I am here.
I stay with you.
It holds.
Heiko Raue
Telephone Counsellor · Systemic Consultant · Author
The Book
Staying With
A Way of Being Present in Crisis, Patoral Care, and Accompaniment
This is not a textbook. It is not a book about how to conduct conversations. It begins with a story and returns to it at the end.
Between the beginning and the end lie maps, animals, questions, and stories. All of them circle around the same observation: that people sometimes begin to see themselves again when someone is willing to truly be with them. Not because that person finds the right words. Not because they apply the right method. But because they are present. Because they look. Because they stay.
It is written for people who accompany others – in pastoral care, counselling, nursing, medicine, or education – and for anyone who simply wants to be with another person without feeling obliged to help immediately. Readers will find no checklists here. But perhaps they will find something they already knew – and that now has a name.
A Reading Sample
The first chapter – ‘The Other Fifty Per Cent’ – is here to read and to take with you.
Where to Find the Book
Staying With is available as a paperback and as an e-book. Staying With has also been published in German: Beistand geben.
From the book: the six movements of resonance
About Me
After many years in senior leadership roles, I now accompany people as a telephone counsellor and systemic consultant – and, as I myself say, a student of life.
I have been shaped by the meeting philosophy of Martin Buber, the person-centred quality of Carl Rogers, the solution focus of Steve de Shazer, and the Systemic Structural Constellations of Insa Sparrer and Matthias Varga von Kibéd – and by many conversations with people in crisis, at turning points and in times of searching.
These different worlds of thought and experience share a common conviction: that people, organisations and relationships cannot be steered from the outside, but develop from their own possibilities. I love the small moments when people surprise themselves.
An earlier book
Konzeption einer objektorientierten Methode zur Entwicklung von wiederverwendbaren betrieblichen Anwendungssystemen (Designing an Object-Oriented Method for Developing Reusable Business Application Systems). Doctoral thesis, University of Bamberg, 1996.
At first glance, information systems and telephone counselling have little to do with each other. Looking back, I realise that both were shaped by the same question: what makes structures hold – in information systems then, in human meetings now.
Talks and Continuing Education
For telephone counselling centres, pastoral care circles and continuing-education days, I give talks and lead evenings on the posture of staying with – on ‘the map of meeting’, for instance, or on presence in conversations of crisis.
If this is of interest to you, do write to me:
