Personal Development - Essay Example

?Personal Development Essay It was great to see everybody back in his last term of our last year. I was already in the frame of mind that this was mylast term and somehow I can now foresee the end of the end is finally within my grasp. But while I was rejoicing at the prospect of finishing something that had been in many ways very challenging, I also felt a deep sense of sadness as I was departing from what had been a constant and comforting place that I have explored with the help of others. Though they also have been part of my struggle and a motivation to challenge not only myself in relation to their world but also in how they had a tremendous impact into my way of being and in my world. Again we spent the first few sessions of our Personal Development in trying to give meaning to the group. Some voices within the group undermined the value of it, whilst others, were reinforcing its importance though we have only spent a brief time on it. I find that it is difficult to give meaning to something when you are still immersed in the process as it is an impossible task and an ethereal feeling as it occurs. One realises its inherent meaning only afterwards as well as when one recognises its meaning on his own time and circumstance which may or may not while it is happening. With this in mind, I have opted not to give a meaning to the experience and I have personally reserved this contemplation on a later time for objectivity and clarity. After starting this trimester with a quite good connection with the group, I admit that subsequently I started to feel some form of anger towards some of the members. Reflecting on it, I remembered that in one session I chose to remain silent as a way of possibly expressing my anger. Where that anger came from took me a while to understand and it made much more sense when I chose to express that anger through my self-imposed silence. I was getting tired of the constant rumination of issues which, as far I was concern, were only used to deflate my temperament. Their actions felt more to me as a sabotage of the group and its process which is neither helpful nor productive. The silence seems as a childish response to the issues and somehow I felt I was too afraid of a confrontation and to speak out on an event where the situation was bigger than me and my own perceptions. It seemed that the only way I could deal with it is by silencing it and somehow suffocating it. I believe that I came out of this experience as a more open and more engaging version of myself as I was less afraid to embrace a possible conflict with other members of the group and possibly be able to deal in a more mature way at the chance that the ‘love’ was withdrawn from me . Nic was one of the voices in the group that I had difficulty connecting with understanding, or at least, that was my own conclusion of how I felt about him. The realisation that we would possibly never have another chance to interact, in view of him returning to France at the end of the course, made me want to explore with him what has been happening in our relationship and why I felt that way towards him. It took me a lot of courage and I had to overcome a strong anxious feeling before I could express to him my difficulty in forging a bond with him and there was a kind of aloofness that I feel towards him and how he is as a person. My exchange with Nic was coming from a place of wanting to reach out but not in any way an attempt to rescue him. I was trying to understand and make sense of his world. A world that for some reason I was not able to share. I expressed my sadness, at not able to bridge our islands and I questioned if that was due to me not allowing for some reasons to embrace his world or was it due to his own difficulty to bring into the group his own way of being. With sadness I also felt a sense of care towards Nic as my desire to understand him has never wavered. I also heard and acknowledged his own sadness and in that moment a bridge seemed to surface from the sea and connect our islands. I voiced and experienced a similar feeling about Sofi. However, though there were some differences between us, I am somehow better able to comprehend her way of being compared with Nic. Her struggles, although not completely shared, gave me an insight in what kinds of water she was navigating and has enabled me develop empathy towards her. I felt that to the end of this term, my relationship with her gave me new perspectives and I think the group in general was also able to gather new insight based on the experiences she was able to communicate to everyone. I had been very supportive of Tom and I also appreciated the hard time that he had in the first trimester of this second year. I wanted to be there for him as we started this journey together and the foundation of our friendship had been strong. I consider him to be a fantastic pal and a dear friend. However, something changed during this last trimester and I could not recognise the Tom that I once knew. I have felt a predominant consciousness of insincerity in the way he was both in the class and in the PD group was. But what I quickly learned is that this same feeling was also felt by many others in the group but I did not acknowledge and brought up this feeling shared by other members of the group since I did not want to bring Tom on the spotlight. I choose to remain silent in order to protect him from scrutiny. However, I felt that by not expressing my feeling about that unauthentic experience that I had of him, I would somehow rescue him as well as I would not allow myself to be congruent and authentic. I also shared to Tom and to the group my experience during his class presentation and my difficulty to see his struggle and the almost nonsensical way of introducing the topic as clearly he was not prepared. The presentation felt to me as a masochistic experience, one that posed tremendous difficulty to watch, as it seemed so raw and painful. However, when I voiced it in the PD group something else came into my mind, as in that masochist way of being in front of the class there was also the feeling of vulnerability, being in the centre of the conversation with all eyes drawn on you. I reflected back to the fact that he also did not attend two consecutive PD group meetings and I wondered again if through not coming it was still a way to get attention and be noticed as his absence will be regarded as an event. It was hard for me to be able to express these concerns and at one point I also wanted to stop from revealing my other observations as I did not really know how he was feeling. It was an intense and very authentic exchange between Tom and me. However, something had changed and I was hoping for some sort of reparation. Naomi also intervened and disclosed that what I was saying to Tom was something that she had also been trying to say. She probably did not do it in the extreme way that I did but there was something that came into play when she felt insecure about how much people loved and liked her. Those were somehow also my own insecurities although not necessarily expressed in the same muted manner. To be loved and liked was something that I also thought highly about especially in the relationships within the group. There had been times when I voiced my feelings to Nic, or Tom, or Sofi, going so far as to tell them that “I am not going to be liked or loved anymore.” However, I did feel the love I was expecting and the security to open up in the group. The end of our course is getting closer and closer and while I had already mentioned my difficulties in dealing with it there is still denial in the group. That denial becomes more apparent when we realise that the penultimate session of our final PD course is just around the corner. This is even made more challenging in the knowledge that we did not organise anything to either celebrate or simply mourn about the events that transpired to establish closure. The refusal to do proactively do anything was for me a clear sign of not wanting to acknowledge something that undoubtedly was coming to a close. I was also aware of not wanting to make any decision knowing that this would only make me sad. I realised that I got attached and cared for the people that I shared some life experiences with and that the closer I felt to them, the more I was able to express my vulnerability. The importance and the compulsory meaning and objective of the group had never been a concern for me nor have I never thought of it as a useless exercise. I always had great faith in our capacity to transform ourselves in the encounters that we have with others as long as there is in us an authentic curiosity to engage in our world and in the world of the others. Read More