Some questions are good to ask, but then there are some people you honestly feel like you are being interrogated by – which is definitely where you start looking for those quick “fill in the hole” answers, lol. great read, thank you I will have to visit here again!

Chelle’s last blog post..The Pursuit of Happiness: The Secrets to Being Happy

nancy white’s last blog post..Hope Wechkin — integration and the important things that surface.

I acknowledge that true listening is powerful and most of us could do better in practicing being fully present to what others say.

However, I find that I DO learn when I am talking. When I am in TRUE conversation, sharing words in an authentic manner with another, I am able to experiment with owning feelings, fears, hopes, thoughts, ideas in new ways as I clothe these intangible glipses with words. As I verbalize what I am only beginning to discover myself I make new discoveries.

To me, the best conversations are the ones where both/all parties involve can strike a balance between safety and vulnerability, to take chances with exploring meaning-making rather than merely playing expected roles.

The technology has to provide the features that the audience is seeking for that particular discussion, their particular role in this community … So: What kind of conversation do you want?

that’s a good question. it reframes very nicely another question i’ve been asking, which is, “what is the conversational context?”

my first reaction to your question is, i want a conversation where my readers feel invited to participate. ideally, this participation, at least sometimes, goes beyond responding. i love comments like yours that say, “… and did you think about THIS? and what about THAT idea over there?”

in nancy-white-speak, that would be the community-of-interest blogger. which means that eventually, i’ll have to have more conversational/interactional modes on this blog. (forums? wikis? regular chats?)

i’ll be thinking about this some more. i just found that nancy white has a great checklist regarding interactional purposes, so let’s see what happens there …

Taking the discussion onto your own professional world, it’s my understanding that there should be solid shutters between Joe the Therapist and Joe the Private Guy. No transparency here, thank you very much.

i’m not quite sure what you’re referring to here; there are many angles from which to look at this topic. my paper on countertransference may have something to say about this.

to my mind, the long and short of this is:

1. as a therapist, i need to make it abundantly clear to my clients and myself that the work is about THEM, not about me
2. talking about me is helpful if and when it serves one or both of these two therapeutic purposes – a) to build the human connection between the client and myself; and b) it may be a teaching tool, as virginia satir puts it (e.g. “when i had this problem, this is how i dealt with it”)
3. in all public communication (as in this blog), i need to do my utmost to protect client confidentiality

“BED experiences with questions” ?!?

OK, back on topic. What’s needed for conversations depend much on the topic and the culture. Nancy’s figure with three different type of setups for blogs + comments illustrated that nicely.

1. CEO blogger: Unless some sort of anonymity is guaranteed, most of the staff will abstain from commenting on anything
2. The three PhD-bloggers: These guys absolutely want credit for their clever comments (no anonymity here) but they may want the conversation closed (semi-private blog).
3. Community of interest (knit-bloggers etc.): The participants want credit for their comments (but they may prefer to be known by a nome de guerre, not their actual name), visibility (pointing people to their own blogs), community, togetherness.

The technology has to provide the features that the audience is seeking for that particular discussion, their particular role in this community (an individual could easily be a member of all three types of communities, and want different conversation features in each type of community).

Taking the discussion onto your own professional world, it’s my understanding that there should be solid shutters between Joe the Therapist and Joe the Private Guy. No transparency here, thank you very much.

So: What kind of conversation do you want?