(This is Part 3 of a series. Go back to Part 2.)
The first principle of helpful intervention is deep listening. How can we intervene effectively if we don't truly understand what's going on? To do so we must profoundly and attentively listen.
This means opening up a space where someone can explore their psyche and tell their story of psychic pain without being interrupted, manipulated, ignored or judged. Most people are anxious to tell their story if given half a chance, but rarely do they get a truly supportive space to do so.
Deep listening does not just occur with the ears, however. It also means taking in the person's body language, their facial gestures, their eye movements and so on. We're taking them in with all the senses, we're receptive and attentive in every way possible, knowing that people communicate in many ways besides words.
It also means not just listening to the literal words of what someone is saying but also the subtext of what they're saying as well. What is the subtext? What are the assumptions behind what they're saying? And it means listening to the person's vocabulary as well; what kinds of words keep appearing?
In Act 1, Scene 7 of Shakespeare's Macbeth, for instance, Macbeth wonders if he should kill the king, finally saying "We will proceed no further in this business." Yet in the very next scene Macbeth is using words like these: "dagger," "fatal," "blade," "blood," "bloody," "wicked" and so forth. If we're listening to Macbeth's vocabulary, we know what he will do, even before he does.
Deep listening is also important because people often don't get to the real issue at first. Only as they feel safer and safer in that spaciousness, as they perceive that they're not being judged or manipulated by some agenda, can they really open up and see and vocalize what's really going on. Thus trying to intervene too soon, because we think we know something, can be very counter-productive.
And the most important component of deep listening is to truly be open to taking in the humanity of this person in front of us, to truly being open enough ourselves to see the divine spark behind whatever the surface presentation may be.
Whatever the intervention may or may or not be, whatever the therapeutic model the therapist is following, whatever the therapist says or doesn't say, ultimately it is love that heals. Though they may indeed be skillful, it's not skillfulness that ultimately makes the great therapists great: it's the compassion and caring in their heart.
(This is the end of Part 3. Go to Part 4.)
—jim sloman, 10.19.06
|
