The second most talked about subject when reflecting on videos at Woolley Wood is the importance of waiting. Beginning practitioners will tend to do too much and I think this has as much to do with human nature as has to do with being a beginner. In his book ‘Full Catastrophe Living’, Jon Kabat-Zinn describes patience as a form of wisdom. Patience demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time. He uses the analogy of a child trying to help a butterfly to emerge by breaking open its chrysalis. The butterfly usually does not benefit from this and any adult knows that the butterfly can only emerge in its own time, that the process cannot be hurried.
Our partners in Rapport-Based Communication are much like butterflies emerging from a chrysalis (or a chick from an egg) in that their social skills can only develop at their own pace. Of course we can help to create the conditions for natural social engagement by making ourselves socially available (and the more we do this the more opportunities there will be for development) but ultimately we must wait for our partner to choose to be with us rather than instruct him or her to do something when we want them to. To achieve this we may have to wait and be silent for longer than we feel comfortable but this feeling of ‘uncomfortable silence’ is usually about our impatience, our lack of familiarity with stillness and the fact that we are so accustomed to doing things.
So to be the person that our partner needs us to be we need to develop more patience. How can we do this? By engaging in more rapport-based communication and simply reminding ourselves that there is no need to be impatient when the feeling arises, that our partner may be quite happy just sharing space with us and that it is important for them to choose to initiate an interaction with us. I sometimes ask staff members whether they could be still and wait for 30 seconds, or a minute or how about 5 minutes? If as practioners we can do this then there will be no ‘uncomfortable silences’ because at those times we will be relaxed and content and this will help our partner to feel relaxed and content too.
Reference
Kabat-Zinn, Jon. 2013. Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. New York: Bantam Books.