The title of this post is quasi-disgusting; there are some things here that are normal, and some things that are gross. I want to postulate that these four things have more in common than you think if you would dream with me for a moment.

This idea came to me from a coffee meeting with an old friend of mine who is becoming a new friend again. You may have had this happen to you before, something like a person beginning a new chapter of their life and they want to give a relationship a second chance or they see something of value in a relationship with you. That’s not quite what this is about, but in this situation, I experienced something that I want to share with you and it revolves around this question.

How do you need to be listened to?
Do you tend to Exhale, or do you Itch?

In general terms (not meant to be limiting or overgeneralizing of course) there is a spectrum of how people express themselves in a relationship. Some people need to exhale, or it is that they need to be heard and not interrupted; some have an itch to be scratched, or they need to be asked many questions. These are the two general ways in which a person needs to be heard, and when these two forms are being met, that is a place of healthiness for the speaker. They feel like they have been heard.
To be clear, you do not always need to exhale, and you don’t always need to be scratched. But let’s be honest, everyone leans one way or the other or else they wobble between the two poles of expression. The question today tries to answer how you need to be heard, and how you need to hear the other person.
Exhaling and having an itch both are ways of expression, and there should be no confusion that both of these activities involve one person’s sharing himself or herself with another, but they take place in very different formats that require different things from the members of the conversation. Let’s explore this by starting with Exhaling.
The idea behind exhaling is that there is an uninterrupted stream from you to the listener. It is important to realize that Exhaling is healthy; not exhaling can lead to word vomiting, which is called Puking. We’ll come back to that in just a moment. First I would like to explore having an itch.
Having an itch is still a form of expression, but it looks much different than exhaling in that it requires the other person to listen to you and to ask questions. It may even require a prompting question from the listener to begin the process of listening. When a person has an itch, there is still something on their heart or mind, but they are not the kind of person to just share and pour out a stream of consciousness. When a person has an itch and it is being scratched, that feeling can put him or her over the moon. But just like not Exhaling can lead to Puking, not having an Itch scratched can lead to Sores.
Puking is something that most people can agree is a sign that something is seriously wrong and that whatever was inside the person needed to be out of them, but that there is something deeper at play more often than not. In the case of being listened to, puking refers to where someone who has something that they need to get out of them and they let it out in a way that is verbally harmful and usually in a time and space that is considered inappropriate.
Puking is what I call a second level expression, and is known by many other names. Venting, shouting, ranting, and yelling are some of the normal names for puking that people experience in a more common amount. These commonalities are not to give the air that puking is in any way or form a normal thing or that it is healthy to get to the point of puking, but they do occur and at some point everyone needs to puke.
Just like how real puking is best done in a bathroom or with a vessel prepared to collect what comes out of a person, Puking is best done in a place where someone is prepared for the amount of stuff and the variety of content that is going to come out o..