My Listening Experience At Carrabba's Italian Grill

Description of Listening Experience:
My first listening experience took place at Carrabba's Italian Grill late on a Saturday night. I have a long standing tradition with my friend, whenever she comes home from college we meet up and have dinner together. Normally, we talk late into the night about all of the things going on in our lives. On this particular Saturday night, my friend did most of the talking and I, as the listener served as her “sounding board” in order to help her with the opportunity to talk through her problem (Wolvin 2009). My friend has been going to a face-to-face college away from home for exactly a year this spring and she is having a hard time adjusting. I was able to get to open up about her problem by providing a supportive communication climate in which the she felt free to express her feelings and thoughts without judgment. She feels completely isolated at her college. When she first started college she made a few friends but they turned out to be bad influences. One even turned out to be a shoplifter! Needless to say, she is discouraged when it comes to trying to make more new friends. As she talked through her
I did so by using my discriminative and comprehensive listening skills in order to provide the necessary supportive behaviors and responses that enabled my friend to talk through her problem. I also used my empathy skills allowing me to understand the speaker's thoughts and feelings. As I listened to her talk through her problems, I also used the principles of nondirective listening, by offering my friend only the necessary responses such as “uh huh” and nonverbalizations such as head nods. By doing this I was keeping her communicating without directing her to any one particular solution (Wolvin, 2009). During this exercise, I used my therapeutic listening skills to help my friend talk through her problems and reach a