Reflective Listening Skills Analysis

This week I talked to a friend asking how their week was by utilizing non-verbal skills and reflective listening. I found this task of using these skills to be interesting because it allowed me to really listen to my friend. Also, I found this task to be eye opening, allowing me to know more about myself as a listener and showing me my own strengths and weaknesses. Now, reflecting back on my own use of these tactics I realize areas I did well in and areas I could improve upon if I were to use this task more. Additionally, this task was informative, showing me the purpose of these tactics and how they would be implemented. Therefore, this allowed me to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of these psychotherapeutic strategies. Overall, I feel

I felt as though this task, for the most part, was a natural process because I use most of these skills every day. The reason that I’ve used these types of skills was because I find listening to be an important skill allowing us to better understand someone else. Therefore, I try to really hear what someone else is saying because it allows me to show them I care. Thus, I feel I have developed skills that gave me different strengths for this task. One of my strengths is my ability to utilize non-verbal communication. Keeping eye contact and focusing my body towards someone has always been easy for me because I grew up with the idea that it was important to have this skill to show the speaker that you are paying attention. Therefore, using these skills in this activity came naturally to me and I did not have any difficulties keeping eye contact. In regards to reflective listening I feel that I also had various strengths that made this process easy for me. My strength in reflective listening was my ability to allow someone to talk without interruption. This is a strength of mine because in my own life I try to let someone finish talking before I even think of what to say. The reason I do this is so that I can understand what they are saying. Additionally, repeating and rephrasing came easy for me because it is a skill I have practiced before. When I was younger I was training to be a camp counselor and one thing we practiced was talking to the campers. During this training they told us to listen to are partner and try to rephrase what they said back to them to show them we were listening. Therefore, since learning that task I have used it in everyday conversations to show the person I am listening because I felt that it was helpful. Another skill I have developed is the ability to tell the person what I think they are saying. This skill developed because I