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, not talk or do, just hear me.

Advice is cheap.

Fifty cents will give you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same paper.

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 do feel what I feel no matter how irrational, then I can quit trying to convince you and get down to the business of understanding it.

Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what’s behind them, and when that’s clear, the answers are obvious and I don’t need advice.

So please just listen.

If you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn and I’ll listen to you.

Madelyn Burley-Allen
Listening: The Forgotten Skill