If you have ever been emotionally held by a listener, you know what a gift it is. To have someone truly care what you are feeling warms your Heart. To not have to wait until your listener gets through their own personal reaction or memory so you can continue is not only special but unique. But perhaps the most precious of gifts is to have someone hear your crazy words pour out about your irrational feeling, and understand they are not your real truth.

Words can carry your truth when they come from a place of understanding. However, words spoken from anger, guilt, fear, or sadness are about the wound which has covered up your truth. It is important not only for the listener to keep this in mind, but it is also necessary for you to remember this, as you listen to your own emotions. To come back to a person after you have listened to them vent or share a feeling and try to hold them to what they said from that state is simply unfair.

Emotions are not rational. That is one reason people often fear them. They never know how they will come out of their mouth, or how they will be received. But out they must come before you can be truly rational. An unspoken, inwardly trapped feeling is just going to lie there dormant. Believing otherwise is the most irrational thought of all. Every feeling that is not acknowledged begins a journey either into your physical body to make it tense and even sick, or to seep into your thinking and turn perfectly rational truths into untrue words of manipulation. Because, you see, if you don’t take care of your emotions, you will need to manipulate someone else into doing it.

Having a good emotional listener helps you to get the current feeling out in the open so you can dispose of it and uncover the truth underneath. Since the rational mind of the listener is still intact during your healing process of irrationality, they can help you sort happenings into a sensible order once the feeling is disposed of. However, if the listener jumps in to add rationality before the feeling has run its course, then their words will just create confusion.

Words of comfort are nice as long as they don’t stop the flow of your feeling. Words of encouragement to proceed are oftentimes necessary. But most frequently, words are not even needed from the emotional listener. Just an open, caring attitude wrapped around an empty space works best. The “empty space” happens when the listener puts aside all their memories and emotions and just makes room for the sharing to be held by their mind and the sharer to be held by their Heart.

Learning to be an emotional listener not only will turn you into a good friend, but it will give you the courage to ask others to play that role for you. Sorting your feelings, thoughts, and actions into separate piles, so to speak, doesn’t turn you into a schizophrenic but allows you to use all of your different parts effectively.