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Action with the person. Ferdinand van der Veen, Dialoguing: a way of learning to relate constructively in close relationships
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Action with the person
It helps often to let a person into your life more, to take them with you to things you care about, to let them watch or be part of interactions with others you are involved in, to include them in even if they can't say anything much or participate, to show them places you like, etc. (None of this can be real if it doesn't feel OK to you. )
It helps to go with the person to and into his activities, situations, places and with people he is involved in.
It is much better to go where a person is, or let them come to where you live, than always meeting them in some " Center" or neutral or official place.
If he has to do something hard, it's good to have someone, maybe you, along.
No one should depend just on you alone, let him meet other people you know, or call someone else in to help with the person.
The person should be present when he is being discussed by people trying to help him. It's heavy to be straight in front of someone you're trying to help, but it's shit not to.
A person's need for help with jobs, places to live, situations, etc., should be part of what help is about. Help is about whatever he needs help with. It’s no good to separate " psychological" problems out from the rest, they aren't separate in a person’s life.
Ferdinand van der Veen, Dialoguing: a way of learning to relate constructively in close relationships
Nonjudgmental Dialogue, or Dialoguing for short, is a readily usable and uncomplicated method for increasing understanding, acceptance and respect between persons and for helping to resolve conflicts. It is especially valuable in close relationships like couples, parent-child relationships and friendships. Dialoguing has certain ground rules and skills which, if followed by both persons, are likely to clarify feelings and ideas, to clear up misunderstandings, to increase closeness and satisfaction, and to stop habitual nonproductive ways of relating. The basic skills may be applied by only one person in a relationship, but that is more difficult and less effective than if both persons learn to use the method together.
My purpose in this paper is to describe the essentials of Dialoguing and to encourage its use by helpers and in therapeutic groups and communities. In my estimation, a method which can deal directly and systematically with important relationships is urgently needed. I see a widespread inability by therapists and groups to deal effectively with relationship issues, even though the most painful and troubling experiences typically happen in relationships. Personal growth often appears to occur at the expense of relationship failure. In my experience, new interpersonal skills are often required before a relationship is able to deal with its problems. But methods for teaching such skills to relationships have not been generally available, and have been ignored in the prevalent sickness-cure thinking about emotional disturbance.
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Dialoguing consists of several sets of specific skills for improving communication in a relationship and a systematic program for teaching them. The approach was constructed by Bernard Guerney and his associates at Pennsylvania University, as part of their Relationship Enhancement programs (Guerney, 1977). Their program has theoretical roots in client-centered, gestalt and behaviorist therapies and shares techniques with other skill training approaches, especially those of Rosenberg (1976), Gordon (1970) and Carkhuff (1969). My personal interest in this therapeutic method has grown out of work in client-centered and family therapy and experience in two, quite different, therapeutic communities. One of these, called Changes and located in Chicago and several other places, has pioneered teaching therapeutic skills within a therapy community, particularly skills in empathic listening and experiential focusing. The other is Re-evaluation Counseling, which is an international community of classes and co-counselors dedicated to the practice of a specific well-developed method of therapy and theory of personal growth. I became acquainted with the Relationship Enhancement program at a three-day workshop on it, and found that the program’s point of view and methods for helping close relationships were highly consistent with my own values and experience. I have termed my particular adaptation of the method Dialoguing, to make it easy to refer to and to characterize the mutual development of understanding and acceptance that lies at the heart of the process.
A communication model
Dialoguing is based on a communication model that assumes that persons continually generate meaning about their relationships and the events that are associated with them and that adequate communication of these meanings is an essential part of relating. We need communication to exchange information, to settle problems and to fulfill needs for acceptance, understanding and respect. The model for dialoguing is, simply, that communication is successful when we say what we mean and it is heard accurately and with respect, so that we feel understood and accepted. To the extent that these steps do not occur, that we do not express well what we want to convey or that we are not understood or listened to with respect, effective communication has failed. Dialoguing therefore involves skills in expressing oneself, " congruent talking”, and in understanding and respecting the other, " empathic listening. " It also involves skills for shifting from being listener to being talker and vice versa, termed switching, so that communication goes both ways and is actually dialogue.
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