Reflective Resonance Listening: The Heartbeat of Transformation at We Write Stories
If you’ve ever spoken to one of our authors or MindTrust clients, you’ve probably heard the same phrase echoed over and over again:
“It felt like therapy.”
While we’re not therapists, we don’t take that feedback lightly, because the experience our clients describe isn’t accidental. It’s the result of a conscious, intentional process we’ve built at the core of everything we do at We Write Stories. That process is something we call Reflective Resonance Listening.
Words don’t make us human.
An Experience Beyond Words.
Recently, during a deep meditation, I had a profound mystical experience. Afterwards, I searched for others who have had similar experiences, I wanted to hear their stories, hoping to find words that could capture mine.
The Power of Listening and Being Heard
In 2021, I was sitting in the shrine room of a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery perched on a cliff overlooking the frozen ocean. The view out of the window of the infinite horizon was only comparable to what I had experienced out at sea. I was in a deep personal retreat with no noise, light, or mind pollution. At this particular moment, I sat in a circle with other monks; we bowed and listened silently as each member shared their thoughts. There was no talkback, no advice given, just one person sharing and everyone else listening.
Transforming Self-Reflection: Overcoming Cognitive Distortions and Nurturing Growth Through Storytelling
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focused therapists refer to the gap between reality and your perception as cognitive distortions. One central tenant that concerns CBT is the idea that emotions are directly correlated to the meanings we associate with events. Essentially, feelings of anxiety or worthlessness can be directly correlated to some event that your brain interprets as proof of this feeling. It is important to note that the issues that arise from negative feelings are not imaginary; they cause interpretations of bad events that exacerbate unhelpfully critical thoughts and beliefs that make them harder to manage.