This is so honest and insightful. Thank you for sharing your struggle. I can see how difficult it is to want to create a group in which both methods are working together. The narrator and you! A very slippery thing. Easy to let go of the distinction between them. I notice when it happens though, and I think you are totally right that it comes from established trust and safety but it also simultaneously erodes trust and safety. I think you got this though. Trust your wise and wonderful inner sheepdog.
Thanks for understanding the nuance of not addressing the writer directly and how feeling safe makes it more likely. And I love the idea of having an inner sheepdog!
As one of your sheep, I understand your dilemma and why you strayed from the AWA method. Pursuing a healing path will elicit introspective pieces that are clearly about the writer whereas the classic AWA method might encourage production of more fictional pieces where the "narrator" is not necessarily the writer. I feel that you could make the two possibilities clear within your facilitation and then people could qualify their readings as to how they want them discussed. When new people enter the group ten it may be necessary to veer towards classic AWA, but the healing path creates safety within the group very quickly, I feel. In any case, nobody has to share if they have written if something too dificult but it is a measure of how safe a space you have created and managed, that I can hardly recall that ever happening and even then it might have been because the person was unhappy with the writing rather than it being too unsafe...
Thanks for your comments, Andrew. I appreciate the confirmation that I've created a safe space. Pat Schneider, the founder of the AWA method, suggested that "all work be treated as fiction" as a way of preserving confidentiality and to make sure the focus stayed on the writing, not on the writer.
Hard to do when people openly acknowledge that they are writing autobiographical and you have got to know a lot about them but I understand Pat Schneider's point...
I love this, Deborah. Thank you for the deep, honest introspection. Your group is fortunate to have you... and I love sheepdogs!
Thanks for your kind words, Marilyn. And thanks for loving sheepdogs!
This is so honest and insightful. Thank you for sharing your struggle. I can see how difficult it is to want to create a group in which both methods are working together. The narrator and you! A very slippery thing. Easy to let go of the distinction between them. I notice when it happens though, and I think you are totally right that it comes from established trust and safety but it also simultaneously erodes trust and safety. I think you got this though. Trust your wise and wonderful inner sheepdog.
Thanks for understanding the nuance of not addressing the writer directly and how feeling safe makes it more likely. And I love the idea of having an inner sheepdog!
As one of your sheep, I understand your dilemma and why you strayed from the AWA method. Pursuing a healing path will elicit introspective pieces that are clearly about the writer whereas the classic AWA method might encourage production of more fictional pieces where the "narrator" is not necessarily the writer. I feel that you could make the two possibilities clear within your facilitation and then people could qualify their readings as to how they want them discussed. When new people enter the group ten it may be necessary to veer towards classic AWA, but the healing path creates safety within the group very quickly, I feel. In any case, nobody has to share if they have written if something too dificult but it is a measure of how safe a space you have created and managed, that I can hardly recall that ever happening and even then it might have been because the person was unhappy with the writing rather than it being too unsafe...
Thanks for your comments, Andrew. I appreciate the confirmation that I've created a safe space. Pat Schneider, the founder of the AWA method, suggested that "all work be treated as fiction" as a way of preserving confidentiality and to make sure the focus stayed on the writing, not on the writer.
Hard to do when people openly acknowledge that they are writing autobiographical and you have got to know a lot about them but I understand Pat Schneider's point...