The Importance of Listening as Counselor
In the two RC fundamentals classes I’ve taught, I’ve started by talking a lot about the importance of listening and being listened to and how much we’ve been trained to not do that. I say that ninety percent of good counseling is listening with good attention. We need to get that part down [be good at that part] before we add any “fancy stuff.”
[Harvey Jackins: “Aware listening can be considered to be ninety percent of effective Co-Counseling, even for advanced Co-Counseling. People often need to be listened to for a long time before being given any direction (or even offered a verbal contradiction).” The List, number 5.060]
I have the students spend the first four weeks listening to the client and not saying anything as counselor, and I model doing the same. In addition to getting people out of the habit of giving advice, this also takes some of the pressure off at the beginning and allows people to listen and like each other without getting distracted by worrying about the “right thing” to say. And it gives people an opportunity to be listened to for a long period of time without any interference, which generally none of them have experienced before.
By the end of four weeks, people are usually hungry for information about contradictions [to distress] and what to say as counselor, and we spend a long time talking about that. I might ask them questions such as, “What is currently a contradiction in your life? When have you experienced a contradiction? When have you offered a contradiction to someone else in your life?” We discuss these questions before practicing using verbal contradictions as counselor.
Holyoke, Massachusetts, USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion list for RC teachers
(Present Time 204, July 2021)