Re: 'listening time'

[Guest guest]

Hi ,I really enjoyed the video and your strength/vulnerability in creating it. And thanks too for the connection with hand in hand parenting - looks amazing. Also, for Helena, and others interested in forms of shared listening (and emotional acceptance expression), another site to check out is Co-Counseling International http://cci-usa.org/ - they are a splinter group of RC and share many of the same principles. Most people don't have the option to choose between the two, but are just lucky if they can find one or the other near them. I find these practices very ACT compatible.

melissa

 

thank you for the kind words about my film and me. There have been a couple of questions about 'listening time' which I mentioned in my intro. It's a process I used for many years within the framework of Re-evaluation Counselling, a peer-based counselling network, with info at www.rc.org. I haven't been part of that organisation for quite some time but still use the basic principles with a couple of people twice a week. We say hello, set the timer for, in our case, just 15 minutes each, decide who's going first, and the other person makes a conscious decision to set aside their own stories and trigger points and judgement and advice and just be another conscious awareness, a witness to the other person for that time. It is recognised that crying, trembling, laughing, yawning, sweating, and talking (in a non-automaton kind of way) are all part of the healing process. And because our society has confused the healing with the hurt for so long (eg crying is seen as the problem rather than the 'washing of the brain' as I call it) there is a backlog in most people. It is a process I have found useful. As a parent I really value the site, www.handinhandparenting.org as they also make use of listening partnerships as a way of getting support as a parent.

I must say I am loving ACT now that I am getting what defusion is all about. I have followed my mind down so many rabbit holes in my life. In my last session with my therapist I got it that I just need to think of defusion as an unused flabby muscle and the more I excercise it the stronger it will function.

cheers