"People start to feel 'healed' the moment they feel 'heard'-" Cheryl Richardson

This article is inspired by my discussion with my LinkedIn friend @aswini Alukkal Prabhakaran who is helping people to speak up their hearts and Aswini is an 'active listener' certified by LinkedIn. When I was talking about her unique business model of receiving paid calls at an appointed time and just listening to their woes, problems, issues etc. patiently and she is doing this on per hour basis just listening to several home makers, career women, ladies who are about to break their brittle relationships and so on. and then I remembered Cheryl Richardson's famous quote "people start feeling healed the moment the feel heard"

In today's complicated world people feel insecure, vulnerable and scared by so many factors of which emotional and social factors play a very crucial role in their mental health. There are several economic factors, job related stress, business related tensions to people in view of the current continued recessionary period all over the world. But the problems which cause anxiety and sleepless nights are mainly the personal issues of people who want to be heard...they just want to share their personal issues with someone in privacy and inspiring women like Aswini have carved out a 'niche' business model listening to people and keep listening to them, which helps them to reduce their stress after the sharing is done and they actually start healing after their sessions with Aswini.

Can we ever imagine that bitter and ear piercing 'words' can cause so much of mental agony and torture to someone? If you are getting hit daily by sarcastic words, heart wrenching words which make you look like a fool or feel like committing suicide. There are some people who are always under tremendous mental stress and are spending sleepless nights and agonising days of worrying and crying sometimes openly and sometimes inside their minds. These poor souls are undergoing this mental condition for a long time and are not finding a way out from their own personal situations which they can't discuss with family or friends due to societal pressures.

When they find someone to listen to them patiently and without disturbing their thought process, they feel better, their mental stress curve comes down slowly and at the end of the session with the counsellor they feel 'inspired' for a positive change in their lives. This is just a beginning of their 'mental healing' process. According to Jennifer Brandel, "healing revolved around a person electing to come to me, with their individual needs as the priority, and with the goal of discovering new information about themselves so they may tell a more truthful story and direct their lives toward new possibilities." She further adds " the power of deeply listening to another person, with full attention, and without judgement or an agenda, is one of the most profoundly healing acts a person can provide to another."

There is also a concept of 'Deep Listening' which involves 'Mindfulness' practice is a foundational training for deep listening at the intra-personal level by which a person helps with guided meditation techniques. There is group level inter-personal listening in which one or more individuals is listening deeply to the voices of many others and this is more trans-formative tool in group listening. Remember that active listening means mindful listening to the affected person and we do not offer them any solution or suggestions.

The listening process gives encouragement to the speaker for articulating his or her thoughts, checking with them for what they mean if we find that some clarification is needed from them. Sometimes the person has emotional outburst during calls and this causes disturbance in the communication, the listener has to be patient and give sufficient time and support to pick themselves up and bring them back on track for resuming the story from where it was paused. It is always good to summarise the discussion from time to time to check and confirm whether the communication was complete or not, at the end of the call normally a person wants to have feedback from the listener, although it it mutually agreed upon that the call will be only for listening and not for giving any solutions to their problems, the summary of the call can be done by the listener in brief recapitulation and this gives very good amount of energy for the healing process to start, because after a heavy shower of rain....generally the water is soaked in the soil and then the sweet smell of soil erupts which is the beginning of the healing of the mind soul and body as well.