About listening in the psychotherapy office

After the first therapy session, a new client confessed to me, “I left here lighter. Although there are things I have always told my family and friends about, telling them here, something was different.”

Listening in the psychotherapy office is different from listening in real life. When we tell our friends, family, life partner or co-workers about the difficulties we face, we are often interrupted, we receive advice, and our story is interpreted through the thinking and emotional filters of those who listen to us. The availability of those who listen to us is often partial, they think about their own problems and concerns, while we debug our story. And our message is often reinterpreted through the belief filters of the person in our life and through the relationship and emotion filters they already have with us. Being already in a relationship with the person in question (couple relationship, mother-child relationship, friendship, office colleagues), the obligations and emotional structure of the already existing relationship load the message with meanings that jam.

In the psychotherapy office, the therapist is 100% present for the client and his story. The story flows without being interrupted, without being interpreted. Through his own process of personal development, the therapist cleaned his own filters of thought and emotion, being prepared to enter the client’s reality and listen to his story, from the inside. The client reveals his suffering in a safe emotional environment, where there are no expectations, he is not judged and measured and does not receive advice from another psychological reality.Listening in the presence, empathy and non-judgment is the most powerful technique we use in the office. Because healing requires that our suffering be truly seen and contained by another soul.