- Listening
- Long haul work
- Empathy
- Patience
- Silence
- Makes you feel heard/seen and allows you to feel your feelings
- Capacity to understand the experience of the other person when they are needy
- Respect
- Imaging yourself in their shores
- Acceptance
- Caring, love
- Physical presence
- Saying when you have made a mistake
- Being non-judgmental
- Responding to a need
- Ask questions if timing is appropriate
- Trust takes time to build, but can be quickly lost
- Validating feelings and emotions
- Willingness to do the work and to listen
- Continued connection
- Meeting the person where they are, not where your hang ups are
- Active listening
- Giving the person space; knowing when to leave
- Putting your curiosity and voyeurism aside
- Relationship is really important for this to work
- Although being curious about another’s experience can be powerful, set yourself aside and learn.
- No savior complex
- Humor if appropriate and sharing own experience
- Generosity and humility
- If I am overwhelmed by emotion, get support elsewhere so I can be present to their needs
- Go the second mile
- Treat others as they want to be treated
- Be creative and inventive: go buy the pump
- Don’t make it worse with your own anger
- Address pain and danger asap
- Sometimes two are better than one
- If you are stonewalled by authority, get backup and go over their head
- Embrace discomfort
- Ask what people need instead of deciding what we think they need
- Regulate your emotions in order to show up for others who are more likely to be harmed for expressing anger
- Use additional resource, don’t get stuck thinking you can do it by yourself
- Understand the power dynamics, don’t take away the power affected people have
- Know your limits, don’t overpromise
- Under promise, over deliver
- Check your guilt
- Trust that the affected people know what kind of support they need/have solutions in mind. Don’t dictate solutions.
- Awareness of our own triggers