The ECHO portion of the Life Pattern RESET process is intended to help the person who is sharing to capture all that they have said.  When we are in the middle of remembering or working through an issue, we sometimes have a rush of thoughts and speak in a stream of consciousness manner.  We will probably say something of importance to the healing process, but we may not recognize it at the time, nor remember it later.

ECHO is nothing more than a mirroring process by the listener for the benefit of the speaker.  The person writing these words down is not analyzing or assigning meaning to what is said. They are simply documenting what was said so that the person who made the statements can review and analyze them a little more objectively after they have finished talking.

The first part of the acronym ECHO stands for

E – Events and Emotions: 

• Listeners write down what actually happened, reduced to as few words as possible.  Try to use the exact words that the speaker used (that is important).  It might have been a recent event or a past event. It could be “he hit me”, or “they made fun of me” or “she called me”. Write them down as the speaker says them, even if they are not in order.  Afterward, you or the speaker can draw them on a timeline or in a cyclical representation.  When they review it later on, they may be able to see it from another standpoint, and possibly see a pattern that has been repeated before.
• What are the emotions that the speaker felt at that moment? Use one word adjectives like “sad”, “mad”, “happy”, “scared”.  Sad, mad and glad can often cover up emotions.  There is probably another emotion further down, so if they mention anything other than those three, underline those emotions in your notes. Much of the time, the things that upset us the most have emotions we either cannot identify or do not know what to do about, how to handle them.  This process can help them clarify their feelings.
• If the speaker remembered any physical reaction they experienced before, during or after the event, write those down.  “My head hurt”, “I felt nauseous”, “My stomach got all knotted”.  This can help them connect it with any other incidents when they experienced that same physical feeling.

By being both a sounding board and a mirror for the speaker, you can allow them to pour out their hearts and re-experience past events without interruption or having to stop and analyze or write down what they said.  Then, your feedback afterward can allow them the opportunity to review it, compare it and analyze it to discover the meaning and affect it has had in their life.

In one of my memories, I remembered the little girl on the playground, in the middle of a dodgeball game, looking directly at me and yelling, “Get the girl in the overalls!”   It was a new school in Atlanta, new kids, and I don’t think I had ever played dodgeball before in my previous school in Chicago.  In my memory, this girl must have hated me on site to declare public war on me and invite everyone else to attack me.

The fact that I had never played dodgeball before is actually a very important part of the story.  As I recently came to understand, what she had done was simply a part of the strategy of the game, like what she yelled out to everyone.  You select someone from the other team and try to get them out.

It hadn’t been a personal attack on me at all – it was just a girl trying to win a game.   If someone had ECHO’d that I had never played dodgeball, that could have helped me to recognize that I had misunderstood the situation, and that it wasn’t a personal attack on me. Then I wouldn’t have carried that around with me for over 40 years!

Instead, Jesus Himself showed this to me recently.  I invited Jesus back into the scene during the S phase of the RESET process.  He moved me from my first person vantage point and walked me to the side of the playground, where I could see all of the players in the game.  When I walked off the game area, this same girl yelled for the other players to get another person.  I saw that I simply had not understood how the game worked, and I didn’t know this girl since I was new to the school and didn’t know she did this to everyone.

RESET ASSIGNMENT:

1. Have you ever spoken to a counselor or friend and they repeated back to you certain things you said?  Were you surprised when you heard what you said?  Did hearing those words from someone else help you to better see the situation from the outside?
2. Practice doing this in your mind when you listen to other people talk.  Look for the way they describe the events, the emotions they felt and the physical reactions they mention.  See if you see a pattern in their words.