When I ask you to listen to me and you start to give 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 should not feel like that, you are trampling on my feelings.
When I ask you to listen and you feel you have to do something to solve my problems, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
Listen.
All I ask is that you listen.
Advice is cheap.
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 stop trying to convince you and get down to the business of trying to understand it.
Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what is behind them and when that is clear the answers become obvious and I don’t need advice.
So please just listen. If you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn and I will listen to you.
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