Needing A Listener

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 to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way, you are trampling 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 asked was that you listen-not talk or do-just hear me.
Advice is cheap;  50 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper; and I can do for 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 weakness.      
But when you accept as a simple fact that I do feel what I feel, no matter how irrational,then I can quit trying to convince you and get 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.      
So please listen and just hear me.
And, if you want to talk,wait a minute for your trun and I’ll listen to you.