Non violent listening

There’s a repetitive pattern: my 17-year-old daughter shares something distressing, I “try to help”, she refuses help and we part ways feeling disconnected. Sometimes she reminds me: ‘mum, I don’t want you to fix it, I just need you to listen’; that helps me drop from doing to hearing. Sometimes I say stuff that turns out to be really helpful and we have one of our amazing conversations. But the times when she reacts to my “fixing” are so painful!

So I did a bit of thinking this morning and quickly saw that, under my ‘trying to help’ was not the worried mum that struggles to see her daughter suffering, as I believed was there. There is some of that, of course, but what is driving my impulse to fix is a desperate young part that needs my daughter to be okay so that I don’t get in trouble (as in being blamed for my daughter’s suffering). Amazing.

About an hour later, my daughter came to me feeling distressed. Usually I sort of lean forward energetically, feel all of her feelings in my chest, anxiety rises and a very strong impulse comes up to do something about it. This time I consciously held my energy back and paid as much attention to her as to my inner distressed part that needs to fix. I felt centered and quiet. She talked and talked; I didn’t need to do anything. Oh! My! God! What a difference! So much more peaceful! Eventually she asked for my opinion, but when I gave it, I was not attached to what she did with it.

I was grateful to the universe for the opportunity to practice relating to her from my newly found awareness. May this way of being become the default. Amen.

Click to follow via RSS FeedReader, DiggReader etc. OR Instagram.
Click to share article on your facebook page.