renaissance poisson

i don't think the technique needs defending (i am fully onboard with the technique itself), it needs better presentation. :) but then i don't generally like pithy slogans. "shut up and listen" gets people's attention, but it also raises hackles, and for good reason (it's such an old dominance play, for heaven's sakes) -- and then we get to waste time smoothing those hackles down first, if we can even manage at all. it's not efficient. it is guilty of the very thing it claims to attack -- it distracts the conversation away from the actual ism. is everyone talking about racism or feminism now? nope. we're having meta-discussions.

in contrast i agree with just about everything you said. i think active listening is an extremely useful skill, and dammit, why are we not all taught about it complete with lots of practice in school? why did i have to piece together my initial conversational skills bit by bit through careful observation? what if i hadn't been a natural observer? it's so much more important than being able to regurgitate the years when the ancient greeks and spartans battled each other. and now, where are the links to websites with practical advice on how to actually do it well? i would enjoy a thread to which we'd all bring examples of what conversational skills have worked for us and share those.

the small bit i disagree with in your post is that "i would never do that" is on par with the other things you might say -- i do find the former unuseful even if i grok wanting to defend oneself against charges of being a cad, but "i think that's horrible" and "i'm sorry" sound merely supportive to me, a first step towards encouraging the other person to say more, an attempt to provide a non-hostile environment. "you should never have to experience something like that" is a bit more iffy because well, *duh*, right, but so what, we don't live in an ideal world. however, giving some supportive feedback is important to not leave the other person hanging. and i really, really hate novice therapist feedback, it feels so very presumptuous, and dicks around with the power balance -- which is much worse than "i would never do that". i mean, i can deflect that easily by saying "i know; that's why i am talking to you at all", and then can continue to talk about my experience, but if somebody (who is not my therapist) pulls a pseudo-therapy card as their first conversational gambit, i immediately want to stop talking to them because i feel patronized.

what sort of feedback have you found to be successful, if you can say? should i start a new thread for that?