|
|
|
|
Peer Support: The Art of Listening
From a talk by Harvey Jackins
There
are many ways of approaching what we have named "Re-evaluation
Counseling." One way is to ask you to look at what happens whenever
people are together and have a chance to talk, at any times when they're not
completely preoccupied with their jobs or other activity. If you will
think back to the coffee-shop or picnic table or similar situations, you will
remember that people are, everywhere and at all times when in the presence of
each other, either trying to be listened to – talking every chance they get –
or waiting patiently or impatiently for a chance to interrupt any other person
who is talking and start talking themselves.
Think
about this. You will find that whenever people are together, they're
making an effort to be listened to, and are very seldom listened to
because the person that they are trying to get to listen to them is waiting
desperately and impatiently for a chance to be listened to himself or herself.
Someone Must Listen
If
we were to encapsulate what we have learned to do in a sentence or two – and
there's much more, there are many complicated applications that come from it –
it is to explain to people that what they are trying to do all the time, this
trying to be listened to, is a very profound process. It will have
profound results if it ever gets a chance to operate and it will operate, if
they will take turns. They need to just take turns, and agree,
"Yes, I will listen to you and really pay attention to you for a
while, if you will give me a chance to do the same thing later on."
Our Intelligence
Can Be Interrupted
We
define "intelligence" as the ability to come up with a brand-new,
accurate response for each new situation, to never use an old response for a new
situation, because a new situation is new, and if you try to use something that
worked fine for a previous situation, it's not going to quite fit the new
situation, which never occurred before. There aren't any identical
entities in the universe, not even two electrons are absolutely identical, and
so two environmental situations for a human being will never be exact replicas
for each other.
There
will always be something new. When we're using this particular human
ability, this flexible intelligence of ours, we're quite capable of taking in
all the information of a situation, comparing it with the information from past
experiences that we've understood, noting the similarities, noting the
differences, putting together a response that is similar to how we handled
similar experiences in the past, but is modified to allow for the differences
in the situation, and handling each new situation well.
This ability to come up with fresh, new answers, this rational human
intelligence of ours, gets interrupted by situations of stress, of painful
emotion, or of pain. Any kind of physical hurt or emotional hurt
interrupts this, to a greater or lesser degree. Under those situations,
the information coming in from the environment, which ordinarily is handled
very easily and in great volume by our tremendous intelligence, doesn't get
sorted out, doesn't get understood, doesn't get compared and contrasted with
what we already know, nor filed away to be useful information. Instead it
congeals, and this unevaluated information becomes, in effect, a recording of
what went on during the bad times, and this recording persists. It
includes the ineffective behavior, the distressed feelings, and the
shutting down of our thinking.
The Recovery
Process
This
wonderful nature of ours that gets obscured in this way would resurge, can
resurge, and will resurge, if particular processes are allowed to take
place. These are what we call "discharge."
"Discharge" is a general word to encompass some very profound
processes that are dependably characterized outwardly by tears, by crying, by
trembling, by laughing (in many forms), by angry storming, by yawns, by
non-repetitive, eager talk. These processes melt the rigidities of the
distress patterns and turn its contents back into the useful information it
should have been in the first place.
These
processes also free this tremendous intellect of ours, this flexible behavior
of ours, to operate. Any discharge – any tears, any trembling, any
laughter, any storming, any yawns (yawning is the dependable indication of the
release of physical distress) – tends to move us back to functioning on our
original nature, which is that of a genius-sized intelligence and a very good
person and (more and more we're realizing this) a very powerful
person. The powerlessness with which most of us feel infected ("I
can't", "I wish I could", "I have to wait", and
"Somebody will tell me I can someday") is all acquired. We're
all conceived, and most of us are born, with a sense of being able to do
anything. This is closer to the actual reality, and only the social
conditioning has obscured this – the tremendous amounts of oppression that are
ladled upon us systematically.
Accidents and Contagion
The
distress patterns that we acquire, the inhibiting fences that get built around
us, come partly from accidental hurts. These are such things as slipping
and falling and hurting oneself. In greater volume they come form the contagion of this distress: the person who was
hurt is pulled by the resulting distress pattern in some situations to hurt
someone else. The little boy who was beaten by is father is pulled, when
he becomes a father himself, to beat his son in the same way and pass the hurt
on. There's a certain contagion in the distress.
Systematic Oppression
More
and more as we explore the phenomenon, and find our way out from under these
intimidating loads of distress, we realize that there's also a systematic process
of imposing hurts operating in society. An oppressive society systematically
places hurts upon people in order to condition them to fill certain rigid,
submissive roles, or, in some cases, certain dominating, oppressive
roles. We've learned in the last few years, and can now state with great
confidence, that no one would submit to being oppressed if distress patterns
were not first installed. We would not permit being placed in any of the
roles of oppression (and we're all oppressed – we're oppressed as workers,
we're oppressed as women, we're oppressed as children, we're oppressed by
racism, we're oppressed by many other oppressions), none of us would accept a
role in any of these oppressions except that we were first hurt as children so
early that we were unable to resist and the groundwork of distress patterns was
laid in for imposing new oppressions as we grew older. More than that
(and this is very hopeful) no one would play an oppressor role otherwise.
No man would act in a sexist way to women, unless he had first been hurt and
then manipulated into the other end of the oppression. No aristocrat
would ever condescendingly mistreat the common folk if not first mistreated
while young. (In
How to Counsel
Co-counseling, as the process is sometimes called, is a sort of mutual
"take-turns" bootstrapping process. You can't lift yourself by
your own boot straps but you can take turns lifting each other. It works,
and of course it works in larger groups than two, but for the economy of time
most Co-counseling is done in pairs, switching roles between the first person
who is listened to and the second, who listens.
If you wish to help someone that you're going to listen to, plain listening is
fine, but there are distresses that take a little more than that,
and the more deeply you can notice and clarify the more effective you will be.
You pay enough attention to them that you notice accurately what the distresses
are. One of the ways of finding that out is to ask, "What's
bothering you?", and then listen and they'll tell you. They'll never
fail you. "What about yourself would you like to change?"
"(sigh) Well, no one ever asked me that
before, but ______," and they will tell you.
If there is an inhibiting pattern preventing them from speaking out clearly to
you, you can simply look at them, and the expression on their faces, the one
that they wear when they're not crying or laughing or discharging in some other
way, will tell you about their distress. It's a perfectly familiar
expression, but it's not theirs. It's an expression of a chronic pattern
that has grown there from the distress that has become chronic.
For many situations, simply to be listened to with interest and attention is
enough. When was the last time anyone did that for you? Often
discharge begins to occur simply with that.
Really Live
It's our life. We haven't been told that. We've been told the
opposite, but our lives belong to us. I sometimes say to advanced
students, "There are no 'should's' in the
universe." Sometimes they look at me with horror and ask, "If I
don't have 'should's' to guide me in what I do, how
will I know I'm doing the right thing?" But there are no "should's" in the universe. Your own intelligence
is quite satisfactory for guiding your life. You're not obligated to anyone.
I thought for years that I was obligated to my children at least, and I
couldn't get past that. Then one day, after some co-counseling, it
occurred to me that anything that my children needed done for them by me, I
would do because I wanted to. I didn't have to be obligated.
There are no "should's." It's your
life. Take charge of it. Have fun.
Extracts
of a talk to the
By
Harvey Jackins (November 7, 1981)
For
complete talk: www.rc.org
(modified slightly by Daniel Hunter, Training for Change for
change)
bravenet.com