Hello everyone here,
I have views too which have been brewing for a while (gosh that sounds soooo assertive for me!).
CC thanks for your post, it’s good to hear more from you! I hope you’re okay and all. I’m sad you feel like you do about the lurking and I know others have felt that the board might be headed the wrong way, maybe even down the toilet. But some of us really care about the board’s continuing existence: I do. And the recent conflicts have been big, big learning experiences. Yep, they hurt! But it does. I didn’t come here for peace like you (did you really?), I came for
answers! I do have concerns about how recent events may have put off new visitors, people who could do with speaking here, who have not posted, or have left, because of the ‘bad vibes’. Maybe we can do something about that…below…
I know Dr G reads and oversees (thank you Dr G). And sometimes I’ve wondered if he hasn’t posted himself as Guest? Why not? It’s a bit like thinking God is watching over us, only this one is a real person. And don’t we humans always like to have some higher authority to point to? It’s another one of our failings! So I tend to ignore Dr G (like I ignore God) and think we’ve just got to sort it out ourselves. We have to be responsible, individually and collectively. Which means we have to work together, as a group. As I said elsewhere, we can all take different roles, we can swap roles, and we keep the board alive – together. It’s a harmonious, consensual group management style we need and with the same goal – to maintain the board (not to dominate it, not to use it as ‘supply’).
On this I’ve had these growing thoughts. Now I don’t know other boards and I don’t know what they do so my thoughts are based purely on here:
Rosencrantz, was it you who spoke about the board with the venting zone? That sounded good, but would it create more problems here – fragile egos of various colours abounding? Not sure, but would love to see a group vote on the topic! (We
can have polls on threads – that facility exists – if we wanted to test the water, even if we couldn’t make it happen. Would that be interesting?)
How about a warm welcome page? Just pointing out that this board tends to have long-term members as well as short-term stayers? That maybe it’s a bit more trustworthy than other boards? That we have ‘upsets’ but don’t let anyone put you off posting? This is all contentious stuff – but it’s the web, it can be changed at any time. Being a complete newbie, I would’ve liked a welcome page telling me how it all works e.g. register to get PM, protect your identity, how to see members’ stories, how to edit, etiquette on paragraph format (thank you Anastasia)! – we could expand the list no doubt. And maybe it could explain, for those who get straight here and don’t see Dr G’s pages: look at DR G’s site, he’s behind this and he reads it, we’re not moderated as such but please be considerate etc etc. This is the basic stuff that tends to get repeated.
I’ve also wondered sometimes if we’re a training ground for therapists. Maybe they’re Guests, maybe they’re members. Maybe wannabe therapists come here and decide to take up landscape gardening?
Rosencrantz again, I want to pull some of your words:
Ns are our problem so we need to deal with it in whatever way we can. It's just a microcosm of how we deal with it elsewhere. So if you avoid it here, you'll be avoiding it in your life, too. If that's effective for you, that's fine. But sometimes you have to become N-ish to stop an N.
Assertive R, that’s what you are. The day you start saying:
I don’t like that and I want it my way; or
this is my board and you can’t play with it – I’ll tell you ok? Will you tell me?
And in the meantime it's good practice for us to find ways of dealing with them and reflect on how we deal with them in a relatively safe environment. In my book, simply leaving them to create havoc and harm 'at will' and on their terms just isn't 'on'.
Exactly. And
I can't go back to not standing firm in my 'space' - I think it's just not possible.
Good good!
