Mental Health - Listening Technique

The listening technique involved indirect mirroring. Indirect mirroring is when you model the client's behavior, but not exactly. This can include crossing your legs, smiling, nodding, matching tempo, and matching breathing. As previously stated though, not exactly. For example, if a person has crossed their legs at the knee, you might cross your legs at the ankle. If a person talks a lot with their hands, you might match the tempo of their hands with tapping your finger. This process of keeping tempo and eventually slowing it down calms the client.

This therapy technique was not very difficult, and yet highly effective. I was amazed to find out how long people would continue talking without me actually saying anything. There were often times when I would have to break rapport to get out of the conversations. The first person I used this technique on talked to me for about 10 minutes without me saying anything at all. She was not a talkative woman either, just had a lot of opinion I guess. I used this technique on her throughout the day, and each time I had to break rapport to remove myself from the topic. I wondered if she noticed me doing it since she was a school psychologist, but she did not appear to.

The second person I tried this technique on also found it easy to talk. The conversation went from business to therapy in about 2 minutes. It was interesting because I've talked with this person about their problems in the past and they would always ask my opinion about various things. This time, however, the person did not ask since I was not doing my usual talking back. Instead, the person continued to talk and philosophize about this or that. Again, after 10 or so minutes, I ended up breaking rapport by breaking tempo or eye-contact.

There were several times this week where I tried this technique. Each time the results were the same. The person I was listening to would find it easy to talk and not stop until I made the conscious decision to look away. What surprised me most was that people who usually do not talk for long periods of time were doing just that. Whether it was about their lives or beliefs, people felt comfortable. I found it especially unusual because I was not actually being a great listener in my opinion. Most of the time I was thinking about mirroring their actions, matching their tempo, or matching their breathing. It took a lot of conscious effort to do that and often I felt I missed the major points the person was trying to convey.

The most difficult thing about this technique was matching the breathing. Eventually, I think I threw out the conscious effort of it because I would start losing the information being spoken to me. Also, the person speaking always appeared to have a much faster tempo than me and that would make me feel anxious when I tried to match it. I did not seem to master the technique of starting out matching their speed and then trying to slow them down. I think the main reason for that was that most of the people I spoke with did not have a tempo that I should be worried about. Nothing was so aggressive that it seemed to warrant a slow-down attempt.

In general, this technique was very effective and simple. I can see that it is something I will use in my practice. When people are not seeking for advice and just want someone to listen, this technique will be very useful.