 Are You Listening?
Try it. It's good for you--and others
AN AGITATED patient visited me in my medical practice and amazed me. She was disturbed by a problem to which I could see no solution. I wondered what I could do. I despaired. But I sat and listened, and she talked on. Then, she suddenly said to me, "Thanks, doctor. You've been wonderful. Let me pay you now!"
With experience, I learned that this was no isolated event, and I became more attentive. Then, I read somewhere that one should "never underestimate the talker's ability to solve his own problems or come up with a creative alternative." Listening is therapeutic for the listener, too. And many of us in AA understand that listening is better medicine than the "strong medicine" they talk about on TV.
By just listening, without interference, we allow the speaker to express himself emotionally, and he finds this exhilarating. It is used by psychoanalysts; many of us have paid them large sums of money to listen to us. To get an audience usually does require money--or power, or special information. But to get a continual audience in AA, we need to have only an honest desire to stop drinking, and a willingness to be the audience in our turn.
This type of listening can be practiced in a small AA group, a home group, or a mini-meeting by telephone, in twelfth-stepping, or especially in helping someone take the Fifth Step. Those of us who have taken the Fifth Step are familiar with the emotional release and euphoria that go with being listened to.
There are several guidelines for this kind of listening.
We should take time to listen. If necessary, we can make the time for it. If the talker thrusts himself upon us when we cannot possibly find the time, we can tell him so forthrightly and make arrangements for a session with him as soon as we do have available time.
While listening, we try our best to be attentive. We don't make coffee, clean ashtrays, or rearrange the furniture--we listen! If there is a tirade, we let it run. If we want to reassure the talker of our attentiveness, we can murmur, "Oh yes" or "I see" or "Hmm." But once we've indicated understanding, we shut up.
We don't play investigator by asking questions, nor evaluate nor make judgments. And we don't give advice--especially if it is asked for.
The listener is only a mirror to reflect the talker's problems, so that the talker can see them in perspective, understand them better, and solve them himself. Not all listening is of this neutral type, but it is the most helpful. People are eager to talk to someone who will listen, even when they have no information to communicate. They are looking for an emotional release.
Good listening is also valuable in that it stimulates better speaking. A nonresponsive audience will put dread into even a good speaker.
A good listener gets more from a talk than an indifferent listener. When we truly listen, we learn to distinguish fact from opinion, to catch implications, and to detect prejudices and attitudes. Good listening can even reconstruct a sloppy talk and discover, beneath the awkwardness of expression, a message well worth hearing.
Listening is part of our dues to AA--and also one of the benefits AA can give us.
H. T., MD
Evanston, Illinois Go to... | 
