If I ask you to listen, will you?

Listen with your heart, not with logic

Listen with your soul,

Not with indifference

Listen with your feeling,

Not with a story.


If I need hope, don't give me facts.

If I need encouragement,

don't give me advice,

If I need solace,

don't give me platitudes.

If I need to let it out,

don't tune me out.


If I ask you to listen, will you?

Listen with compassion,

not with condemnation

Listen with understanding,

not with argument

Listen with love, not with a clock.


If I ask you to listen, will you?

Make me matter ~ not invisible.

Caress my loneliness

and comfort my pain

Keep my trust and not dishonor it.


I don't need to be right,

but don't make me wrong

I don't need a teacher, a critic,

or a judge

I need freedom to say how I feel

And a friend

who will listen...just listen.

-P.H.Levitt, 1987 SOS Newsletter

bumping up for Terri

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 problems,
you have failed me,
strange as that may seem.

Listen! All I asked, was that you listen,
not to talk or do - just hear me.
Advice is cheap: 10 cents will get you both
Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.
And I can do for myself; I'm not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.

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

But when you accept as a simple fact that I do feel what
I feel, not matter how irrational, then I quit trying to
convince you and can get about the business of understanding
what's behind this irrational feeling.
And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I
don't need advice.

Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what's
behind them. Perhaps that's why prayer works, sometimes, for
some people because God is mute, and he doesn't give advice or
try to fix things. "They" just listen and let you work it out
for yourself.

So, please listen and just hear me. If you want to talk, wait a
minute for your turn, and I'll listen to you.

Anonymous