Please Just Listen to Me

Ray Houghton, M.D.
Teen Times, Nov/Dec 1979

please, just listen
when I ask you to listen to me and you start giving advice,
you have not done what I asked
when I ask you to listen and you begin to tell me
why I shouldn’t feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings
when I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do
something to solve my problems,
you have failed me, strange as that may seem
listen! All I ask you to do is listen
not talk, or do…just hear

advice is cheap; twenty five cents will get you both
dear abby and billy graham in the same newspaper
and I can do that myself. I’m not helpless
maybe discouraged and faltering but not helpless

when you do something for me that I can and need to do
for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy
but when you accept, as a simple fact, that I do feel
no matter how irrational, then I can quit trying to
convince you and get back about the business of
understanding what’s behind this irrational feeling
and when that’s clear, the answers are obvious and I don’t
need advice. Irrational feelings make sense when we
understand what’s behind them

please listen and just hear me, and if you want to talk wait
a minute for your turn and I’ll listen to you