Monthly Archives: September 2016

A Collection of Stories – Part 2

Being seen and heard, Group Therapy, Intimacy

Group Therapy and Its Power

Group therapy is like a collection of short stories creating a collective multi-layered novel, whereby the characters of the book and their stories, individually and in composite, create a broad and varied landscape where they live together – a family, a community and a place of home. This home, in that therapy room, provides a safe place to be caringly challenged and to ultimately know oneself more in relation to and with others – to grow. This capacity to create a richly woven tapestry with others and thus be an integral part of a unit and of healing and knowing becomes yours – a tool that is now yours to take into the world.

As addressed in Part 1 of this two part post, revisiting the wounds of the past impacts the stories of the now. Group therapy is a wonderful way to hear, hold and help heal these historical wounds and to know the stories of your past. To have your peers, your created community and the assembled “family” be able refer and remind you of these past pains helps you, caringly challenges you, to tell your more pure stories of the now and therefore create more of a life that you want for yourself.

I have been blessed to witness and help guide such groups. The work they do is something I marvel at each day.

A Collection Of Stories – Part 1

Being seen and heard, Intimacy

As a therapist I often say, as it relates to a patient sharing information, “The story in my head is…”

A big part of intimacy, I believe, is in the realization that our narrative, our stories, are solely our own. They are meaningful and dear to us as they should be. For us to be seen, heard and honored in and about our stories we need to learn to value them. We also need to develop the capacity to see beyond our own narrative long enough to see and hear the stories of those that are important to us to complete the intimacy equation.

Our narratives, our stories, are not Truth. They are a collection of richly woven experiences digested through the entity that is you. They are yours. Truth holds less value here. Facts matter, but they hold less importance in the interchange with another in the journey of courage, intimacy and connectedness.

I encourage you to separate Intimacy from Truth, your story from the need to be “right,” and connectedness from ego. When we are fighting to be right, it is not about the journey of intimacy in the now. It, might however, be the well worn historical path of not having been seen and heard. That path, that history, matters because it intrudes upon the now, it holds wounds to be healed and revisited, and it potentially skews the stories you are telling in the now. Attend to these ancient and not so ancient wounds, so that you and the dear person, whose eyes are looking at yours in the now, can hear the story you intend.

It is of great importance and can transport us from aloneness to intimacy to tell our stories – to live in them and with another. It is therapeutic and therapy, it is friendship and love, it is family…

The story in my head is…