Monday, January 30, 2012

Feeling heard

It is really important to me to feel heard and to hear others. I think it is one of the most important factors in any relationship, including the relationship we have with ourself, we often don't hear what we're feeling. I came across this really lovely article by Carl Rogers that I really related to and wanted to share it here. Excerpted from www.listeningway.com

Experiences in Communication
by Carl Rogers

In my own two-way communication with others there have been experiences that have made me feel pleased and warm and good and satisfied. There have been other experiences that to some extent at the time, and even more so afterward, have made me feel dissatisfied and displeased and more distant and less contented with myself. I would like to convey some of these things. Another way of putting this is that some of my experiences in communicating with others have made me feel expanded, larger, enriched, and have accelerated my own growth. Very often in these experiences I feel that the other person has had similar reactions and that he too has been enriched, that his development and his functioning have moved forward. Then there have been other occasions in which the growth or development of each of us has been diminished or stopped or even reversed. I am sure it will be clear in what I have to say that I would prefer my experiences in communication to have a growth-promoting effect, both on me and on the other, and that I should like to avoid those communication experiences in which both I and the other person feel diminished.

The first simple feeling I want to share with you is my enjoyment when I can really hear someone. I think perhaps this has been a long-standing characteristic of mine. I can remember this in my early grammar school days. A child would ask the teacher a question and the teacher would give a perfectly good answer to a completely different question. A feeling of pain and distress would always strike me. My reaction was, "But you didn't hear him!" I felt a sort of childish despair at the lack of communication which was (and is) so common.

I believe I know why it is satisfying to me to hear someone. When I can really hear someone, it puts me in touch with him; it enriches my life. It is through hearing people that I have learned all that I know about individuals, about personality, about interpersonal relationships.

There is another peculiar satisfaction in really hearing someone: It is like listening to the music of the spheres, because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal. Hidden in all of the personal communications which I really hear there seem to be orderly psychological laws, aspects of the same order we find in the universe as a whole. So there is both the satisfaction of hearing this person and also the satisfaction of feeling one's self in touch with what is universally true. Read on

4 comments:

sharmishtha said...

i too believe in exactly that type of relationship. i think thats what relationships are meant to be like.

hope you are enjoying beautiful days.

lots of love and hugs.

Noreen Barron said...

Me too Trisha, great to hear from you, have a lovely weekend :-)

sharmishtha said...

why all blogspot blogs are showing blogspot.in? have they changed their urls?

winter is back with a vengeance there! It seems like a icewave is passing through there.

hope you had a lovely weekend.

take care of yourself.

lots of love.

Noreen Barron said...

I don't know Trisha, I don't think so. I had a nice weekend, hope you did too. Have a great week, love xx