stopped for a reflection after each sentence or each " thing. " After people get used to being Listened to and are more tuned in to their inner processes, their words about themselves seem to come out in manageable parts. Or they find out that they don't need the whole thing reflected, but maybe just the last part. They could know this about themselves and could say so when they sit down to be Listened to. I tell people that perhaps the most important thing to learn first is how they personally like to be Listened to. But in order to learn that, they should try Listening and being Listened to using the most basic, strict Listening technique. So, the next time George is Listened to, he should try stopping after each thing.
Now, what could Patsy have done in the problem situation, given that George did not seem to be stopping? She could have stopped him, saying, " Uh… could I try reflecting just that much? " To do this does seem to be interfering with the Focusser's process in some way, but it is important for the Listener to feel she is hanging in there, especially in beginner's Listening when nobody is too sure about his process anyway. We leave open the option for the Focusser to reply, " No, I need to go on, " if he really does.
Another thing Patsy could have done, after being bowled over by a flood of stuff that was too much for her to give back, would be to say, " I got the part about your life being a jumble, but I got lost in the rest, and I really do want to understand it. " This way George would hear back part of what he said, he would know that Patsy was trying to stay with him, and he would have the option of whether to repeat it, say it another way, or go on.
Finally, there is something that I could have done in this situation. As soon as George's part started getting pretty long, 1 could have interrupted gently and said, " Now, that's a lot. How about giving Patsy a chance to see if she can reflect that much? " There are problems with this, too, of course. One time I tried it and the Listener (someone who had never Listened before) asked if it wasn't his prerogative to stop it if it got to be too much? I said, “Well, yes... ” He said, " Well, she can continue, because I'm getting it just fine. " And by God, he was! He gave a fine reflection. So, there are no easy solutions to this problem.
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3A. Adding, and 3B. Not correcting
Eloise: " I'm worried about a thing that happens to me when I'm with people I really care about. I get very anxious about their reactions to me. ”
Abner: " You really want to please these people and so you're worried about their reactions to you. "
Eloise: " I get so anxious that I… (etc. )
Two things are going wrong here. Abner has added something to Eloise's thing. It may be a logical continuation to being anxious around people you care about that you really want to please them, but it ain't necessarily so and Eloise hasn't said it yet. It's hard to give a reflection that adds nothing at all to what the Focusser has said; maybe Abner has a similar problem that he can't help thinking about and he has trouble sorting out his feelings from Eloise’s. This is understandable and needs working on but it's not disastrous - yet. Where the trouble really starts is in Eloise's treatment of Abner's response. If she is using his responses in the most productive way - that is, checking each one with her feeling to see how they fit - she will immediately reject a response that doesn't fit her feeling. In this case she would say something like, " Well, I don’t know about wanting to please them. That may be true but that's not what I'm with right now. It's that I…” and so on.
This is important. Let people realize from the very beginning that the burden of power and responsibility is on the one being Listened to. It's up to her to throw out any response she doesn't like: additions, questions, interpretations, opinions - anything that would distract her from getting into her feeling. It's up to her to ask for more or fewer or different kinds of responses, depending on what she needs. This follows from the fact that she is the only one who can keep track of her feeling. This means the Listener doesn't have to get too uptight about doing absolutely perfect reflecting - of which there's no such thing, anyway.
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