So how was yesterday?  In the blog post "Peer groups, Cumbria spring group - third morning: authenticity, learning & interpersonal conflict" I talked about conflict & confrontation.  I think I jumped in too fast and too hard a couple of days ago in a small group interaction that sparked some difficulties we went on to work with yesterday.  Good intention, good work.  Things have moved forward it seems.  Teasing out the issues, being honest, hearing each other, apologising for unnecessary hurt.  And it seems to me, it's well worth going back again to speak more about it ... to see where we've got to in our individual processing of what happened.  There's potential learning here for me, for the other person, for our relationship. 

Have I screwed up?  I wrote yesterday about the first full day of this peer residential group.  I woke this morning with wisps of cloud in my mind ... a flash of Lady MacBeth ("out, damned spot") ...

I wrote yesterday about arriving at this year's Mixed Group here in Cumbria.  Now it's the second morning.  Yesterday was the first full day of the group.  How was it?  As I've written before "Process groups tend to move through a series of developmental stages.  These can be described in a variety of ways.  Tuckman presented an early description which still contains much that is useful.  His sequence was forming (orientation and dependence), storming (intra-group conflict and differentiation), norming (interpersonal intimacy and cohesion), performing (work and functional role-relatedness), and adjourning (loss and autonomy).  It is important to emphasise that all stages of group development contain useful opportunities for learning and that one stage is not necessarily any better than another."

First morning of the "Mixed Group".  This last week has been such lovely weather.  People arriving yesterday evening looking so brown.  The forecast had predicted a change to more cloudy weather, and it certainly seems accurate for this morning's rather colder, overcast feel.  Good weather to stay indoors for "group work" though ... no repeated urge to be outside in the sun.

We've been meeting here in Cumbria for these four day peer group residentials for over twenty years.  I've written quite often about these groups in this blog, for example last year's Mixed Group and last year's Men's Group.

“ Education should be "not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire." ” - William Butler Yeats

Yesterday we had the twelfth & final session of this "Life skills" evening class.  There was scheduled to have been a bit less than a three month gap since the last - eleventh - session.  However the heavy winter snow we'd experienced had resulted in this last session being postponed.

I wrote yesterday about the email that was sent out last autumn asking several fellow psychotherapists up here in Edinburgh whether they would be interested in forming a Therapists' Support Group.

Seven of us got together yesterday afternoon to talk about possibly setting up some kind of therapists' support group.  We're all therapists ourselves, and some of us are close to or on the mature side of 60.  All male therapists, so we're kind of "the Grizzlies".  Why do it?  It's mostly been me who has got this inital meeting to happen ... with some help from a friend.  Why the effort?  The email we sent out at the end of November was headed "Invitation to a therapists' support group" and it read:  

Greetings.

Recently two of us ... who have been involved with counselling/psychotherapy for many years, have been talking about some good things that might emerge from meeting up with other experienced therapists.  We've batted around a whole series of ideas and one that has emerged looks loosely like this:

“

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars.

” - Thomas Traherne

“

What does not kill me, makes me stronger.

” - Frederick Nietzsche

“ There is more to life than increasing its speed. ” - Gandhi