What is a sounding board?
In my earlier email on managing stress, I shared how important it is to have a sounding board.
Understanding the qualities of a sounding board is essential. What makes a sounding board…a sounding soul?
A sounding board resonates with wonder, encouragement, compassion, intelligence, discernment, creativity, multiple perspectives, and good humor.
Who do you talk to that not only gets you but responds with inspiration?
Inspirations show up as surprising observations and deep questions that
- set you free from stuck places and old stories,
- make sense of the crazy confusions of your feelings,
- waken self-forgiveness,
- make you laugh or cry with relief,
- see what has been hiding in plain sight for a long, long time,
- give the unnameable a name, and
- give you the courage to live in the power of your truth with agency and authenticity.
A sounding board is
- not a fixer,
- not an expert,
- not a priest,
- not a therapist,
- not a teacher,
- not a role-model,
- not a degree,
- not a guru.
A sounding board has no role other than resonating with you.
A sounding board may also be one or more of these other roles or qualifications but without the resonance, the qualifications have no meaning and the role has no purpose. Just remember that a sounding board is a quality not a qualification or a role.
A Spiritual Friendship
More than a good friend, a sounding board offers a spiritual friendship. This friendship is not about a social connection, common interests and needs, or sentimentality and shared history. It is about you becoming you.
A spiritual friend befriends your thinking, your feeling, your willing, your stories, your karma, your destiny, your becoming, your wounds, your transforming, your mysteries, and more. A spiritual friend reveres your individuality and celebrates you as a spiritual being wanting to fulfill your potential.
I’ve been a sounding board for so many individuals over 40 years of sacred conversations. Most of my clients refer to me as their therapist. I’m not a therapist. I think they call me therapist because they pay me for the time I devote to them. And maybe it feels strange to say “I have an appointment with my spiritual friend.” I earn my living being a spiritual friend, a sounding board.
Together the two of us form and participate in a sacred friendship.
Often people contact me when they are facing a life crisis but they continue working with me for the richness of our spiritual friendship. Each friendship is a rare blessing.
