PLEASE LISTEN TO ME

When I ask you to LISTEN to me,
And you start giving advice,
You really have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me,
And you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way,
My feelings feel trampled upon.

When I ask you to listen ot me,
And you seem intent on “solving” my problems,
You are failing me, strange as that may seem.

LISTEN!
All I ask-is that you LISTEN.
PLEASE!-not to TALK or DO.
JUST HEAR ME.

Advice is cheap;
Two quarters get me both Dear Abby and Billy Graham,
In the same newspaper and I can do that for myself.
I’m not helpless-
Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.

Please try to understand,
When you do something FOR me,
That I CAN and NEED to do for myself,
Rather than helping, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.

But when you accept as a simple fact,
That I really do feel the way I say I feel,
No matter how irrational-
Then I can conserve my precious energy.
I then have the energy to get about this business
Of understanding what’s behind my irrational feelings.

And when that’s clear,
The answers become obvious, and the advice becomes unnecessary,
I can make sense of my irrational feelings,
When I begin to understand what is behind them.

SO PLEASE LISTEN AND JUST HEAR ME.
And if you want to-or need to talk,
Wait a minute for your turn, and I’ll LISTEN to you.


snagged from a binder at work.