Why They Leave (Reflections On The Group Process)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

I will try to share my thoughts on this here:

I'll start with myself. With the personality of the group leader. For me, my own stability, awareness and openness are very important. The opportunity to be in the so-called (well described by Perz in "Ego, Hunger and Aggression") point of prediscrimination. When some opinion or pole is not supported, although the streams of their own preferences, likes and dislikes are trying to nail me to this or that bank

This "bias" of the facilitator allows each participant to be manifested in a more or less safe environment.

Mindfulness helps me, among other things, not to "skip" after group processes, but to slow down and pay attention first to my own, and then to the participants, to what is happening to them. This is very important at the stage of pre-contact, when trust, openness, the opportunity to be in a group, to open up in it are formed.

Openness is about showing the group what is happening to me. Being aware of your experiences, it is very important to package them in forms that the group members can digest. Not dumping them in their original form, but not hiding them, not draping them too much with beautiful phrases and words.

The less hidden, hidden, "blurred", the more stable the group as a whole and the safer it is for each of the participants to be in it.

The interaction of the leaders is very important when there are two (or several) of them. The more unclear and even unconscious tension the co-hosts have, the more this is reflected in the group. As soon as the leaders begin to realize what is happening in the contact between them, to discuss, to take out for supervision, and even to speak in the group, the more stable the group itself becomes

For the group, at the very beginning of the process, not only clear understandable boundaries of the project itself are important, but also the boundaries in the relations of co-hosts, in how they divide the space of the group process among themselves, how they respect each other's personal space, how freely and safely they can be presented in co-operation. If these boundaries are not there, or their building is delayed, the group reacts with anxiety and instability.

Special people

Here are some examples of features.

One of the participants left the group due to the intolerance of her own shame in front of her son. She discovered him in the first session, when someone spoke about their grievance against their mother and some of the participants supported this. To which the woman reacted very violently, criticized the presenters, the process, the teaching method itself, etc.

Another participant showed a very pronounced insensitivity (the personality function was strongly dominated) She had a lot of reasoning about how it should be, how it should be, etc.

And everything would be nice if the rest of the band members were in the same range of shame and insensitivity. But they had an order of magnitude better with these parameters (well, plus, minus each in their own direction). And the presence of such special people in the group adds a lot of tension that is difficult for all members of the group to withstand. Even if the presenters show miracles of professionalism, legalize tension, pay attention to the difference in perception, it is difficult for special people to stay in the group space. This is where personal therapy can come in handy, and those who use it are much more likely to stay in the group.

Natalia Barsukova