Instructions for Listening
1. Dance
Speak for ten minutes.
Tell a story in the most elaborate detail you possibly can.
Make the story about some real problem that has happened in your life and how you dealt, or didn’t deal, with it.
Don’t make it a problem that will upset you.
Start telling your story when you think it is appropriate to start.
Keep on telling your story.
I will give the appearance of listening but I will actually be singing, inside my head, all the Beatles lyrics I can remember. When you have finished telling your story I will tell you how much of it I heard and can remember.
At every point in your story I will tell you what I would have done and why you were wrong to do what you did.
I will interrupt your story as often as I can with my story. I will find every opportunity within your story to hang mine.
I will interrupt your story as often as I can with questions arising from your story. I will try and get as much information about your story from you as I possibly can.
I will never interrupt you.
I will use no non-verbal responses. I will only use verbal responses. I will use these responses to encourage you tell your story.
I will only use non-verbal responses. I will use no verbal responses at all, to encourage you to tell your story.
I will not focus on you at all. I will find as many things in the room as I can to focus on except you.
I will focus on you intently. I will not say or do anything except focus intently on you.
I will have three prepared statements to say to you and I will say them periodically whatever you say to me. I will prepare the statements in my mind right now.
I will only reply to you using language you have already used.
When I speak I will accompany my speech with bizarre and inappropriate physical gestures.
I will be positive about every statement you make.
I will question every statement you make.
I will be critical of every statement you make.
I will invite your story.
I will not invite your story.
*
2. Question
Did you feel angry at not being allowed to go?
You must be feeling angry now; are you?
What are you feeling about not being allowed to go?
Did they tell you by telephone?
How did they tell you?
Where was the funeral?
What would going to the funeral have meant to you?
What was the name of the person who told you?
Shall I speak to your employers for you?
How may I help you?
What would you like me to do about it?
Has it helped talking about it?
How has it felt talking about it?
What will you do now?
July 2010.
*
3. Listen
Could I do it that well?
Could I do that at all?
Would I do it that way?
I wouldn’t do it that way at all.
When my mother died I coped much better.
When my father died I grieved during his illness.
When my sister died I said, well that’s the way it is, and washed my hands of it.
But that can’t be it really, can it?
There must be more to it than that.
OK, so I shall say,
Well I shall ask,
We’ll let it go for now,
But, I’ll come back to that.
The illness.
It’s always the same illness.
It’s always that illness.
Do we say that illness’s name?
Can we think that illness’s name?
Have they uttered that name?
They have not loved as I have.
They have not felt as I have.
They have not grieved as I have.
They have not suffered at all.
And we do not say its name
As we conduct the examination.
And we do not say its name
As we whistle.
And we do not say its name
Before the child.
Yes I have been at the bed.
Yes I have been at their side.
Yes I have been lost, too.
I will solve this problem for you.
I will make helpful suggestions.
I am even now searching for the right advice.
You say, ‘yes, but’,
But you have not been listening to me.
July 2010.
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