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Peer groups: Cumbria autumn group – flowing

And it's the third morning of the group.  Yesterday again I took time for a usual mix of "self-care" - yoga, meditation, stream-dunking, tea & fruit.  As I wrote yesterday, I was very aware of feeling frustrated and impatient with how I felt the group had been going and how, particularly later in the day, I hadn't felt much emotional engagement with it.  Then it was breakfast and the small groups.  I was ready to "pop" by then and came in pretty much right at the start to ask for a bit of time.  It's a good rule of thumb in the group - and often in relationships more generally - that if I'm going to find it hard not to be distracted from what other people might do & say by what's going on in me, then it may well be sensible to raise the issues that are distracting me.  Unmentioned elephants in the corner of the room make conversation about othe

Peer groups: Cumbria autumn group – frustration

Yesterday I wrote about arriving for this Men's Group in Cumbria.  It's the second morning.  Groups - particularly these residential interpersonal groups - seem a bit like rivers to me.  They move on inexorably, often full of surprises.  I may have some guesses as to how a group will evolve or what will happen next, but so regularly I come round the next bend of the river and where I expected rapids, there is a deep smooth-flowing straight section - or where I thought all would be beautiful and calm, the river plunges into a gorge and it feels like I'm struggling to keep my vision clear in the emotional spray.

Peer groups: Cumbria autumn group – arriving

It's a little after 6.00am and I've been up and about for a while.  It's the first morning of one of the four day residential peer groups that I've been coming too since 1991.  This is the autumn Men's Group.  In the Spring several of us also meet here in Cumbria for a Mixed Group.  The groups are about friendship, emotional/interpersonal learning, a chance to get a break in the country.  I love this time - with all its honesty, deep connections, pain, laughter.  The groups can be something of an emotional roller coaster.  I've written extensively about them before - both why describing these gatherings is relevant for a blog about stress, health & wellbeing, and also more detailed reports from last year's Men's Group and from the Mixed Groups earlier this year and

Training in group facilitation

I'm facilitating a group today on "Relationships & emotional intelligence".  When explaining why someone might want to come to the group, the initial publicity leaflet reads "It's worth taking the time to look at our relationships because they are such a huge part of our lives.  Past relationships deeply affect how we feel about ourselves and how we interact with others.  Current relationships can be a great source of joy, warmth and support, or of loneliness, frustration and unhappiness.  Human beings are social animals.  In many ways we are the sum of our relationships.  As adults, we don't have to just accept how we learned to relate when we were younger.  We can look at our interpersonal style and  how we connect with our emotions.  We can get feedback from others.  We can decide what patterns we are happy with

Recent research: six studies on positive psychology, goals, relationships, caregiving, mindfulness & nature

Here are half a dozen studies that one could loosely put under the broad umbrella of positive psychology.  Zorba the Greek said "Take what you want and pay for it, says God." and Niemiec et al's study, on the effects of achieving different kinds of goal, supports this statement (for all six research studies mentioned in this blog post see below for abstracts and links).  Quoting Niemiec et al's somewhat awkward language: "The relation of aspiration attainment to psychological health was found to differ as a function of the content of the goals. Attainment of the intrinsic aspirations for personal growth, close relationships, community involvement, and physical health related positively to basic psychological need satisfaction and psychological health.

Oregon University research on emotional regulation, interpersonal perception & personality

I love it when I follow up ideas from a new research paper and then break through into a whole area of helpful knowledge that I haven't come across before.  This happened recently with the paper by Srivastava and colleagues (Srivastava, Tamir et al. 2009 - see below) on the social costs of emotional suppression.  This then linked me through to James Gross's work at Stanford, but more on that in next week's post.

Peer groups: Cumbria spring group – cathartic work from the outside

So I wrote yesterday about the cathartic, emotion-focussed work that I went through.  In their classic 1973 book "Encounter groups: first facts"  the authors, Lieberman, Yalom and Miles, describe their major research on the potential benefits of these kinds of groups.  One of their findings was that people who benefited most seemed both to get strongly emotionally engaged with the group and also took time to reflect and make sense of what they had experienced.  In the weekly-format groups I run in Edinburgh, I try to encourage this reviewing process by explaining its value and then askin

Peer groups: Cumbria spring group – feeling burnt out & relinking to values

Something quite deep happened to me, in me, during the group yesterday.  Third full day of the group and powerful, deep things were happening in and between a whole series of us.  Two couples have contacted particular distress.  No doubt many, maybe most, others have been moved strongly in various ways.  When there are powerful, potentially life-changing crises going on, one would need a heart of stone not to be deeply moved.

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