July 18 is International Listening Day, making it afitting opportunity to look at how we can support fellow human beings through listening or strengthen our own mental health with conversation. And it offers a good occasion to introduce the voluntary offer of REDEZEIT FÜR DICH – #virtualsupporttalks, with whose blog Lesezeit we of FemalExperts cooperate in the context of this column.
Questions, answers
Cognition in dialogue
when speeches unite
Nora Hille
Kinga Bartczak, FemalExperts editor, comments on the importance of listening to our mental health and the work of collaborative partner “Redezeit für Dich.”
“Active listening is essential to our mental health as it enables us to develop empathy, strengthen human connections, and gain a deep understanding of others’ perspectives and feelings. We are pleased to join together in this framework, especially with “Speak Time for You,” to highlight the special importance of listening and, through this, open a shared space of mutual understanding.”
Here’s what you can expect in today’s column:
- Small Talk or Deep Talk
- International Day of Listening: All who are genuinely interested in their counterpart can listen
- Review: Corona as an amplifier of loneliness
- Birth of “Speech Time for You
- The volunteers of “Speech Time for You
- Statement from “Speech Time for You
- The self-experiment: I test “Speech Time for You” with a personal request
- Find a suitable contact person
- The contact
- Our Zoom conversation: An emphatic listener and advisor for me
- Interview with “my” listener Andrea Schmid
- When coaching, when therapy?
- Looking back on more than 3 years of speaking: co-founder Florian Schleinig in an interview
- Finally: A poem
Small Talk or Deep Talk?
Whether it’s our best friend, a valued colleague, or our beloved partner: with some people, we can talk quite freely beyond small talk, discuss worries and experiences, or share hopes, wishes, and dreams. Such conversations – also called Deep Talk – generate in us the warm feeling of closeness and belonging, because we feel understood and “seen”, i.e. valued. In conversation, we often find solutions to problems that we would not have come up with on our own. Even when feelings are challenging or stressful, a good conversation can help us better deal with or process them.
International Day of Listening: All who are genuinely interested in their counterpart can listen
The International Day of Listening reminds us of this: having an open ear for one’s fellow human beings can be very strengthening, relieving and helpful for our counterpart. That’s why it can be worthwhile to follow up on the standard “How are you?” conversation situation, which is so often met with the small talk response of “fine” or “okay,” with a “How are you really doing?” And suddenly the way is clear for an in-depth, honest conversation that is good for both sides – because it is precisely this interest in the other that we ourselves desire.
But what to do when such a familiar person who is interested in us is not available right now or is completely absent from our lives? Or when our issues and emotional burdens have reached a dimension where professional contact persons are needed?
Review: Corona as an amplifier of loneliness
Especially the first Corona Lockdown (seven weeks from March 22, 2020) meant for many people a sudden isolation combined with great emotional stress. Many suddenly lacked the everyday contacts and conversations that are so important for mental well-being. As a result, existing stresses grew more quickly into mental crises and a real need for help.
Birth of “Speech Time for You
At that time, Florian Schleinig (41 years), Hamburg coach, intensely perceived the social development with its enormous, mental challenges for so many under the burning glass of Corona. That gave him the idea right away one evening in March 2020 to found “Redezeit für Dich” together with three other practicing coaches as a non-profit, society-oriented initiative that is free of charge for everyone. They quickly wanted to get other professional listeners on board to help their fellow human beings voluntarily, unbureaucratically and quickly – that was the birth of “Redezeit für Dich”.
Florian Schleinig recalls: “When we wrote the message REDEZEIT FÜR DICH on a tile as an offer to help, I never realized that we would be starting a founding story. That we would be laying the foundation for a non-profit and thoroughly voluntary social startup. Looking back, every day to this day has been the best investment and lesson in part of who I am.”
The volunteers of “Speech Time for You
At “Redezeit für Dich” — virtualsupporttalks.de, which, by the way, is a partner of the Action Alliance for Mental Health — you can speak by (video) phone, free of charge and in confidence, with currently over 350 trained coaches, therapists, and mental health experts—some of whom are multilingual—who offer their expertise and support, driven by a desire to do something meaningful for their fellow human beings.
Statement from Speech Time for You
“We do not pursue economic, political or religious goals. All listeners at REDEZEIT listen regardless of the topic presented, origin, background, identity, sexuality, religion or political views. We volunteer to give you our ear and listen to you: we are simply there, with all our senses and antennas, listening to your words as attentively as we listen to the silence. Individually and collectively as a group, we send a signal of hope and support every day in both good and challenging times.”
The self-experiment: I test “Speech Time for You” with a personal request
As a mother of two children (daughter 10 and son 14) with a turbulent family life, there is always some issue that is pressing and discussing it with a professional can be a real benefit. That’s why I would like to finally try out “Redezeit für Dich” myself, whose offer I have known for so long and have often recommended to others.
Find a suitable contact person
To do this, I first go to the virtualsupporttalks.de homepage and call up the “Speech time for you!” section. Here I have several options to find a suitable contact person: I can select by language and gender. This is followed by keywords such as overcoming fears, alcohol abuse and violence, eating disorders, family, bullying, grief work and 32 other options.
The more I click on them, the more I can refine my search results, because fewer and fewer contacts are “spat out” by the database. At the end, three listeners are suggested to me, each with their own homepage and e-mail address.
The contact
I choose Andrea Schmid (54), a talk therapist and alternative practitioner from Ebersbach near Göppingen, whose friendly smile on the homepage photo immediately wins me over. Now I should briefly describe my request in the e-mail and indicate free time slots for the following week. The answer to my inquiry comes by return of post the next day together with a proposed date. And just a few days later, we see each other in a Zoom call.
Our Zoom conversation: An emphatic listener and advisor for me
First Andrea Schmid explains to me that we have 20-30 minutes and that I may decide for myself how the conversation should proceed:
- Do I simply need a good listener with whom I can let out everything that is bothering me at the moment?
- Or do I want a dialogue, maybe even tips?
I opt for the latter and say that I would be very happy to receive specific advice. Then our conversation begins (for which I have made notes in advance, after all, I don’t want to forget anything important): I report first, then we circle the topic together more and more.
Andrea Schmid asks me questions, I think about them, and together we come up with new answers. Especially exciting for me as a mother: A problem I see in one of my children is closely linked to myself, to still existing limiting beliefs and projections. Of course, it is not necessarily pleasant to hear that you are part of the problem, but it also opens up unimagined possibilities for action and support for me, if I will work hard on myself in the near future. I am of course prepared to do this because of my own experience of therapy for my bipolar disorder [1] and for the good of my child.
Interview with “my” listener Andrea Schmid
Following our very appreciative conversation, however, I would like to find out more about therapist and alternative practitioner Andrea Schmid for this column and invite her to the following interview.
Why do you volunteer for “Talk Time for You?”
“Because I think the platform is just great. There are so few therapy places, and we all know about the long waiting times. That’s where we at ‘Redezeit’ can be a good first port of call with our professional listening and conversation services in acute cases.”
What kind of experience have you taken away from your previous work for Redezeit?
“I always thought therapy via Zoom didn’t work. And yet it does! Unlike in my profession, where I accompany my clients over a longer period of time, here at ‘Redezeit’ I had to learn to let go and trust that my one-time conversation partners would continue to find a good way with the topics I ‘touched on’.”
What is your biggest concern in your job? Why did you choose this profession?
“For me, the most beautiful job in the world is to support people on their way. I believe that everyone already has the solution within themselves. Our task as therapists is to accompany our clients in their work, so that they gradually uncover their own solution.”
What is especially important to you in the therapist-client relationship?
“An encounter at eye level with the goal of self-empowerment of the clients, because no one should become dependent on long-term therapy. It was particularly nice when a client said to me at the end of the session: I now have such a great toolbox, with which I can face life. And if I notice that I’m still missing a circular saw or a cordless screwdriver, I’ll just drop by again.'”
When the journey continues after the acute conversation: when coaching, when therapy?
Sometimes, however, it becomes clear in such conversations that longer-term professional support is needed.
The boundaries between coaching and therapy are clearly defined: The target group of coaching is healthy people who are usually coached on a predefined topic so that they can solve problems independently in the future. [2]
Psychotherapy, on the other hand, is aimed at people with suffering pressure who experience themselves as significantly limited on a daily basis by mental stress or symptoms of illness. The three most common procedures are:
- cognitive behavioral therapy,
- depth psychologically based psychotherapy and
- analytical psychotherapy.
In contrast to coaching, therapy always requires practitioners with a license to practice, i.e. with a state license to practice.
Looking back on more than 3 years of speaking: co-founder Florian Schleinig in an interview
Besides your family, your full-time job and the podcast “Echte Papas”, where do you always find the strength for your honorary position at “Redezeit”?
“Meanwhile, REDEZEIT has become my ikigai ❤️ . The Japanese concept, which can be roughly translated as “meaning of life,“ is becoming increasingly popular in this country. After all, it is considered the key to a healthy and happy life. And somehow working with this great team and the many volunteer listeners gives me a lot of strength and energy. They drive me to constantly take on new challenges that are important for the growth of REDEZEIT. Through them all, I can rise above.”
When you founded “Redezeit”, what was your vision?
“Quite simply, being able to help people and giving back to society.”
Were you surprised by how quickly so many professional listeners joined you and how much demand there was for speaking time in the first few weeks?
“Yes, a little bit. Actually, it was “only” intended as a small campaign by the four of us coaches, aimed at our own followers in the networks. We didn’t have in mind that there would be so many followers and that we would receive so much support.
What are your biggest challenges at the moment?
“Volunteer work is one of our great challenges. Apart from the volunteer listeners, we are also a volunteer organization team. And here it very often becomes apparent that life can get in the way and the volunteer work of individuals then has to take a back seat. For us, this means always remaining flexible. Another challenge is the question of funding. Donations are scarce in our field and public funding always entails a lot of work. That’s why we’ve been working on a non-profit business model and hope to take it on the road. In doing so, we are targeting companies and their employees.”
Where do you see “speech time” in 5 or 10 years?
“We hope that we will still be around then and that we have been able to help many people in the meantime. For us, the impact, that is, the effect we want to achieve with our work, plays a big role.”
How confident are you that talking about mental health will become more normal and commonplace, so that the stigma of mental illness can also diminish?
“It’s difficult to say. There has been a lot of talk about it since Corona. But the question is, how will this affect the way we deal with each other? Will empathy grow as a result? Will we be able to gain a bit of normality with it? I’m sure that won’t be clear for a few years.”
Finally: A poem
Listening I listen to the sound of your voice so quiet so fragile so full of fear I see your face your eyes turned inward your gaze I see your slumped shoulders But also see how the flow of your words brings you relief Our eyes meet An encouraging smile flows from me to you Listening leads to a enriching dialogue that overcomes loneliness What connects us is through the exchange of our thoughts but also with our souls Nora Hille
[1] I have written an encouragement book about my experiences with bipolar disorder, which will be published by Palomaa Publishing at the end of August 2023 and is now available for pre-order. It’s called “When Light Defeats Darkness. Shaping life, family and partnership positively with bipolar disorder.”
[2] See Michel, Stefanie: “Der feine Unterschied zwischen Coaching und Psychotherapie”. Published in Welt online on February 7, 2018. Source: https://www.welt.de/gesundheit/article173289591/Der-Unterschied-zwischen-Coaching-und-Psychotherapie.html (accessed 18.07.2023).
About the author
Nora Hille was born in 1975, is happily married and has two children. She studied history, literature and media studies, worked in communications/public relations for 12 years and has now retired for health reasons. Today she writes articles on the topics of mental health and mental illness as a sufferer and experience expert. She also writes literary essays, poems (preferably haikus) and short prose. She regularly publishes her mental health column here at FemalExperts Magazine and is Editor of eXperimenta - the magazine for literature, art and society. Anti-stigma work is close to her heart: she is an encourager at Mutmachleute e.V. and is committed to Anti-Stigma-Texts against the stigmatization (exclusion) of the mentally ill in our society for more togetherness, tolerance and equality. In autumn 2023 her book "When Light Defeats Darkness" will be published by Palomaa Publishing. A book of encouragement about how to live a good and rich life despite bipolar illness - and the enormous challenge that this means every day for the inner balance of those affected.
