“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

e e cummings

We do not become fully integrated, self-aware and self-loving humans in isolation. We become our best selves in relationship. Specifically, we become our best selves in relationships that make us feel seen and heard, understood and appreciated for being just who we are. We become authentically ourselves in relationships in which we feel known.

Fascinatingly, these moments of feeling known and appreciated affect not only our psychological sense of self. They also change our brains!

Dr Dan Siegel, a thought-leader in the field of interpersonal neurobiology, teaches that moments like this develop the part of the brain that makes us most human …the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that allows us to modulate our emotions, know ourselves as individuals, empathize with others, experience insight, integrate the past, present and future, and intuit the inner wisdom of our heart and gut.

It is the part of the brain that takes a long time to grow. It needs stimulation of one particular sort. It needs the experience of feeling known.

Your listening makes that possible for others.