Support
This initial class offers a safe space for participants to openly discuss and release the issues they are grappling with. It serves as the foundation for the subsequent classes, fostering a sense of community and shared experiences.
Objective:
Encourage participants to share their stories openly.
Validate their emotions and experiences.
Create a sense of community.
Expectations:
Active Listening - Listen attentively without interruption. Show empathy and compassion.
Time Management - Allocate sufficient time for each participant to share.
Group Norms - Remind participants of the rules (no rudeness, no crudeness, no political talk).
Self-Care - Facilitators should also practice self-care to manage their emotional responses.
The first class for the program is the place where participants go to tell their story and listen to other people’s stories until they reach a point where they are tired of telling their stories. The goal is to take away the power of the past and get the participant to not want to hear it anymore, not from a place of denial but rather a longing to move on.
People can start the program at any time. Because of that it is common to have new participants begin the program each week. Support is designed to be accommodating and flexible, given the fluctuation of new people coming in. For some people, it may be the first time they ever put their hardships and struggles into words, stringing together life events into a story. It may be a hard and tearful experience, but a necessary one. After weeks of telling it over and over, the story will lose its power over the teller.
As people share their stories each week, it’s not uncommon for the story to change. People begin to see what’s going on in their lives in new ways. They finally see where they were responsible, where they could have made different choices, but mostly they start to understand, as they see more clearly, that they can regain control of their lives.
Support is a place where people begin to bond. We do not ask for phone numbers in this class. Sometimes people do ask to talk to us and ask for our numbers. Sometimes they exchange numbers among themselves. This is all acceptable. We don’t people on the spot in the group by asking for phone numbers when they might not be committed to the program yet. However, once they move to Transitions, we do like to keep a phone list in order to keep in touch and support our participants should they miss a week or two.