🌸 Your Input Matters 🌸
As listeners, we truly want to support you in ways that feel meaningful, comfortable, and genuinely helpful not just by being present, but by asking questions that help you feel understood and safe to open up. We know that sometimes the usual questions don’t always reach what’s really going on underneath, and it can be hard to put things into words without a little guidance.
Everyone is different, and what helps one person open up might not work for someone else. That’s why your perspective matters so much. Hearing directly from you helps us learn how to better support you not just in general, but in ways that actually feel right for you.
✨ So I’d really love to hear from you:
- What’s something you wish listeners asked you more often?
- Are there questions that help you open up more?
- What makes a question feel supportive vs. unhelpful?
- What makes a good listener?
Your voice can help shape how we show up for you and others 💛
Share as much or as little as you’re comfortable with this is a safe space 🤎
@LexListens2025
Thank you so much for requesting input from people who need a listener. I am both a listener and a member so I would like to provide you my experience as I often ask for a listener to talk to regarding the issues i have dealing chronic illness.
Good listeners are angels. I cannot begin to tell you how much relief some listeners have given me. Their kindness is overwhelming. I love all the people who have talked to me who have encouraged me, empathized with me and even cried with me.
There are many types of people in the world. We all have different qualities and skills sets. Those qualities and skills determine what we are good at. We also do things based on our own motives and reasons.
So a good listener needs to:
1. Have the human qualities and skills to be able to listen effectively to those needing support
2. Perform the listening role for the right reasons.
I think that it is important to realize that, just as a good listener makes a significant and positive difference to a human life, a bad listener can have devastating impact on a human life. The same thing can be said about health professional roles such as therapists, doctors nurses etc. In my mind there is no difference between a listener and a therapist. They are both support roles for people who need support.
If we want our health professionals to be effective at supporting and helping other human beings we need to ensure the above two points are addressed. ie. (i) Has the individual have the qualities required to be a good support person? (ii) Has the person got the skillsets to be a good support person and (iii) Does the person have the right motivation to undertake a role aimed at supporting human beings?
Most of the time, when looking for people to do these kinds of support roles, employers, assessors look at skillsets of an individual. This is in fact the simplest thing for anyone to aquire as skills can be learned. Answering the other two questions addressing an individuals nature to support someone as well as their motivation to support someone are much harder to assess. However, i believe it is important to do so if we want quality health professionals.
If 7 Cups wants quality listeners and good therapists then they need to ensure that a person has the proper nature to undertake the listener and therapist roles and they also need to understand the motivation of an individual to become a therapist or listener. We assume they want to help people. This may be a motive however it may not be the most important reason why a person wants to be a therapist/listener. There are many ways to assess the nature of an individual before allowing an individual to start in the role of however assessing a persons motive is much harder to do before the person begins to work in the role.
It does not take long to establish a persons motives for becoming a listener or therapist. All we have to do is look at that persons results to see if they are making a positive difference or not. We can normally understand motives through the review process.
One last point that i would like to make about listening and is, members invest a significant amount of emotional energy in discussions with listeners, therapists and other health professionals. The listener however, is in a position of investing absolutely nothing. There is also a power difference between the listener and the person being listened to. If that investment is not recognized or even disrespected then, i can understand why people don't want to go to therapists or talk to listeners or see therapists.
I hope that what i have written provides some perspective and insights and can assist in developing effective listeners and health professionals in general.
@Trying
Also sorry for the English mistakes and bad writing
Lots of times Listeners act very formal, they basically say something like "everything will be ok, you'll see". There are usually no actual support or advices or their own experience. It's worse than AI, because the conversation should be something more than "oh, I'm sorry, everything will be fine, don't worry".
If they are teached only for that... I think it's useless at almost 100%. Damn Chat GPT can do that faster.
