madeleine from the mpls icarus group has some really important thoughts and concrete ideas about the support manual. Al Galves is author of Surviving Schizophrenia.
From: madeleine
Subject: support manual feedback
Date: June 7, 2006
I finished reading over the support manual draft last night, and have
some feedback.
I think the manual is going to be such a great source of inspiration
for people needing a little extra support to get things going in their
own town. I like how motivating it is, and how it stresses that anyone
can start a group, regardless of their experience.
I really love the pioneer species/seeds metaphors and how they extend
throughout the manual. I just finished re-reading A Language Older
than Words by Derrick Jensen. If you haven't read it, I'd really
strongly recommend it. It's somewhere between a memoir and a
reflection on our culture's treatment of the environment. He has a lot
of similar ideas in his works about the power of nature/power of
metaphor to heal.
I also really like how the manual has a ton of practical advice, too,
especially the information on how to facilitate a group. It's a hard
skill to learn, but those tips are right on, and hopefully will point
people in the right direction.
I'm wondering a little about whether there shouldn't be a little more
acknowledgement about how difficult having bipolar disorder can be. In
the section "Underground Roots and Magic Spells," in the paragraph
that starts "There are so many of us out here who feel the world with
thin skin and heavy hearts," I think there might be a little bit of
romanticizing about what it means to be mentally ill. I know for
myself that, although hypomania has been extremely productive, when I
get manic I feel awful. Sometimes the "secret layers of consciousness"
are things people don't want to experience, like scary psychotic
thoughts, voices, hallucinations, paranoia. A lot of times these
experiences can get in the way of being creative or being activists.
For me, it's a balancing act between trying to avoid certain extremes
of mania and depression specifically because they are so destructive
for me. I guess I just mean that sometimes having bipolar disorder
really sucks, and it's okay to say so.
In the section called "Holding Successful Gatherings," I think it
would be helpful to have more information on how to "diversify your
group." This is such a difficult subject, and I think it has a lot to
do with building coalitions and relationships with people all over
your community, but how exactly to do this is hard to say. But maybe
one or two more sentences about reaching out to people, asking people
what they need, having people from diverse backgrounds create the
agenda for a group, etc., would be helpful.
I think it would also be good to have something about boundaries in
the manual. In the section "Creating Mutual Aid Groups," it says,
"Caring for others is often the best way to care for ourselves." I
think this can be true a lot of times, but sometimes people get so
stressed and out of whack because they care for everyone else except
themselves. When I was in a partial hospital program a few times,
almost everyone there was a caregiver-type, and we had all spend a ton
of time helping other people, while neglecting to do the most basic
things for ourselves. I was thinking that maybe a sentence
acknowledging that we need to care for ourselves, too, would be
important there. Or even a separate short paragraph about taking care
of ourselves, knowing our own limits, knowing when to ask for help or
say we're feeling overwhelmed. I know this is something we already
know, but it might be good to explicitly state it.
I'm really excited to see the final version! Take care,
maddy
>>>>>>>>
I think this is great stuff Will. This project has the possibility of really making a difference in some of the conventional wisdom and consensual reality of our culture. The one thing I would suggest is that you include something of the basics of active listening in the section on Listening Spaces. I'm talking about the mysterious value of just letting people know they have been heard by saying back to them what you heard them say and by inquiring into what they said and letting them know you'd like to hear more. Active listening was first described as far as I can tell by Dr. Thomas Gordon in his book Parent Effectiveness Training. It's really a simple and effective way of affirming people. When I suffered by first "breakdown" at age 25 and started seeing a classically trained psychoanalyst (lying on the couch and saying whatever came to my mind), the most valuable thing about it was the opportunity for me to expose the crazy, homicidal, ridiculous, narcissistic, assholean, egomaniacal, stupid stuff that was inside of me and to become more comfortable with it, less afraid of it, less hostile to it and less compelled to spend lots of energy in resisting it and keeping it down. If the Icarus Project listening spaces and emotional support groups could do that, it would be a tremendous contribution to individuals and to our culture. Thanks for sending this to me. Please keep me on the list so that I can get a copy of the hard copy when it comes out. Al Galves >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Lauren wrote:
Given all the discussions that have taken place on the local group organizing forum in recent months, it seems really important that if TIP is going to get a whole lot of people excited about organizing locally, we give them some tools to try to prevent the kind of burnout and frustrations we have been seeing in various groups. Friends Make the Best Medicine is great as a basic manual for starting local groups, but I think it's time to make use of some of the discussions on the organizing threads and get some of the helpful ideas out there to people who are just starting out. With that in mine, I've drafted a little document with pointers for local group organizers, all of them stolen from those threads and including relevant quotes from the threads. I edited the quotes a little, but only around grammar and punctuation errors and very occasionally, clarity. This obviously needs some help. I couldn't find successful examples of shared responsibility and creating a clear vision--both important points--or a quote about creative uses of technology. Plus it needs some serious beautification.
So the link to that text is below. We can use this space for talking about ideas and strategy and make changes to the text as we go:
Pointers for Local Group Organizing
So you want to start a local radical mental health group? Check out our support manual, Friends Make the Best Medicine! You can explore techniques for publicizing local groups, organizing events, holding successful meetings, and more. Here are some additional thoughts from local organizers:
A few tips to keep in mind for local group organizers:
?Identifying needs that have not been met, holes that have not been filled. From a Buenos Aires organizer who's working on starting a local group:
"I'm researching how many groups in the city are already working with mental health and what they are doing. For example, I have found a dozen groups that offer support, and they are very successful, and I see no point in starting a support group when there are people with lots more experience already doing it and doing it great. I'd rather point to them and focus on the things the activist mental health scene is lacking."
?Group autonomy and self-determination. Groups often work best in the long run when group identity takes the shape of the people involved and of the communities in which they live. An Asheville organizer remembers:
"Because of all the early bickering about affiliations or loose association (with Icarus or other paradigms) we chose to be totally autonomous and let our identity take the shape of the people who came and the community we live within. It would have been foolish for us to have had our identity formed in advance of getting together. It was not until our six-month mark of simply meeting weekly that we started to create a collective identity. A lot of people come with great ideas and don't stick around. Now we have general "housekeeping" meetings regularly about every six months and special topic ones when people care about a hot topic or buttons are pushed."
?Sharing responsibility.
Need successful example.
?Creating a clear vision.
Need successful example.
*
Some tools that have worked for local groups:
?Collectively owned property. The Minneapolis group has a lending library of books, zines, and articles contributed by members. The Asheville collective shares a binder in and tote bag that they refer to as their Office. Here's a description of the Office from an Asheville organizer:
"We have an "Office," which is a gigantic heavy binder in a tote bag with basics like tissues, cups, a calendar, past meeting notes, flyers and junk. We even have a tip jar for meetings and a money pouch anyone with the office can use for related stuff. This tote is passed off person to person each week based on who will come to hold the space the following week. It is our collective baggage we share the burden of caretaking. Everybody has added to it with resources."
?Connecting to the local environment. The Minneapolis group has built relationships with other local movements, communities, and natural resources and has integrated history of place and tools for self-expression into its activities. A Minneapolis organizer describes some of the group's place-based activities:
"We have quarterly celebrations of the river, gatherings of musicians, families, spirituality, art projects, history stories, community leaders, some political people, and local organic farmers."
?Distributing a phone support list. An Asheville organizer writes:
"We have a phone support list with about twenty-five people who welcome phone calls 24/7 for support outside group time that anyone who comes even once can have."
?Using technology creatively. Some groups have created their own web pages. Groups have also created their own zines and other literature.
Need a quote.
*
Comments on Local Group Organizing:
"When starting a group realize that in the beginning stages there are not going to be a lot of people involved. The people who are dedicated to getting this off the ground are running around doing tons of jobs that could easily be done by lots of participants.…There will be funny, slap down hilarious moments, highly stressful breaking moments where you want to give up, misfiring of communications that will cause friendship deterioration, people coming and going in participation, times that will make you cry with frustration, connecting moments where you helped someone find a community, a home, and the best moments where you wake up and know you are on the path you are supposed to be walking. It's tough work, draining work, fun work, rewarding work, but it is also work."
--Portland Organizer
"The ARMHC(Asheville Radical Mental Health Collective) has over fifty-plus people involved (some come and go, some stay in touch from distance). About ten people "facilitate" or actively take on responsibilities and a handful of others are leaders of their own projects they share with the group. We range in age from 19-76. We have very different perspectives, use different language and share basic respect (and great love) for one another. We have guidelines that were at first loose, then overly structured, now evolving into something in between. Many of us have become close friends outside the collective. We are usually conscious of not being cliquish, defusing gossip, and making everyone feel welcome while supporting the fact that some of us relate better to some than others. The people who break form or formal format have given the group the gift of playfulness (one facilitator who kind of resented the format said "i don't need guidelines to be a human being," brought a potato to throw around group we could all draw on...and bury the facili-TATER later. Another person with nervous laughter made us all crack up endlessly, then we all started interrupting everyone with jokes). So anyway, I KNOW it can be done. We need basic rules or agreements and we need to break them sometime."
--Asheville Organizer
"I agree that community is not built so much through endless meetings as through doing things side by side that may have nothing obvious to do with "mental health." We don't just have to sit around and talk about trauma all the time. Some of my most powerful experiences since Icarus came into my life have been just cooking a meal next to someone who has a similar "dangerous gift," getting to work on hanging an art show, walking around New York City, dancing around a park... just being near and talking to people who experience the world similarly. And I think that Icarus-inspired groups have been, and continue to be, a really powerful way for people with shared experiences/dispositions to meet each other -- and hopefully for those relationships to branch out into doing things together."
--National Staff Person
*
Questions? Ideas? Collaborations? Check out our Organizing and Facilitating Local Groups forum. (link) You can dialogue with other local group organizers and participants, share successes and frustrations, and learn from each other's experiences. We'd love to hear what you're doing!