THE SECOND KIND OF HELPING: USING YOUR OWN FEELINGS AND REACTIONS ABOUT THE OTHER PERSON

There are ways of doing more than listening, but they aren't "more" if you do them without listening!

In this section I will show you how to try out many other things, but in a way that always keeps listening as basic.

Try some of them, one at a time, and then go right back to listening for a while.

How to say your reaction. Whatever you say or do, watch the person's face and respond to how your input affects the person. If you can't see that, ask. Even if what you say or do is stupid and hurtful, it will work out well if you then ask about and say back whatever the person's reaction to it is. Switch back to listening right after saying your own reaction.

Make your statements questions, not conclusions. And direct your questions to people's feelings, not just their ideas. Invite people to go into themselves and see whether they feel something like what you say -- or something else. You don't ever know what they feel. You only wonder and help them to ask themselves. You might say, "I don't mean that / would know. Feel it out and see. Is it like that, or just how is it?"

Note that the person must feel what is there, to an­swer your question, if you put it this way.

Let go of your idea easily as soon as you see that it leads into arguments or speculation, or just doesn't get further into anything directly felt. If you think it's good you can say it twice, but after that, abandon it. You can bring it up later. (You could be right but something else might have to come first.)

Make sure that there are stretches of time when you do total listening. If you interrupt with your ideas and reactions constantly, the basic focusing process can't get going. There should be ten or fifteen minutes at a time when you should only listen. If the person is feeling into his or her problem, do less talking; if the person is stuck, do more.

Let the person's process go ahead if it seems to want to move a certain way. Don't insist that it move into what you sense should be next.

If the person tries to teach you to be a certain way, be that way for a while. For instance, some people might express a need to have you more quiet or more talk­ative, or to work with them in some definite way. Do it. You can always go back to your preferred way later. People often teach us how to help them.

If you find you have gotten things off a good track and into confusion, bring the process back to the last point where the focuser was in touch with feelings. Say, "You were telling me... go on from there."

Watch your person's face and body, and if you see something happening, ask about it. Nonverbal reac­tions are often good signals to ask people to get them into a felt sense.

For instance, the focuser might say, "That happened but I feel OK about it." You respond, "You feel OK about it in some way. But I see from the way your foot is tapping, and the way you look, that something might not be OK, too. Is that right?"

You don't need to get hung up on whether you're right or not when you sense something. If you sense something, then there is something, but you may not be right about what it is. So ask.

You will often see the focuser's face reacting to what­ever you are saying or doing. Ask about that, too.

Feel easy about it if the person doesn't like what you're doing. You can change it, or you might not need to. Give the person room to have negative reactions to you, and listen and say back what they are.

Don't always stay with the words the person is saying. Does the voice sound angry? Discouraged? Insistent? Is there a sudden break in it? What way were the words said? Ask: "You sound angry. Are you?" And if the answer is yes, ask what that is about. If the focuser gets no further, ask: "Can you sense what the anger is?"

You can use your own felt reactions to what's going on to help you sense more clearly what is going on with the other person or with both of you. If you feel bored, annoyed, impatient, angry, embarrassed, excited, or any way that stands out, it indicates something. Focus on what it is in you. If you are bored, you might find that it is because the person isn't getting into anything mean­ingful. Then you can ask: "Are you getting into what you really want to get into?" If you are angry, what is the person doing to make you angry? When you find that, you can say it. For instance: "Are you maybe shutting me out because you gave up on my helping you. Did you?"

Let yourself have any feelings at all while working with someone. Let them be as unlovely and as honest as they can be. That way you can be free inside to attend to what's happening in you. That often points to what's happening with the other person or between the two of you.

If you get an idea as to what someone is feeling by putting together a lot of theoretical reasoning or a long set of hints, don't take up time explaining all this to the other person. Just ask whether the person can find the feeling you inferred.

You can express any hunch or idea as a question. Sometimes you might add another possibility to insure that the focuser knows it's not a conclusion but an in­vitation to look within at the feeling itself. "Is it like you're scared... or maybe ashamed? How does it feel?" Then listen.

In the rest of this second section on helping I offer many reactions that you might say to help someone. You needn't read and grasp these all right now. You can look these up when you have become competent in listening and want more ideas to try. For now, you should probably move on to the third kind of helping.

Some questions to create movement It is often worthwhile (though not always feasible) to ask if the focuser's sex life is good. If it is not, it may help to see if sexual needs are felt as frightening or bad. It may also help to talk about what's standing in the way of a good sex life, as well as how to change situations or get into new ones. (Some people may find such questions nosy or silly. Don't ask unless you are sure that your focuser will accept your asking.)

"Crazy" conditions are often related to one's life situation. If your rapport with the person is such that a question about private matters doesn't seem shocking or nosy, or if the person mostly speaks of strange or hallucinatory stuff, try asking if the person has friends, work, places to go, sexuality. The person can focus on these with or without telling you all the details.

Feelings are inside and "relationships" are outside. But inside and outside are always related, and a good listener can help a troubled focuser find steps to change the outside, too.

You can ask people, referring to any bad thing they are fighting or puzzling over inside: "How is this bad thing in some way good, or useful, or sensible?" This is a complex, profound question, and you might precede it with something like this: "No bad thing that's in a person is all bad. If it's there, it has or might have some right or useful aspect that we have to listen for. If we find what the thing is good for, then it can let go. So give it a friendly hearing and see what it says, why it's right." The point is to help the focuser stop fighting the undesired ways long enough to allow them to open, so the positive aspect in them can come out.

Often a troubled inner state protects us from other painful problems. If we can see what a painful thing protects us from, we can sometimes protect ourselves much better than the thing itself can.

Sometimes a person's trouble lies in the fighting against the way the body feels. If you let how you feel simply be, a positive next step can then come out of it -- one that you couldn't make up and force.

Sometimes it helps to ask a suicidal person: "Are you thinking about committing suicide at somebody? At whom?" (By this I mean attempting to hurt someone by committing suicide.) The focuser may know right away, and the focus may then shift to where it needs to—that relationship. It may help also to say that the other per­son in that relationship probably won't understand the focuser's suicide attempt any better than the person ever understood anything else.

Sometimes, if a person is angry, it pays to ask: "Are you hurt about something."

Sometimes you can ask: "Do you feel that you can't ever get what you need?" (If so, let the focuser feel into what that is.) Some people's most frantic, seeming­ly destructive reactions are really a life-affirming fight against some part in them that forbids what they need ever to come about. The point then is to shift the focus to this assumption or prohibition, which has to be false in some way. What does it say, and why?

If a feeling keeps being there, over and over, you can ask the person to "switch roles"¹ with the feeling. The person stands up, loosens the body, and prepares as if to act a role on stage. The role is to be the feeling. "Wait... sense it in your body, what would this feeling do to you, how would it act, what would it say, how would it stand or move? Wait and see what comes in your body."

Sometimes body expressions, crying, or yelling cer­tain words arise spontaneously. When that has finished happening, it is important to find and focus on the felt sense that these expressive "discharges" come out of.

Some suggestions to point people in a forward direc­tion It helps to assure people that it's OK to have their feelings -- at least long enough to feel what they are. The same is true of needs, desires, ways of seeing things. There are various reasons people stay clear of their feelings, as we've seen. Among the reasons: the fear that bad feeling will lead to destructive actions. If someone is afraid of feelings, you might say:

"Feelings and actions aren't the same thing. You can let yourself feel whatever you do feel. Then you can still decide what you choose to do.

"It's OK to need. Trying not to have a need that you do in fact have makes a lot of trouble. Even if you can't get it, don't fight needing it.

"Focusing isn't like just wallowing around in what you feel. Don't sink into it, stay next to it. Let your­self feel whatever is there and expect it to open up.

"Weird states are different from feelings. It helps to move out of them toward life and ordinary situations. Weird states may not ease by getting further into them. What in your life is making things bad? What happens if you lean forward into living, instead of lying back?"

If the person suddenly feels weird or unreal, slow down. Take a short break. Ask the person to look around the room, recall the ordinary to the person's attention. Then continue.

But you shouldn't decide whether the focuser should go into, or out of, anything. The focuser should decide. Your company may be wanted in probing some weird thoughts -- or may not.

'To change something or do something that's been too hard, we have to find a small first step you can actually do. What would that be?" Suggest small first steps if the focuser has none, but don't settle on any­thing unless it is received with some elation that that first step is possible. "Can you make a list of places to go meet new people? As a first step, make a list."

Some people are so concerned with what somebody else thinks that they need help getting to what they themselves think and feel.

"Put away for a minute what they think and what they said, and let's see what you feel about it, how you see it."

Dealing with very troubled people. You can talk about yourself, your day -- anything you feel like saying. You need not always try to get into the other person's problems. Of course, if the focuser is in the midst of talking about them or seems to want to, you should not then refuse to listen. The person should know you would listen. But there will be times when it will be a relief to a troubled person to find that you can just talk of other things.

Silent, peaceful times are also useful. It is good to lie on the grass, go for a walk, without any tension of wait­ing for something to be said.

You can even get very troubled people to talk about (or do) something they happen to be competent in -- for example, sewing or music. This helps them feel OK for a while and lets you respond to a competent person —respond positively and for good reason.

It is often after such times, after having been able to just be with you, that a person might feel like taking you into some areas that are disturbing.

If the person talks a lot about strange material you can't understand and then says one or two things that make sense, stick with those and repeat them many times. They are your point of contact. It is all right to keep returning to these phrases, with silence or other topics in between, for as long as an hour.

If the person says things that can't be true, respond to the feeling rather than to the distorted facts or un­truths. For example, "The Martians took everything I had away from me. . .." You can get the feeling here. Say, "Somebody took what was yours?"

Other ways to be helpful. Let's say a man asks you for something you can't give. You may have to refuse the request itself, but you can tell him you're glad he's in touch with what he needs. Tell him you're glad he felt free to ask. This is especially so if the need is in the di­rection of life and growth for the person, if for the first time he can allow himself to want or ask for closeness or time with you.

When a person acts toward you in a way that is obviously destructive or self-defeating (and you think, no wonder lots of people dislike this person), there are several things you can do:

You can say how it makes you feel.

You can point to what the person is doing and ask what that feels like inside. Leave it vague, not de­fined. If you call it "attacking," "manipulating," "lazy," "whining," "controlling," or any such con­demning label, you give only the external view. In­side the focuser it's something more complex. So be puzzled about what this is, even if you can give it a clear disapproving name from your outside perspec­tive.

If you sense what a good life-thrust might be in this bad way of acting, then respond to that life-thrust. A lot of bad ways are bad only because the right thing is being half done, instead of being done fully and freely. If you respond to the half of it that is happening, that lets it happen more. Responding to the half that's missing isn't as helpful.

Example: Someone is whiningly complaining. It would not be helpful to say, "Why do you always whine and come on so weak? Why don't you stand up for yourself and say what you want?" It is more helpful to respond to the positive half of this that's trying to happen, and say, "You're saying what you need from people, and calling a halt to what they've been do­ing."

Some healthy life-enhancing processes are: taking up for yourself, defending the way you see it, allowing yourself to be free to feel as you do, reaching out for someone, trying to do something that you haven't been able to for some time, exploring, wondering about your­self, trying to meet people, sexuality, a sense of cosmic significance or mystery, seeking peace, letting someone see you, trying something new, taking charge of a situa­tion, telling people how you need them to be, being honest, hoping, refusing to give up, being able to ask for help. These are all good life-thrusts.

No one should depend on just you alone. Let the per­son meet other people you know, or call someone else in to help, if the person lacks others.

The person should be present when being discussed by people trying to help. It's hard to be straight in front of someone you're trying to help, but we've already seen why you must.

A person's needs for help with a job, a place to live, and so on, should be part of what help is about. Help is about needs, whatever they may be. It's not useful to separate "psychological" problems from the rest. They aren't separate in a person's life.

⇐ Предыдущая16171819202122232425Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: