Entering a New Space and Meeting New Faces - Essay Example

 Personal Development Group Entering a new space and meeting new faces can generate some anxious feelings. As much as I knew the structure of the personal development group, its unpredictability did not reassure me. There were people in my group that did not share much the previous year and were new to me. In addition to some new colleagues, there were others there who were part of my previous journey. The close physical space of the room that we sat in did not reflect the sense of open space that I felt around me. Maybe the latter was self-created as a defence to protect myself from possible questions, or a reaction to not wanting to be back at college. I voiced my uneasiness to the group because I wanted to be as honest as I could. The comment generated different responses from the group; however, voicing it helped me settle in a space that only twenty minutes earlier was foreign. Learning to voice the once unvoiced was something that I learned the previous year. Although this act did not come without anxious feelings, it helped me get in touch with what I would call the less structured me. In the past I would think twice before expressing my thought so freely, especially if the latter were not part of a mainstream way of thinking. Honesty was a word that passed many mouths in that first session. I also expressed my need of trust, which was my own Achilles’ heel. Proclamations of honesty resonated in the room. These proclamations felt very real and somehow had an emotional undertone that made the experience for me quite intense. That sense of openness and the desire to be true to one’s feeling was also brought back into the room in a tangible way. The following week Michael and Nick exchanged words about their respective roles; subsequently, the expectations of the group escalated to something much bigger than a lively conversation. At this time I shared a real sense of their difficulties. I also felt a sense of discomfort was permeating the room and I felt the need to stop that high tense mode by naming the anxious feeling that generated in me. Only once I voiced it was I able to bring myself back to the group. That episode brought back memories of family conflicts that were still clearly unresolved. Undoubtedly, other members of the group also shared uneasy and anxiety provoking feelings during Michael and Nick’s exchange; however, it was my discomfort that I was aware of. I took back to the group the uneasy situation that I found myself in the previous week only to be told by Michael that was the best thing to do. He indicated that the anxiety had overwhelmed him so much that he was not able to shift and stop the process. He indicated that made him stuck and removed him from thinking about what was happening in the room. The former comment reinforced in me the direction that I was gradually learning to take to specifically be in touch with my unpleasant feelings and to di-stigmatise them. During my personal development group lecture of the morning, painful experiences were still resonating in my mind. I was well aware of that discourse and how powerful the outcome of a trauma or distress can express itself via a bodily experience. I had been diagnosed with epilepsy twelve years earlier; this resulted in a very difficult time. My relationship of thirteen years ended. Additionally, my demanding and stressful work and studies did not help my already shaky emotional life. Michelle picked up on a comment that I made during the morning lecture in regards to that connection. However, I decided to not only share it with her but also with the rest of the group. My difficult experience was somehow hard to share. I also felt that it was important to make the group access some of the difficulties that were still present in my ' here and now'. Ultimately it was important for me to talk about it as it gave me the opportunity to revisit some aspects of my still unresolved narratives. I am also at the stage where I have decided, suggested by my doctor, to stop medication. This decision did not come without anxiety. The last twelve years spent in a secure seizure free life suddenly became an unknown one. The prospect of a life free from the daily pills was as much liberating and exciting as scary. The security gave space to unpredictability and this is sometimes hard to manage. My disclosure also gave safety space to Michelle, who shared her difficulties in wanting to stop her medication for her long-term anxiety. The debate brought into my awareness the difficulty that I still have when I am confronted with unpredictably and changes, but also made me realise that the latter can be a way to regain the freedom that I somehow had lost twelve years earlier. Bringing back to the group an unresolved issue from the morning lecture seemed something that I needed to do. This is possibly because it was the right space, as it was safe for me to do so. However, the issue itself was based on trust and that gave a different perspective and debate to the entire hour. Karen, our morning lecturer, was informed in an email sent by her manager, Desa, that the group was unhappy with her teaching and her bipartisan way of dealing with students. This email occurred because of a meeting that the majority of us were not aware had been taking place. However, what annoyed me the most was the sense of hiding some personal issues with Karen’s teaching method and style behind the collective. I can understand that the latter can be a safe way to deal with the situation, and sometimes I have been guilty of that, but I also have learned that it is not necessarily the most authentic one especially if the road that one is taking is the one of to be true to oneself. The group that day felt angry and I was angry. My anger weakened once I started to think about where it was directed. It seemed to me that Tom became the scapegoat of our anger and frustration. These were negative emotions that needed to go somewhere and or to someone as long as the latter was not ourselves. Tom was sitting next to me and I could only hear, in the handful of statements that he made, a tone of voice that was a mix of sadness and rage. My sadness was due to a sense of feeling lost and broken trust and boundaries from some members of the group. Reflecting after the end of the PD group, I recognized the latter feelings were also mine. I wanted to rescue Tom from that uncomfortable and defensive position that he found himself in, a position that I felt was making him more and more isolated. I was well aware of my rescue mode and how easily I could reach out. However, I was learning to move away from that way of being. Instead I chose to allow uncomfortable situations and feelings to take their own space and pace. The last PD group had been very intense and its effect was still present the following week. A feeling of an unresolved issue felt tangible and so was the strong need to readdress it. I told Tom what I felt the previous week, and the sense of sadness and witch-hunt, which I also co-created with the rest of the class and the PD group. I apologised to Tom for the difficult situation he must have felt the previous week. After my apology I thought if the latter was also a way to say to him ‘sorry if I did not come to your rescue’. Soon after Tom explained his own feelings of the previous week and announced that he was the person who spoke to Desa about Karen’s teaching method. Michael brought back into the room the exchange that he had with Sofi at the end of the previous PD session. That exchange, which started with Michael voicing his difficulties to connect with Sofi because of her lack of sharing and contributing her concerns and personal experiences with the group, escalated in something much unexpected. Sofi expressed her ‘not exposing position’ due to some very personal and potentially threatening consequences that any ‘declaration’ could ignite. This brought Nic and Michelle into the arena supporting Sofi’s decision and labelling Michael ‘insentitive‘ because she wanted to know who and what was threatening Sofi. I felt the group was overcharged with emotion. This made me speechless and somehow disconnected with the group. I had the feeling that trust was once more the issue at the core of the group, and that was something we all should work on if we wanted to overcome our fears and limitations and be authentic, as we all declared at the beginning of the term. Read More