Communication Skills

Petersen: Chapters 26 – 29

Petersen, J. (2022). Why Don’t We Listen Better? Communicating & Connecting in Relationships (3rd ed.). MBS Content.  https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/MBS7916214

Chapter 26: Listening through Dreams

sOmetimes peOple yOu are listening to have dreams that are significant to them. They ask you what the dreams mean. Well, it feels good to be asked, but a little scary, because no one really knows, do they? I hope by this time you recognize the trap, the temptation to quit listening and start talking. While they asked for your opinion, you could share some authority’s theory (or your best guess). But you would be talking when it is your turn to listen. Yep, this question about dreams is not a real question. It is your clue to help the “askers” figure out what the dream means to them. If your talker wants to explore their dream, ask them to pull their dream into the present, as though they are in it right now and then ask them to role-play several people and parts in the dream, starting with themselves. Have a conversation with them as they “get into” the vari-ous roles. Ask them to describe what they see, how it is to be the person or part, what they feel. Use whatever listening techniques help you both focus on their dream and how they might see themselves in experiencing each role. Listen for significant descriptions that might help them under-stand aspects of themselves that they may or may not have recognized. Role-play gets the actor into a part in a way that can get past the conscious into the subconscious. When I would role-play a Biblical character as a sermon with the congregation asking me questions, what came out often surprised me. I found thoughts and feelings in me I didn’t know were there. In my experience the same process can help when talkers share their dreams. But it doesn’t work when they just recount the dreams, because that keeps it in the past. You are just hear-ing their reflections and guesses, probably not much better than yours might be. Role-playing each part in the present helps them to slip by their conscious intellectualizing. Start by asking them to say, “I am me (name) and right now I am seeing... and am frightened of...” Or, “I am the dog, (big and cuddly) I’m following my master through the woods...? I would fight to protect him...? I am grateful that he is good to me...” Or, “I am an over-flowing river, afraid I’ll destroy the home in my path...” And you listen by following and going deep into their experience, how they feel, how they see themselves as the parts they are playing and also themselves as the dreamer. This will be new to them and they will bounce out of the present into talking about the past, which is easier and safer, but not useful. When they do, remind them to go back into the dream and talk with you as though they are in it right now. To listen further you might ask, “So, how scared are you right now...?” Or, “What’s it like to be a big cuddly dog...?” And later, “So how does being ‘big and cuddly’ fit you...?” And, “Are you the kind of person (dog) who is grateful and would protect your master and others...” Or, “So sometimes you are powerful and gush out of control, but are afraid you might damage things and people...? How does that fit you...?” I learned this method from Fritz Perlz many years ago. He would say, “YOU ARE YOUR DREAM!” with his deep raspy European accent, almost catching me up into suspending my sense of reality and thinking I was my dream, but I caught myself and figured, “I am not my dream.” But when I slide into the dream and role-play its parts in the present, I find it to be a pretty effective way of getting past my conscious mind into that unknown area. And since it’s my dream that I’m role-playing, I get to decide what fits me and what doesn’t. (This is the safety valve for your talkers, different from you deciding for someone else and judging their dream and them.)

When a psychological type wants to tell me what my dreams mean, I’m offended. After all, they are my dreams. I’d be happier if people helped me focus on my dreams or shared what their dreams mean to them. I’ve always been bothered by the concept of dream interpretation. I didn’t understand why, until I discovered that would-be interpreters promoted talking when they should have been listening. Yes, I know there are great theories about particular words, sym-bols, and archetypes, but when I share a dream, I’m not finished talking (investigating) and want a listener to help me find my meaning in it. I experimented by trying this listening/dialogue method on a re-curring dream, one that I couldn’t finish and that always left me feeling small and powerless. I walked through the process. What follows is a shortened version of it. “I am me, Jamie, nine years old living on a farm. I’m climbing on the pig-pen fence. I’m having fun. I like looking at the pigs wallowing in the farm-smelling muck. All of a sudden the pigs turn into wild boars, like the ones I’ve seen in Buck Rogers comic books. I’m scared. They start after me, knocking down the fence. I’m running toward the back door of our house. My steps are getting slower and harder. The boars are snorting and screeching. I’m getting more frightened by the second. When I reach the three steps up into the screen door and safety, I can’t make it. I fall on the stairs, exhausted, can’t move, and I wake up.” I applied this listening process to my dream. Since you know all the listening skills now, I’ll just share the results: • As little Jamie, I’m feeling vulnerable, powerless, and frightened that what sometimes appears to be safe and familiar can turn mean. • As the pigs, I like to wallow in safety and the familiar and don’t look scary. • Sometimes I can be like a wild boar, strong with powerful back muscles and have within me power to knock down fences and frighten people. • As the fence, sometimes under pressure I just fall down and don’t do my job.

• As the distance between the pen and the back door, I can only watch sometimes when frightening things are happening and I don’t like it. (Like watching the muck of our world situation.) • As the steps, I can be formidable and people don’t find it easy to walk over me. • As the farm house, I yearn to take frightened folks in, but tend to stand back and let them come to me. The aftermath of this listening-to-myself process, which included a couple of sessions with Sally in the listening role, was that I finished the dream and stopped having it. Instead of redoing that dream and always feeling small and powerless, now I have other parts of me that I recognize from the dream. I garnered a number of feelings and learn-ings about myself that I hadn’t seen before. It gave me some clues about changes I wanted to make in my life, ministry and relationships. (For ex-ample: As the house, instead of being concerned and waiting for others in trouble to come to me, I now take more initiative in going to people to act on my concerns for them.) If you try the process, remember to ask the talker to play various parts of the dream, not just the fearful ones and then to enter the dream with them in a conversational way. Here are some listening questions; you can fill in the responses: “So when you are the monster, what do you want to do...? Do you feel capable of lifting the tree trunk off the child...? Now back in this room, right now, does the monster’s strength you just described reside in you too...? How could you apply that energy in your life...?” So keep an eye on yourself and be careful not to take over someone else’s dream (and their turn to talk), even if they ask.

Chapter 27 Listening through Asking for Help

sOmetimes we want a talker to keep on talking and looking for solutions to our problems and to provide us some help, but they seem to want to settle for a simple negative answer: “No. You (or I) can’t do that.” Or, “No. The rule-book (system, the government, or law) doesn’t allow it.” For me, there are three steps to asking for help and keep them tak-ing (and owning the problem): 1. Describe your situation. 2. Acknowledge their expertise in the system. 3. Ask how they might help you accomplish your goal (not whether they can help). Say we want to apply for a loan, a zoning variance, a permit, an extension of time, or an exception to a rule. We are going to run into people who have the power to help or to turn us down. If we want to keep them sorting through their systems to help us, the key is not to ask a question that they can answer with a “No.” Questions like: “Can I do this?” make it easy for them to react nega-tively and hit us with their rule-books. If we keep them in the role of the talker who owns the problem, we can ask them how they might be able to fix it. If, however, they slip behind the rules, all thinking about how to help comes to a complete stop. Our “Can I...?” is quickly and efficiently answered with a “No.” These folks work in “customer no-service departments.” I’m not against rules. But people can use rule-books in different ways. Some will let you do only what is specifically allowed, while oth-ers will let you do anything that is not specifically disallowed. When we are lucky enough to get the latter, we usually sail through our tasks — missions accomplished. But things get tricky when we run into the first group. Human be-ings tend to be attracted to the easiest paths. Our minds get lazy and will do their darnedest to avoid creativity, because it’s hard work. How do we approach these folks when what we want is for their brains to keep on thinking and generating creative solutions? In talker-listener terms, you want to stay in the listener role and keep them in the talker role. Then they keep ownership of the problem and continue working on it. To ask for help, first describe your situation: “I’d really like to be able to get a loan on this uncompleted house. I understand that’s not normally done. I’m baffled by the real estate mortgaging system.” Second, acknowledge their expertise or understanding of the sys-tem: “You’ve been working a long time in the mortgage business. I expect you know a lot about how it works.” Third, ask for their help in accomplishing your goal: “How can you help me through this complicated system, so I can move my family into this home...?” Notice that the question was not, “Can you help me or can I get a mortgage on this house?” which could easily have elicited negative responses. “How can you help...?” invites them to hold onto the problem a little longer and think toward a helpful solution. Here, you give the talkers clear information, that you don’t have a clue how to accomplish what you want and that they likely know the system well enough to figure it out. You challenge them to wake up and step up to a tricky task, which you believe they can do, a direct compli-ment. You also ask them to act on their best inclinations to be helpful. I believe that most people want to be helpful, but often don’t know how. When you ask them how they can contribute, it offers them a chance to think about how they can. More often than not, you will make it possible for them to rise to the occasion and be their best. And you become the kind of person around whom good things happen.

Chapter 28 Now You’re Ready i said early in the bOOk that the word communication derives from the root “to commune,” which suggests that people connect with each oth-er and with whatever is basic to our humanity at a level deeper than thought, bringing to mind the adage — “you can’t be human alone.” There is something in community that has the power to make us whole. Many approaches to psychology affirm this with different language by suggesting that unconditional acceptance shown by a therapist supports and empowers the growth of the counselee. I have been touched and grown both by real people who listened to me with unconditional acceptance and by my listening to others simi-larly. In writing this book I’ve hoped that you would join me in a con-tinuing journey of self-discovery and growth. For me, and I trust for you, when we listen well to others, we meet something of ourselves in them and so treat each other better. I’ve said this before: Real changes in relationships do not come from knuckling under to another’s wishes or demands, but through hearing, understand-ing, and deepening our caring for the other person and their concerns. In listening deeply we also encounter some of the inner resources of life, though we describe them differently. Some say they pay atten-tion to the rumble of the universe, others describe connecting to the ground of being, while yet others figure they tap in to whatever is deep-est inside us or to God. A Psalmist drew a word picture of God inclining an ear to us, literally leaning over, paying attention to us. And for me in listening we return the favor. Varying points of view My intent has been to make the book accessible to people inside the church and outside, to folks of any religion and no religion. Tricky. In dealing with relationships and growth we get to the heart of much of life. I’ve tried to describe what I see as truth or reality in both religious and secular language. I remember picture boxes as a child. A scene was set in the middle of the box with four viewing windows cut into the sides. Each win-dow showed a different view of the same reality. For adults the windows could be labeled religious, non-religious, psychological, sociological, economic, political, serious, humorous, conservative, progressive, and whatever more you can come up with. Four windows won’t cover them, but you can choose which you use to describe reality. The scene in the center is the same, the descriptive language, the viewpoints and the accuracy of our eyes vary. I find that I can hear echoes of the truth I see when others from varying perspectives and points of view share their insights with me. Scholarly lingo? I’ve had criticism from a few readers that my book language and con-cepts sound simple and not terribly scholarly (not enough multisyllabic words). I did include a great Table of Contents, but no proper footnotes. (Horrors!) I intentionally used language that I saw as accessible and memorable, the language I use in teaching. I didn’t want to put the folks in my classes to sleep and I wanted them to remember the concepts (who can forget the flat-brain-syndrome?). I also wanted readers from all across the academic board to find practical help in relating. (And to be honest, I can’t be serious for long, so I included humor to make it easier for me to write and hopefully easier for you to read and practice.) Listening is an act of love My second favorite psychiatrist said that listening is an act of love, which fit one of the two counseling ideas I learned in seminary. A pro\fessor described a counseling session as “structured agape.” Agape being a first century Greek word Biblical writers used to describe what they saw as the fully accepting, life-giving, non-judgmental love of God. This struck me as the spiritual equivalent of the psychologists’ “unconditional acceptance” (think picture box). That grabbed me more than sixty years ago and has formed the basis for my thinking, counseling, and teaching ever since. It meant to me that when I entered a counseling session or started listening to someone on a bus that God’s love (or unconditional acceptance) was organized around that person, so they could relax in that safety, sense the acceptance, and come more alive, taking a step toward becoming the best they could be. I never feel alone when working with people. For those who don’t buy the spiritual side of that, but who can go with “unconditional ac-ceptance,” then there is still a power in the structure of how the human community operates that supports growth (again for me, same thing, different words). And I learned from my favorite psychiatrist that a per-son’s healthy brain can send signals electronically to another person’s that has been damaged. We have processes going on when we’re with people that we don’t fully understand yet. Nice and encouraging. When you or I listen or counsel, we become a community with an-other person and in that community more is happening than passing facts back and forth — communication that produces growth at a deeper level. That is a long way around to say to you that I believe learning to listen and communicate really well will enhance your relationships (es-pecially those with a close life-mate) and offer the greatest possibilities available for human beings to gain significant maturity and joy. That is why I struggled to write, hoping to encourage you, no mat-ter what your belief structure, to surround your friends (partners, spous-es, children, counselees, work mates, enemies) with your love by using practical listening skills. I hope too that you’ll in turn find deep respect for people vibrating off these pages and that it will stir your compassion for each other.

Chapter 29 Beyond Skill...

knowing when and how to shift into your learned-listening-gear makes a major difference everywhere from the counseling office to random relationships. But what does it take to encourage growth in people? As a young pastor and counselor, I was nervous about my ability to help anyone. I studied many approaches to therapy. The more I learned, the more insecure and ineffective I felt. At that time, academic battles simmered over which counseling and therapeutic styles were best. A group of researchers took on a study to determine the effective results of each school of psychology. What they discovered was this: The personal qualities of the person doing the therapy were far more important than whatever techniques they used. This doesn’t mean that good technique and training don’t matter, but it does mean that neither is a substitute for being mature and healthy. Folks often seek counseling because their friends and relatives are lousy listeners or not very healthy. I’ve seen it over and over as I’ve worked to build therapeutic communities. Human beings become healthier in the presence of other healthy humans. The study identified three key characteristics of the listener (coun-selor) that most influenced growth in people — empathy, genuineness, and warmth. This came both as a surprise and a great relief to me. The findings in that research encouraged me to continue working with people. While professionals do bring knowledge, skill, and a referral sys-tem to the diagnosis and treatment of the more difficult psychological problems, much of what they do consists of non-judgmental listening. You can use the same listening techniques to turn strangers into friends, friendships into deeper relationships, business associates into collabora-tors, love-interests into partners and occasionally political and religious opposition into respectfully, disagreeing friends. If then you go beyond skill to increase your empathy, genuineness, and warmth, you’ll tap into a reservoir of healthy humanness that will put wheels on your technique. And that’s what I hope for you. Empathy The first of these characteristics, empathy, some call the “grace of God” quality in people. Stressed, flat-brained people do and say crazy things, but an empathetic person can see through “the crazies” into the pain and the person. If you can listen into other people’s experience, you’ll understand them and won’t judge them. You’ll develop concern for them and give them a better chance to become and stay healthier. Your insides will change toward them and so will your behavior. Genuineness People often say about genuineness, “What you see is what you get,” but most don’t mean it. When our best friends won’t tell us about the spinach in our teeth, they are not genuine and we don’t get healthier around them. Some people are more real than others. Their insides match their outsides, what they say is what they mean. Psychologists call this being congruent. If you can be this way with people in your listening rela-tionships, it’s like creating a substantial fund in your bank that others can draw on to invest in their own lives. (Being genuine however does not mean being “perfectly frank,” that is, forgetting about empathy and warmth and hitting folks with your truth.) Warmth Finally, warmth is essential to growth, especially in a world where many people are more interested in themselves than in caring for others. (Narcis-sistic behavior has escalated off the charts in the last forty years.) While warmth may not matter when the doctor removes an appendix, the doc-tor’s bedside manner can nourish and relax us so our bodies heal quicker. Studies show that plants grow better in a warm, friendly, talking atmo-sphere. How much more true is that for human beings? Let yourself be the kind of person with enough warmth to spare, so your spirit nurtures the environment around you. Then those in prox-imity will grow more fully as human beings. When it works Many of the folks who have read the book carefully to help with editing, re-ported that it caused them to re-examine the listening in their relationships.

One found herself in a spot with her husband that was a familiar pattern. It normally would have ended in a battle, a standoff, and dis-tance for the next few days. She haltingly tried the listening techniques and they soon broke into companionable laughter (and understanding). Another person, at a lengthy awards banquet, was seated next to a couple noted in their industry for being close-to-the-vest and open-with-very-few. “Oh well,” she thought, “I’m stuck here. Might as well try what I’ve been reading.” She did and the pair opened up, let down their barriers, and shared their lives for the full two hours. Then they kept talking in evident enjoyment all the way to their taxis. They let some-one into their lives and both listener and talkers gained a privileged gift. Before finishing the first edition of this book, I was coming home from a conference in New York. As I approached the ticket handler, his communication was all non-verbal, that is, he looked worn and bedrag-gled. He slouched with weary eyes. I acknowledged what I saw, “You look like you’ve had a really tough day...?” He made no response I could see. Then I told him that I had just met an old friend here at the airport, found that we were on the same plane to Portland, and wondered if there was any chance we could sit together and visit on the long flight home. Still no response. He didn’t look up. He took our tickets, scribbled, stamped, stapled, poked at his computer, labeled our bags, and handed us our tickets as he reached for the next person’s. In boarding we showed the flight-attendant our stubs and started turning right toward the cheap seats. She said, “Oh no, you’re in first class.” And we said, “No, we’re not, we’re in economy.” (Notice how we didn’t listen?) We repeated that exchange two more times before she showed us. “See, first class? Seat numbers 2A and 2B.” I’m a bit of a skeptic. I looked back into economy to see if there weren’t any seats together or if the plane might need balancing. Noth-ing. No reason I could see for the agent to have done that for us. What happened? To this day I believe the agent switched us to first class because his unspoken pain had been heard with a simple listening response. I suspect that he had felt a human connection and responded to us in the way he could.

Acts of love, often beget acts of love. Therapeutic or thera-noxious? Everyone gets healthier, happier, and more confident around therapeutic people. In the presence of thera-noxious folk (I love that term), we feel less healthy and secure. We lose our energy, feel drained, and wonder whether our skirts are buttoned or our pants zipped. When I see thera-noxious people heading my way, I want to hide. I know that after I spend time with them, I will feel a little less worthy and a little less capable. I do my best to listen to them, but they are a real challenge for me. Therapeutics are so different. Even when I visit one of them in a hospital with cancer, I leave feeling more secure, capable, energized, and clear headed. To enhance your maturity, make a list of the people you know who are therapeutic, that is, empathetic, genuine, and warm, with good lis-tening skills. Hang out more with them. Learn from them and soak in their health so you more fully develop your therapeutic side. I invite you to join me in continually learning to listen better, to communicate more clearly, and to grow empathy, genuineness, and warmth. Let this book increasingly help you be, in the words of my fa-vorite psychiatrist, “the kind ofpeople in whose presence good things happen.” Thank you for spending a chunk of your life reading and considering my thoughts about and experience with communication and personal growth. I hope the experience has been fun, enlightening, and a little challenging. I trust now that in tight situations the flat-brain syndrome will pop into your mind and tickle your perspective. I can just see Talker-Listener Cards leaping from your wallet or purse to your mind or the table be-tween you and those with whom you want to get along better. It would please me if your relationships were deepened because of the time you’ve spent between the covers of my book. And may you toss Talker-Listener Cards like confetti on your friends, cohorts, and anyone you meet, so that their lives can be enriched as well.