Finding the Courage to listen

​I spent 13 years working with at-risk kids in a residential wilderness program. For the first several of those years, I lived with these kids and provided direct care for them 24 hours a day - several days a week. I was a youth counselor.

When I speak to groups about mental health these days, I often bring up those counseling years. When I do, I tell people that the first two years of that experience, I was THE WORST counselor ever. By far.

Then one day I was having a conversation with a kid. Actually, it's more accurate to call it a fully escalated verbal assault. He assaulting me - and me him. This wasn't the first time that happened with us. This kid knew every one of my triggers and I knew his and we just took turn pulling triggers. Boom. Bang. Boom.

In this particular conversation, though, I did something different. I stopped yelling and asked him a question. I asked this kid what on earth had happened in his life that had made him so angry. I couldn't possibly be the source of that much anger, I told him. I remember how stunned he was by that. I'd never asked him about his life before.

In this conversation I'd learn that no one ever had.

Through tears, that kid went on to tell me a lot about what had happened in his life. When you finally have someone interested in listening to a story you've been dying to tell for 13 years, you tell your story. All of it.

That day, the world's worst counselor became a great one. That day he realized the secret to being a great one is getting rid of the idea that healing kids happens when you tell them all about YOU and start embracing the reality that what they need most is someone interested in hearing about THEM.

As I've spent the last decade or so working more deeply in the mental health world, I've come to believe at the heart of so much of our mental illness is people who believe no one is interested in them - no one is interested in this story they want to tell.

I believe that's at the heart of a lot of our illnesses. And hurts.

Be still and listen.

Maybe that gets to be too bible-like so we shy away from it. But that day, with that kid, when I just got still and listened - I literally saw healing in the air. Something beautiful happened in that kid I'll never forget.

Too this day, when I get to believing the healing someone needs in their life is to hear a little more of me - I picture that kid and I try to quiet myself. And then I'll ask the question kids like that - people like that - long to hear.

I'll ask how are you? And then I listen.