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Areas › Your marriage › Listening and understanding
Empathic reflection, gently naming and mirroring back what your partner is feeling, tells them they are not alone in it. Keep it slow, simple, and warm rather than clever or corrective.
Speak to him gently, so that he may take heed (Quran 20:44). A soft, slow, gentle voice is the very manner the reflection calls for, and the manner in which a heart takes something in.
طه
فَقُولَا لَهُۥ قَوۡلࣰ ا لَّيِّنࣰ ا لَّعَلَّهُۥ يَتَذَكَّرُ أَوۡ يَخۡشَىٰ
Speak to him gently so that he may take heed, or show respect.’
Qur’an 20:44read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Johnson's most basic move is to say a person's feeling back to them slowly, simply and softly, using the words they used. Done that way it creates enough safety for the deeper feeling to surface, where a clever or corrective reply would close it down.
Susan M. Johnson (2019). Attachment Theory in Practice: EFT with Individuals, Couples, and Families. Guilford
RISSSC: Repeat, use Images, keep it Simple, go Slow, use a Soft voice, and use the Client's words. Johnson's delivery rule holds that how a thing is said governs whether it can be heard when a partner is emotionally aroused.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Slow, soft, simple reflection of a partner's emotion creates a felt sense of safety that lets deeper feeling emerge.
Where this sits: EFT, RISSSC delivery: empathic reflection, slow, simple, soft and in your partner's own words.