About Listening

1. When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice, you have not done what I asked.
2. When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings.
3. When I ask you to listen to me and you start telling your story, you haven't let me tell mine.
4. When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
5. Listen: All I asked was that you listen, not talk, or do...just hear.
    
6. Advice is cheap: Twenty-five cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.
7. And I can do for myself. I am not helpless. Maybe discouraged, maybe faltering, but not helpless.
8. When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.
9. But when you accept, as a simple fact, what I do feel, no matter how irrational, then I can quit trying to convince you and get about the business of understanding what's behind this irrational feeling.
10. And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice. Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what's behind them.
11. So please just listen. Just hear me.
12. And if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn, and I'll listen to you.

Note: This came from somewhere, but I don't know who the original author is. If you find out, I'd like to know.