Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Language of Caring


I’ve now attended the third in the series of nine skill building workshops designed to “hard wire” skills that make our caring felt. During this session we talked about Acknowledging Feelings.

Every day we work with people who are filled with feelings; patients who are tired and anxious, family members who are worried or overwhelmed, coworkers who are swamped or grateful. When we tune in to people’s feelings we ease their anxiety and make our caring felt.   

We learned to respectfully check out whether or not we’ve read the person right. Make sure you ask questions such as, you sound… or you seem… Once you understand how the person is feeling you know how to help and the person feels understood.

We also learned what not to do, we should never:

  1.  Tell someone you know how they feel;
  2.  Dismiss the person’s feelings, or
  3.  When you reflect back, don’t sound annoyed or angry.

When the people we serve are full of feelings, it is healing for them to be understood.  We also demonstrate that we are, caring people, caring for people. 

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