How to listen when it counts
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When we're upset, sometimes all we want is to be heard and have our feelings vindicated. Easy right? Not so much. As it turns out, really listening to someone who's upset is tougher than it sounds. Guiding someone through an emotional outburst and helping to return them to ground level is much more difficult than most people realize. Psychology Today offers some good suggestions for really listening when someone is upset. Here's their step-by-step guide:
1. Let the person complete their narrative so you have all the facts.
2. Convey you get what happened to them from their perspective (whether you agree with that perspective or not and even if their perspective is obviously skewed).
3. Convey you understand how they felt as a result of what happened (from their perspective).
4. Convey that their feelings are completely reasonable (which they are given their perspective).
5. Convey empathy or sympathy (not pity!) for their emotional reactions.
Full story at Psychology Today.
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