Listen

some tips on how to Improve Supportive Listening
brought to you by my interpersonal communications class

*Be Mindful

*Suspend judgement

*Use focusing skills

-aim posture appropriately

-use natural and appropriate eye contact (not too much, but enough)

-move responsively

-make responsive sounds

*Use encouraging skills

-use minimal encouragers (oh really? tell me more… etc.)

-use mirroring (reflect emotions)

-use clarifying questions

-use open questions

-use attentive silence

*Use reflecting skills to clarify and verify understanding

-use paraphrasing

-gently pursue verbal and nonverbal inconsistencies

*Provide support

-express empathy (not always sympathy)

-demonstrate understanding of the other’s feeling

-demonstrate care for the other person

*Get rid of internal/extrenal obstacles to listening and bad listening habits

*become more “other centered”

*be quiet and LET THE OTHER PERSON SPEAK

I have made two new friends at stocker and today I sat with them while I waited for my class started. They told me of drug/police adventures and the stories were actually quite interesting. Since I do not involve myself with drugs I had no stories to share… instead I just listened :) I hope both of those boys will be there on monday, maybe they will share more stories <3

Monday I finally got the chance to talk to the kid who sits in the same area of stocker as I do inbetween classes m&w. I had a conversation with him almost completely made of my questions and his answers. My responses were simply more questions. I’m not sure if he’ll talk to me again though, I was a bit too critical of him for a first-conversation, but he seemed really interesting to me.

Yesterday I had an hour break between my first and second class at LCCC so I was standing around in the hallway and there was this lady/girl/female-person-of-some-age in the hallway kind of standing there so I asked her if she was early for a class too. The strange thing was I just asked it, I didn’t even think about it—normally when talking to a new person I debated for like 10s whether or not I should say something. She wasn’t, but was going to play piano in the practice room and was worried about disturbing a class. A little later I had changed into my dance clothes and was listening (from the hallway) to her play piano and decided to go in there and ask if I could listen in there. She said sure, but she didn’t know how to play that much. She wasn’t too bad, but she only ended up playing for a couple more minutes. Then she talked to me about her life and her relationship and her fiance’s kids and all sorts of things for about 40 minutes. I chimed in with responses and it was a pretty typical conversation, except I did most of the listening. It was really cool to get to learn so much about one person. The odd thing is I don’t know if I’ll ever have another conversation again with her, but maybe my life will be different because of the one I had.

Also I did a good job last week of listening to Miller when she was talking about her boy and how they might date and all of this stuff. I love listening.