Please Listen
When I ask you to listen to me
and you start giving me 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 ask is that you listen.
Don’t talk or do – just hear me.
Advice is cheap – 50 pence will get you both
Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.
And I can do that for myself ; I am 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 inadequacy.
But when you accept as a simple fact
that I feel what I feel, no matter how irrational,
then I can stop trying to convince you
and get about this 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.
So please listen, and just hear me.
And if you want to talk,
wait a minute for your turn,
and I will listen to you.