Compassion Group Notes - November 2023
Surface ruffled by an inner activation -no accurate reflection
Surface stilled by deep inner work - reflection of the other possible
If you truly saw and heard yourself, you would empathize and understand the whole world
Reflective Listening
Not a strategy, technique or control mechanism - it is heart listening
We cannot change the world by a new plan, project, or idea. We cannot even change other people by our convictions, stories, advice and proposals, but we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves, lay aside their occupations and preoccupations and listen with attention and care to the voices speaking in their own center. ~Henri Nouwen
Reflective listening is essentially something we first learn to do for ourselves. What is it we are trying to hear in ourselves? On what are we reflecting as we turn our eyes inwards and gaze down into the depths of our own being. We are trying to bring our awareness to the voice deep within that expresses it’s needs, feelings, desires, hopes, beliefs and thoughts - the voice that knows suffering, shame and fear. The voice that is filled with self-doubts and doesn’t know what is right and wrong in terms of what to believe. We are trying to listen to the still small voice of intuition and knowing that we typically drown out with reason and logic. The layers of self reflection follow the questions we ask of ourselves:
What am I doing?
What unmet need is driving this behavior
What feeling is this unmet need creating within me?
How am I interpreting my feeling, need and experience?
How do these reflect the feelings, needs, thoughts and behaviors of a child stuck in a memory state?
Self reflection means seeing all the connections, patterns, dynamics between need, feeling, thought and behavior
Can I reflect on all of this within and do it with a heart of acceptance, love, and humor instead of judgment? Only then can be fully present to myself and by extension to others. Can I be like the still lake that holds all within it without comment and with calm, unruffled acceptance?
As I learn to do this for myself, it is inevitable that we start deeply listening to others for these same aspects of self hidden in their communications and surface words. We start hearing what they feel and need and think and do without them explicitly saying so and when we can really hear, we can reflect back to them what they told us in a way that delineates and clarifies the needs, feelings, thoughts, behaviors and the connections between all these functions of being a soul in in a human body. To do this requires being actively working at listening to yourself and the other at the same time. As someone is speaking do you empathize with your feelings and theirs, your needs and theirs, their beliefs and the meaning they are making of something, and yourself, their behaviors, and your own choices? This is hard, active work.
Your consciousness is like a completely still, endlessly deep lake of water that can reflect back everything around it perfectly - but only if it is still and not agitated by some external happening that distracts attention away from the knowing of yourself as consciousness and that agitates the surface of the water. Think about this statement.
If you are not aware of your own activation within in terms of feelings, needs, meaning and behavior, it is likely that what the other person says will be like a wind blowing across the calmness of your consciousness and the waters of your mind will ripple and wave in a way that you cannot reflect back accurately what the other person said. So the work is first to be aware of any activation within and then to sink deeply to the place where all is still and calm the surface ripples, so that you can reflect back what is shown to you about the other person.
“Reflective listening reinforces that you have been actively listening.”
~Asa Don Brown
Practice:
Read these statements and then deeply contemplate what they bring up inside of you in terms of feelings, needs, meaning, behavior that are a reflection from a past event of childhood. When you have listened deeply to yourself, see if you can reflect back what you are hearing these people saying in terms of their feelings, needs, meaning and behavior that reflect past experiences in childhood they may have had.
“My daughter just doesn’t understand. She keeps telling me I have to start getting rid of stuff and move to assisted living. Just wait till she gets to my age, then she will see what it is like having to give up everything you worked for!”
“I know my wife needs a break, but I hate going to recreation morning at the old age home - I have nothing in common with those people. They are not interested in me - they just talk about themselves all the time.”
“The worst thing about being here is that no-one has any time - it is just rush, rush rush from one thing to the next.”
“They tell me that I do not have much longer to live, but I don’t believe it - I am not going to just give up and die.”
“All my friends have just been slowly dropping off and I hardly ever see anyone now that my husband has died. And I hate to depend on the kids - they have busy stressful lives.”
Caretaking vs. Caregiving
Caregiving at the emotional level is reflective listening. It is not giving superficial advise, fixing, rescuing, enabling, changing, controlling….
WHAT IS CARETAKING?
1. Behavior
Caretaking is behavior that is very often mistaken as caring and loving behavior towards another person because it looks as if it is caring and loving. However, it is a masquerade, a charade, a sham and a cheap mimic of true love. It is controlling with a hidden agenda, not authenticity. It is interfering, enabling, encouraging dependency and controlling. it is ultimately disrespectful to self and others.,
2. Motives
How do we differentiate between caretaking and loving if they look the same? We can do so by examining our true motives for doing, giving, and caring for another, or for being “nice.” Unfortunately, our true motives are often unconscious to ourselves and hard to discover. Some of the unconscious reasons people have for doing “kind” and “loving” things for others are:
• fear of being judged, criticized, rejected, abandoned, not liked ..........
• fear of not being seen as moral, a good mother, neighbor, friend ........
• need for approval, affirmation, attention, love.......
• fear of feeling guilty or shameful for not being “loving.”
Fear is the opposite of love. Shame limits our capacity to love ourselves and therefore others. Need results in taking not giving. This kind of giving is a closed loop that ends with ourselves. It is selfish because it serves our unconscious and hidden agenda of getting our own needs met, our own fears soothed and our own guilt assuaged.
3. Consequences
We also need to examine the consequences of our “loving behavior.” Does “caring for others” take away time from our primary relationships? Does giving and volunteering result in us feeling resentful and stressed? Are these feelings inappropriately taken out on others? Is our own creativity stifled because there is no time left for ourselves? Do others remain dependent on us and never learn to take responsibility for themselves? Do we help someone else stay stuck in dysfunctional behavior? Do we try to get our needs met indirectly and manipulatively instead of asking for what we want? Do other people feel guilty and beholden to us because of our “giving?”
Very little in life is black or white. Our motives are often a mixture of both genuine caring and caretaking. Our task, however, is to become aware of the extent to which we are motivated by fear or shame or need. Once we are aware we need to have the courage to set limits, be assertive and not allow ourselves to become victims of other people’s demands and requests. In the long run acting like a victim is detrimental and destructive to us and others.
© Lyndall Johnson 1995
Practice
Every time you feel compelled to give advise or help someone reflect deeply on what you are saying, what motivates the behavior, and what the consequences will be to yourself and others.
