masking

My female owner hitched a ride to school from someone today. Over the past months of training, my female owner has learnt not to let go of slight hesitation of responses or responses that seem to be masking the true feelings. In other words, people tend to say what is socially expected at the first instance but when you read into the non-verbals, you can pick out incongruent messages and with gentle probing, can help the person to express these inner feelings and thoughts.

My female owner did just that today in the car. She waited for him to go beyond the surface and was glad she didn’t accept his socially expected answer, coz allowing him space to express himself led to a fruitful conversation. My female owner started asking him questions that she would ask any of her clients and found it fascinating how her friend answered her spontaneously.

She wondered if he even knew that she was doing some form of therapy on him. My female owner mused that if she tried any of those questions (“how would you know if…”, “what did you do that was helpful?” etc) on her psych/counselling/social work friends, they would have retorted almost immediately with, “stop using your psych-speak on me?” So hard to support helping professionals.