![]() Every once in a while make sure to check-in with your breathing feeling your breath in the body to ground yourself in the present moment. With your mind: Keep most of your awareness on the story/narrative of what the other person is disclosing. With your body: While they speak to you, orient your body towards them, maintain a physical posture of interest, and maintain appropriate eye contact. Practice Tip: Find someone you feel comfortable practicing deep listening with a friend, colleague, or even teen if you feel comfortable enough to implement this practice in vivo. While practicing deep listening it’s often skillful to be aware of our own bodies and to portray interested, curious body language (appropriate eye contact, potentially leaning in, and an overall orientation toward the teen talking rather than a dismissive one). The benefit of this skill is that the teen that’s confiding in you will feel heard, listened to, understood, and as a result your relationship will grow stronger. In deep listening however, the object of focus is on the conversation you’re having, and the experience of the person talking to you. The difference between deep listening and mindfulness meditation, for example, is that in meditation the object of our awareness is often our breath, body, thought process, and sometimes even just experience itself. The issue is, many adults don’t practice basic listening skills and youth often are left feeling unheard and not understood, if not completely written off.ĭeep listening is the practice of bringing one’s awareness to the present moment with an attitude of non-judgment-a type of mindfulness practice. ![]() Of course, oftentimes when a youth has an issue and needs to connect with an adult, listening on the adult’s part is a core ingredient for whether or not the youth feels heard. They are basic enough so that the novice can learn and practice them, but important enough that even skilled psychotherapists will benefit from their implementation. Thus, these basic skills presented here are applicable to anyone who works with youth from the math teacher who has a connection with a particular group of students, to the licensed therapist who sees youth in individual and/or group psychotherapy. For educators, it’s important to know that there are limitations to the counseling-type conversations one may have with a youth, while at the same time understanding that it’s important to have some basic counseling skills to help facilitate the authentic relationship. I have known many teachers who build authentic relationships with their students and in turn their students feel more comfortable talking to them about their problems rather than the school therapist. Working with teens has its own unique set of challenges and often times as providers we’re relegated to positions of listener, mentor, and guide, regardless of whether or not we’re actual therapists or counselors.
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