I think that listening to and hearing what people are saying are also a function of the highest level of mindfulness where you keep your expectations about what people might be saying out of the interaction. Maybe this is just total openness that allows the person's authentic self to emerge.I haven't achieved the highest level of mindfulness nor a lower level yet but I do see your point. I find that when I accept what T is saying or at least consider it carefully, I go places (mentally, intellectually, emotionally) where I've never been before. When my high emotions aren't allowing me to be as open, T has ways to come in the 'back door' or the side door and can contact me there.

I think this is openness is different than having no idea of what's going on with someone and how to guide them to where they need to go. It's not a "blank slate" to project onto, although that may be a piece of it.I asked T last week if she always knows before me what's going on with me. And she said she does not but she has some ideas about it. So her questioning is to tease out of me what might be going on.

I think it also might be a somewhat paradoxical twin of using your own experiences and who you are to connect to what people are saying while simultaneously suspending your beliefs and expectations about how people are supposed to feel and think.'Suspending' beliefs is the tough one. But, boy what a ride we can go on if we can sometimes do that.

At some point, I would probably define the safety I feel in session as the one hour of my week where someone isn't "out to get me", in the non-clinical paranoid sense. Where someone is really there for me, and nothing else.

Anne