Please Just Listen

When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice, you 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, you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.

Listen! All I asked was that you listen … not talk … or do. Just hear!

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

And I can do for myself. I’m not helpless. I’m discouraged and faltering.

When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.

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

When that is clear, the answers are obvious and I don’t need advice. Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what’s behind them.

So … please … listen and just hear me.

And if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn, and I’ll listen to you.

Ray Houghton, MD

“….therefore I beg you to listen to me patiently.” Luke 26:3b (NASB)