What do you mean: “reflective”?
Dear Friends,
I feel very squeamish about the word reflect. To me it seems that the point is not to be a mirror, but to be (in the other sense) reflective: to take in what is given, to be touched by it and to reflect inwardly - like Mary, who “kept all these things in her heart”.
For this reason, I should myself always feel happier talking about receptive listening than about reflective listening or mirroring.
And then I feel that the child learns to listen to the inner story by being listened to. I doubt if (in general) it is possible to learn experiential SELF-accompaniment, without having received experiential accompaniment in a fairly sustained way.
And I am sceptical that anybody can offer experiential accompaniment, who has not learned to practise experiential self-accompaniment - who has not learned to listen to their own inner world with respect and tenderness.
Further, Focusing is contagious.
And finally, as my friend Marianne says, inner trust is fed, when a capacity for experiential self-accompaniment begins to take hold, when children are able to “live and breathe further into their lives”.
So what we are talking about is something which may be handed gently on from one person to another, across many generations. We are passing a golden treasure from hand to hand…
Kind regards,
Rob