ARE YOU SECURE ENOUGH TO TRULY LISTEN?

Do you know what holds you and me back from really, really listening? For Carl Rogers what holds us back is fear and insecurity. At least that’s what Carl Rogers wrote: “It takes courage. If you really understand another person in this way, enter into his private world and see the way life appears to him, without any attempt to make evaluative judgments, you run the risk of being changed yourself.” (1961, On Becoming a Person, p. 333)

When Rogers speaks about understanding someone “in this way” he is speaking about empathetic understanding— “understanding with a person, not about him.” And for Rogers, this is such an effective approach that it can bring about major changes in personality (1961: 332).

“If I can listen to what he can tell me, if I can understand how it seems to him, if I can see its personal meaning for him, then I will be releasing potent forces for change in him.”

What stops this? Judgment. Evaluation.