Group – Ends

Wellness Hub Group
Following the previous weeks of discussion of Group, I wanted to reflect on the last group I supported and helped bring into being – the Black Men’s Therapy Group. We began at the Wellness Hub in Lee, South East London. Just like in other group spaces the beginning was tentative, wary and awkward. Within 10 weeks the first group were willing to engage with the dynamic of the space much more. The group of 9 Black men became with each other and themselves a fluid, self questioning, humble and hilarious, authentic assortment of people of differing backgrounds, ages, sexualities and shades. We were able to after a few appointments be vulnerable with each other, challenge, support and laugh like our cares and concerns were forgotten, or behind us.

Noodles delicately balanced like Group

CoVid19 Interruption
With the event of Corona Virus 2019 erupting at the beginning of 2020, thoughts were had about how to continue if we were unable to come together? The decision to take the meeting online was made with hesitancy and questioning of if the group could function virtually. Skype for some provided enough bandwidth for a few meetings to operate well. Zoom eventually won out as the preferred method to conduct the Black men’s therapy group. Similarly to Group the meeting virtually did not hamper the group’s engagement at all. I would suggest that without the boundaries of the circle, making direct eye contact with others in the ‘room’ a significant change took place for attendees. Conversation and depth of what was discussed improved what we understood and felt from fellow participants. CoViD19 was a significant topic for discussion as was George Floyd’s murder.

Peak
Being a facilitator amongst this group was a zenith experience of all the groups I had ever been a part of. The reason for the feeling was the summation of all group engagements seemed to be the direction I was travelling in. An ending point to all of the previous group experiences.  

First Charceuterie. The Finer Hot Points of Group

Change
What I have enjoyed about both short seasons of Group is the spontaneity. The expert direction by Dr Ezra. The challenges I recognise from my own experiences of being in group. Forceful presentations by Manny, Tilda and Karina are laudable. Rebecca and her quixotic presence alongside the enigmatic Stuart, provocative Henry and Pam dynamics and then there is Frank the enigma. The cast of characters offer something refreshing and also recognisable about group processes for those who choose to watch. Be they families, organisations or amongst other clients being treated. Group is both art and a mindful reminder of days past and hopeful, that a post CoViD19 world can be found and accessed by all. Left to wrestle with the aftermath of Lockdown 3.0 and a planet beginning to wrestle with difficult and different concerns brought about by an undeniable murder.

Rice Dish as important: The Lulls in Group

Energy
Each episode of Group is between 10 -15 minutes, I found myself hooked and wanting more. A worthy sugar rush with none of the guilt and shame of devouring a triple choc cookie. The show offered me a perspective of what I have been missing about group work. The silly, the deeply defined and entrenched, the undulating sense of never quite ending and always beginningness. My hope is that group will be renewed and that we see more from this dynamic cast and the creators of this amazing show. I also plan on building a new Black men’s therapy group only this time in Canada. It is the reformation of community that is of specific interest to me at this time: Post George Floyd, post the Tulsa uprising, post the Capitol Hill invasion and the UK government’s handling of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report by Gareth Iacobucci reporting on Health disparities.

Final Course: The dessert. Group ends and departure to further growth and *awareni.

Together
There is something very fulfilling about witnessing a group of people come together to dine, to share stories, listen, be seen. My love of cooking shows departed with the fru-fru-ness of Masterchef but returned en-force with Chef’s Table (yes Netflix again!). High on the Hog appears to exemplify all that is good in sharing culinary experiences and a people connected together by food! Dr Mos-Shogbamimu offers her interpretation on a year post George Floyd. I agree with a number of her points. Home Cooking is a simple delight of a podcast. Home Cooking presents group as a virtual friendly experience – sharing jokes – recipes – puns – and food making support guidance. Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman share their story of finding each other and an interesting idea for a dinner party.

Remember
We are both amongst and outside of group/tribes simultaneously. Group offers
us paradox. Until we make a choice. Both are indeed true and align with us simultaneously…

Resources
Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu Independent Article
High on the Hog – Netflix
Home Cooking Podcast
Unlocking US with Brene Brown Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman

Images
Cover photo by sunorwind on Unsplash
1st Inlay photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash Soup Noodle Bowl
2nd Inlay photo by Emerson Vieira on Unsplash Barbecued Meat
3rd Inlay photo by Estela Shaddix on Unsplash Colourful Rice dish

Group – Challenges

In this post I am reviewing the experience of difficulty and the danger of being in group.

Good Enough
My initial training as a counsellor at Morley College in 2006 was my first-hand experience of group. The teacher Ian Mendelberg was the tutor whose warm guidance offered everyone on the course a sense of what being a counsellor looked and felt like. Ian challenged, heard, listened, appeared unendingly wise and somewhat of a humoured story-teller. A bit like Dr Ezra in Group, or how I imagine Irv Yalom to be in treatment groups. Intelligent, patient, resourceful and poignant with insights that arrest as much as they inform.

Follow Up
The 2nd therapy group experience had, was the experiential group. First year of the MSc programme at University of Greenwich. I joined a year after finishing the Morley introduction course. The experiential group was a new yet familiar experience. Similar in essence to the YouTube show Group mentioned above. Fellow students, I and a facilitator would talk about our experiences with the course. The blend of our learning and our personal lives alongside how we were inadvertently becoming more consciously aware of the counsellor waking up in us, were frequent topics of discussion. The discussion was the object we pulled and played with. It was neither mine nor theirs. This object was the groups and seemed to change in form, and colour and vitality when members were not present.

Not Group Therapy
The Experiential group was like group therapy but not. The facilitator generally offered observations of the group process as if they hung from the ceiling. Aloft. Looking down from their elevated experienced height. Infuriatingly. Never laughing at our juvenile forays into this new world of Counselling and Psychotherapy. We moaned about how we were finding timing impossible to schedule alongside work commitments, life commitments (what life) and how we were finding it hard to fit it all in with the incessant always present uni work commitments. Diabolical and yet somehow achievable or so we were lead to believe.

Games Seen, Lost and Won.

Tempered Smiles
They the facilitator, were able to somehow with mirth offer reflection as if they were remembering their time, in our place – struggling. To make sense. To make it all fit. To make it all work. I became bemused by it all. A defence? Possibly. When I became a facilitator of my own experiential group a few years later, I vowed that I wanted to be a little more helpful. But a process group does what a process group needs to do. Process and work out for themselves the up from the down. The necessary from the useless.

Group in Prison
The third group experience arrived as a result of an idea generation. How to support more people in prison therapeutically? The answer. Group!
Myself and a very experienced counsellor friend came up with the idea of wanting to support men come to terms with their grief, whilst inside away from family. Listening to Griefcast for a few years prior, inspired a question that only beginning a group could answer. Could a grief counselling group be effective in prison? How will a counselling group work in prison? Will the group experience be effective for the men in a category B prison?

Answered
We began the grief therapy group at one of the prisons I worked at in Kent in February 2019. The answers to the questions were: Yes a counselling group will work. The How – took planning, and advertising, and discussing the idea of the group with officers, and clergy, and education, and with clients that expressed a need for the group – a soft sell. The operational lead for the NHS foundation trust we worked for at the time, was enthusiastic about a grief therapy group starting. With their guidance, we began the bereavement group. The first few appointments were difficult to engage with for a number of reasons: Finding a location was a challenge. Arranging for clients to attend was another hurdle to overcome.

Grief is an unwelcome visitor for anyone.

Witnessing
For these men, encountering grief alongside serving time in prison increased the level of challenge significantly. Despite these challenges the group grew and stabilised until the Summer break in 2019. Men found that they could share long held pains. The facilitation of the men sharing happened as a result of support and stabilising interpretations by the counsellors and by other men within the group. The level of insight and willingness to encourage other men by fellow persons in prison was the rare quality of compassion myself and my co-counsell witnessed frequently.

Coloured Defiance

Companions
Some meetings we were left wondering how the group had supported much of the repressed pain to be released. It was like from a pressure valve – slowly. At other times supporting the talking felt like walking a tight rope. Going too fast we all fell. Going too slow – not much happened and still we fell. Boredom, distraction, avoidance, telling other unconnected stories that felt familiar. All to leave the specter of Death and her willing companion Grief alone. Unfortunately I left the prison in October 2020. My hope is that the Bereavement group continues in some shape and form.

Resources Explained
Thank you to Anne Willoughby for sharing Prison Break on BBC Sounds. The aspect of death and dieing is a constant factor to life. Experiences end. This too is also considered death. College behind bars is a wonderful testament to endeavour and to dare greatly. These men and women dare greatly and are both punished and rewarded. Philosophy Bites overviews the life of Spinoza who thought about the existential aspect of dieing. Code Switch Podcast shared the tragic story of Claude Neal. There is a chilling reminder of what constitutes group mind and group decision in relation to the podcast episode and the article that follows.

All things come to pass.

Eventually.

Resources
College Behind Bars – Netflix
Prison Break – Podcast
Philosophy Bites Podcast – Spinoza
Remember Claude Neal: A strange and bitter crop Ben Montgomery article: Spectacle https://www.tampabay.com/spectacle-the-lynching-of-claude-neal/
Code Switch Remember Claude Neal: A strange and bitter crop Claude Neal: A Strange And Bitter Crop : NPR : Code Switch : NPR

Images
Cover Photo by Max Winkler on Unsplash BW Basketball
Photo by Lerone Pieters on Unsplash Lone Hoop
Photo by Max Winkler on Unsplash Colourful Basketball

Group – Explored

The not Netflix show Group, has truly mesmerised me. I could watch both seasons repeatedly and still learn something new. Alerted by Kwame Opoku in the UK. A fellow Ghanaian Psychotherapist suggested I give the YouTube phenom a try. Working with groups has been a part of my life professionally as a counsellor for more than 5 years. I wanted to discuss and share partially what it is like being in group and being designated the facilitator in this piece of writing. Primarily because the position is an imperceptible dance.

Diviner
As the facilitator of a group you get to dance with the life and death of experience. At times the pace of a group is so slow and quiet. A group can be a space filled with unheard and unseen ghosts of past experiences. At others group experiences can be fast and dynamic, filled with talk, voices raised as the energy flies around the room. If you have read the Shopenheur Cure (as yet I have not) or Loves Executioner (this one I have) by Irv Yalom you will recognise the unending sense of experience and compassion that arises from Dr Ezra. 

Boardroom Group Collaborating Board Room

Art Imitating
What has inspired me to remain a fan of Group, and hoping for a further 20 shows that gets picked up by a major studio, is the sense of how true and congruent and vibrant the show feels. Group is strangely authentic and as real as any TV show has the potential of being. For me it is the recognition of the energy that appears to move about the room. The energy, caught well by the double camera filming and the actors shedding lines and insights like members of a dance troupe – fluidly, with the ease, force and grace of a strong wind.

The links below highlight the felt sense of movement for me in Group and also how both Move and Code Switch live in Birmingham Alabama brought group experiences and shared insights to life.

Resources
Move – Netflix
Code Switch – Live in Birmingham. A group experience and more

Images
Cover Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash Women on Steps
1^st Inlay Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash Women in Boardroom

Group – Intro

What I was interested in exploring over the next few blogs was Group. The TV/Youtube show, I have been mesmerised by recently. A few of my favourite characters are Dr Ezra, Stuart, Tilda and Manny. Each embodiment offers a different whole person experience that thoroughly captivates. I recognise them as parts of myself and as identities in my own life. Dynamic, rich, challenged, reserved, demonstrative and powerful.

Social animal
There are many different types of group we can identify with. I won’t name all of the millions of different groups here as I am sure other blogs have written about Tribes too. As a member of the human animal species (thank you Celia for keeping this idea in my minds eye!), we are members of some groups and tribes. Other groups, we remain painfully aware of how outside we will remain.

Opposites
Dr Dwight Turner, in his book Intersections of Privilege and Otherness in Counselling and Psychotherapy: Mockingbird, spends a glorious 130 pages discussing these gossamer embers in glorious person centred detail. Dr. Turner has written and explored the interesting paradox of intersectionality and privilege. Where belonging and the experiences of being othered are held painfully, balancing the act of being discriminated for one’s identity as well as being aware of privilege too. The book is masterful.

This blog is followed by 3 more on Group – Explored, Group – Challenges, Group  – Ends

The resources listed in the following works involve groups that inform, explode and challenge notion of identity and belonging.

Resources
Group YouTube Clip
Group Review
Code Switch Podcast – Remember Claude Neal

Images
Cover photo by Hello I’m Nik on Unsplash