This is a copy of the post on the main message board - I put it over here because it might be easier to find, if anyone wants to look at it again some time later. This board tends to move more slowly and threads are easier to find as a result.
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A couple of weeks ago, feeling a bit down, I shared a deep concern of mine: that it may not be possible for people to heal 'in groups'.
In realspace, I have many negative memories of past group interactions, ranging all the way from preschool to grad school to nearly every workplace I've ever known. I can only really recall two places where the overall 'attitude' was positive, cliques were seen as unnecessary and destructive, and the trend over time - in terms of morale, and people's overall level of behavior, etc. - was also positive, that is, things got better instead of worse, people seemed nicer the longer one knew them, etc. [This is, theoretically, 'how it's supposed to be', but it's been sad, in my life, to take stock of how rarely 'how it's supposed to be' and 'how it is' have had anything to do with one another.]
That's realspace. I haven't been in cyberspace long enough to have enough history to have an opinion. I just have concerns... and I admit they're a bit self-centered. I'd like to find a way to have a group-linked experience of healing, partly because of all the group-linked memories of damage I contain. Starting of course with FOO.
That being said, after I made the comment about group healing I went off and read about it. I found an interesting discussion of exactly this - group healing - and according to the writer [a psychiatrist and professor at Stanford's med school, at least when he wrote this] - it can happen. People can heal in groups. People can heal together.
But there's a catch - apparently, certain things need to be part of the mix. Here's what this doctor thinks they are [I've paraphrased big time, but the core ideas are not changed]:
1. A sense of hope - a belief that change is possible, that things can get better, that people can heal and grow.
2. Universality - a belief that people are fundamentally more alike than different, that no matter what we have suffered there is someone who can hear, understand, and actually deal with it and respond supportively - that we are not alone.
3. Sharing information - um, that's what I'm doing right here right now, and what a lot of other folks have been doing too. Nuff said.
4. Altruism - kindness, a willingness to look past the self to the welfare of the other, to restrain the immediate emotional response to the surfaces of things and people and look within - a willingness to say, 'no, you go first, your need is greater'. [This only works when what goes around comes around, of course. It's give as well as take, and take as well as give. Taking turns.]
5. Dealing with unfinished FOO business! Seeing the original FOO games, how we may be living in roles assigned to us by our FOO.
6. "Make-up lessons" in social interactions. Learning to control our tongues, our tempers, or to speak out instead of always suffering in silence - learning how to do things our FOO never did so we never knew were possible. Especially in the area of, guess what, conflict resolution...
7. Mutual modeling and learning. Looking at the nifty things others know how to do and trying them on for ourselves. Like painting, or poetry, or timber harvesting... giving ourselves permission to try things we always wanted to try and find out if they really could be part of us... and not feeling down if things don't work or we don't like them, once tried...
8. Valuing relationships appropriately - not writing them all off, not using people, not hanging on for dear life to anything that's available simply because it is available-
9. 're-learning' on an emotional level. Getting bad tastes out of our mouths. Having GOOD experiences to replace previous bad ones, like enjoying a party when in the past we've always been too shy; or making a painful self-disclosure and being heard, validated, and supported instead of turned away from, dismissed, invalidated, shamed.
10. learning from the mistakes we make with one another, learning how to see when our instant response to something is actually inappropriate - and not follow through on it, but substitute the more appropriate response instead. Learning how not to react emotionally if someone else has an inappropriate response to us - distance, detachment, discernment. Learning to recognize our own patterns - and others' - and move beyond just saying 'there's that again' to being able to do something differently, at least where our own patterns are concerned.
11. Hanging together. deciding to stay with it for the medium haul if not the long haul... not giving up when we feel bruised or misunderstood, but hanging in, being there for each other and doing that as a service to ourselves too.
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I've been sitting with this list in my head for a little over a week, and wondering if I should share it, if it would help others. Because it has certainly helped and encouraged me. I do see all of these things here. Not rosily and unrealistically, but actually, grittily, really here.
Hope this gives other folks some encouragement too.
