Written for my 1976 B.A. Portfolio for Antioch
Linked from Psychotherapy overview
1. Describe the learning setting. Include where it took place, the role of other persons who were involved with you, and any materials and methods employed which assisted your learning.
After six months of individual therapy with Pat Sutton, she began to ask me if I would like to join one of her therapy groups. I was at a point where most of the work that I needed to do was in learning to be comfortable relating with people, especially women. When I joined the group there were two young women and two young men all about my age, in addition to the therapist. The group had changed only slightly in the one year and nine months up to the time that I enrolled at Antioch. At the time that I enrolled the group consisted of four women and two men in addition to myself and the therapist. Of these, two women and one man were in the group when I had joined.
We met for two hours once a week in the same room in the therapist’s home where I had seen her individually for six months. We sat in chairs around a coffee table and had no formal agenda. People discuss personal matters with the group. There is no formal distinction made between the therapist and the members. There is usually a pretty strong agreement as to when somebody is doing something that is good for them and when they are not. The only behaviors that are formally not allowed are throwing anything or hitting anybody. The only positive ritual is that at the end of each session usually everybody hugs everybody else in no special order. If you don’t feel like hugging anybody you don’t have to. Having attended approximately eighty meetings of this group at the time of enrollment there was a very strong set of emotional ties that had developed.
2. Describe your participation and responsibilities in this setting.
My role has changed rather radically since I first joined the group. For the first few months my participation consisted mostly of complaining about the fact that everybody had an ongoing relationship to share with the group but that I was somehow less developed because I was not involved in a relationship. After a while my attention was directed to positive aspects of my growth and I began to feel that I was an equal participant with the others. My role in the group took a distinct turn when I stopped working as a stagehand and started looking for another job. At the suggestion of group members and the therapist I began looking for work in the mental health field. Since then I have grown steadily toward a goal of becoming qualified to be a therapist, including taking on this Antioch program as a first step. My participation in the group has become increasingly more supportive of the others, as I have gained in confidence and ability to work through emotional difficulties and help others do the same.
Each of us has the responsibility to be open and honest with each other about our feelings and thoughts and to offer honest feedback to the others.
3. Describe new skills and/or knowledge derived from this learning activity which contribute to your Degree Plan.
A. To be less hostile. When I joined the group I was so threatened by having anybody be as close as they all were to each other that I used hostility as a defense. Being with them every week for two years I have become much more tolerant of closeness and therefore less in need of hostility.
B. To be more poised and graceful. In fact, it goes beyond just the negative aspect of losing the hostility, and into the positive side of learning a lot of social poise and grace simply through interacting this closely for this long.
C. To be more optimistic about the possibility of communicating. All this has taught me a whole new set of expectations about the possibility of communicating. I used to end half my sentences with a deep sigh which we interpreted as despair over communicating what I felt were the ‘cosmic’ and ‘ultimate’ dimensions of my message.
D. To be more lovable and trusting. This begins to get into the depth aspect of the social interaction. These are very important skills or attributes for a therapist.
E. To be less facile about intimacy. As I begin to allow myself to experience intimacy my verbal communications are less facile. There really is a referent, and I become much more care-ful about expressing this precious living experience.
F. To be more capable of touching and being touched. I originally came into therapy from a sense of isolation and lack of close relationships. The little ritual of everybody giving everybody else a hug at the end of the group session has helped me overcome a lot of the surface fear of touching, which contributed greatly to this sense of isolation.
G. To be more objective about self so as to see others more objectively. Getting compassionate feedback from six different points of view has allowed me to become more objective about myself. This clarifies one’s perceptions enough to be able to see others more clearly. This is of course a prime skill of the therapist.
H. Improved ability to conceptualize. This ties in with being optimistic about the possibility of communication. After getting through the sighing, I found that the others really did want me to formulate what I was trying to say, and stayed with me, supportively, until I did. The Antioch project is one of the results of this improved ability to conceptualize.
4. Self-Assessment: Evaluate this learning activity. Mention such things as the quality of the experience itself and its personal significance to you.
Quality. Everybody in the group started with Pat in individual therapy. They all know her approach. Also, they were chosen by her for their appropriateness for this group. She runs four or five other groups in her private practice and in her work at Olive View Hospital. She is quite a remarkably loving, caring person. I know about twenty people who see her and all of them are amazed at her exceptionally deep and consistently caring attitude for everybody she works with. Therefore I feel this group experience, made up as it is of people who share in this depth of caring, is very exceptionally high quality for the mental health field. We are actually allowing ourselves to deal with health.
Personal Significance. For the first time in my life I am learning how to accept being cared about, and how to allow myself to really care about somebody. I am relearning skills that were less adequately learned in the original family. Also, this experience is complementary to my Zen training as evidenced by the fact that about twenty of Pat’s clients have connections with the Zen Center. It seems the Zen training emphasizes the discipline a little more, and the work with Pat the aspect of kindness a little more.
A personally significant learning that took place in group revolved around a man who was just leaving the group as I joined. I was very impressed at the high positive regard shared between him and all the other members of the group. My experiences of leaving had always been unpleasant, as I had always stayed someplace until it became so difficult for me to cope that I left in an angry panic. Watching Barry leave slowly, gracefully, and lovingly showed me that in making the change of employment from Ingleside to Hathaway I could hope to do that too. In fact, based on how I had seen Barry leave the group I was able to immensely add to my self-esteem by leaving Ingleside on very friendly terms, the first time that I had ever made closure on a part of my life with no major unfinished business carrying over into the next phase. This is an example of how personally significant this group has been in my life.
5. Describe the methods of evaluation and feedback used during the learning experience itself.
As with the individual work there is mutual feedback between the therapy and daily life. The difference here is that the feedback is from a group of individuals rather than one individual, and there is much less chance of distorted feedback once you consider all the different inputs.
6. Describe the material products of this learning experience, if any.
None.
7. List the forms of testimony and evaluation that you will include in your portfolio as demonstrable evidence of learning. Please attach there.
Evaluation by Patricia S. Sutton MSW.