Hear

Friday nights are special in our family because we typically get together with The Langs. Theirs plus ours makes for some crazy laughter and conversation with some food and drink thrown in for good measure. We become one functionally dysfunctional mass of people and the volume is always turned up on hilarity. The standing joke when someone chokes and sputters on food or drink is "are you choking, may I help you, I'm trained in First Aid?" Sometimes we insist, no really may I help you, even when the person is clearly able to cough and clear whatever got lodged temporarily in the throat. This brings me to my point, that I am trained in emotional first aid, as many are. First aid can save a life and so too can emotional first aid, in the moment at least. When asking a conscious person if they need help, there is an inherent understanding that the person being asked is at choice, capable of response, yes, help me or no, I don't want/need/agree to being helped. The question puts both the asker and the respondent in clear positions with one another. This clarity is fantastic in its resolution of what will happen next. What if the asking does not occur? What if I/you, swoop in and attempt to save the day, rescue someone perceived to be needing first aid of the emotional kind and we steal from them the power to choose? In coaching, everyone is considered naturally creative resourceful and whole, capable of asking for what they need for self healing, from the inside out. I am a band aid, a tissue, a shoulder to cry on, I am a stitch that fades in time as wounds mend and scar over. It is the wounded that must take care, love themselves well and seek help when they feel they cannot go it, the painful suffering, alone. This is learned and it first must be taught, to ask respectfully, can I help you? After the asking there comes the wait, the standing guard, the self management to refrain from insisting on rushing in, trusting that the one being asked is able to choose and must not be put upon "for their own good". Ask, wait, listen...hear.