Listening

When we ask you to listen to us and you start giving us advice, you have not done what we've asked.

When we ask you to listen to us and you begin to tell us why we shouldn't feel that way, you are trampling our feelings.

When we ask you to listen to us and you feel you have to do something to solve our problem, you have failed us, strange as that may seem.

LISTEN! All we asked was that you listen. Not talk, or do....just hear us.

Advice is cheap: Fifty cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.

And we can DO for ourselves: We're not helpless.

Maybe discouraging or faltering, but not helpless.

When you do something for us that we can and need to do for ourselves, you contribute to fear and weakness.

But when you accept as a simple fact that we do feel what we feel, no matter how irrational, then we can quit trying to convince you, and can get about this business of understanding whats behind this irrational feeling.

And when thats clear, the answers are obvious, and we don't need advice.

Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what's behind them.

So PLEASE listen and just HEAR us.

And, if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn; and then we'll listen to you.