Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Anger for Anger's sake? No Thank You

On Monday night, I went to my second showing of the new Men’s Group I joined. It’s a new group, and it was only the third meeting, so they are still trying to gather steam and figure out the structure and direction of the group. There are some really strong personalities showing already.

One gentleman who appears to be a veteran of a multitude of self-help groups decided to be the facilitator on Monday night. There was also an extremely self-assured and confident intellectual that knew he had the correct response for everything. Some reason, the facilitator wanted me to join in an anger exercise with this guy.

It felt really strange. I honestly felt this smug and real anger coming from him, but I didn’t know what to do with it. The facilitator kept asking me to explore an angry response back to him, but I just didn’t feel it. I tried to “blow up” at him, and I must have succeeded, as we stopped the exercise.  I plan on talking about my experience next week, as to how I resented being forced into an angry confrontation in which I had no vested interest. Getting angry for anger’s sake is not my idea of a positive interaction. I ended up really liking the guy, and respected his different approach to life. We had a nice long talk after the meeting and I think we both came away with a mutual respect. I would share a beer with him any time. He even called me out on my need to always appear that I am calm and in control of my emotions…and I agreed with him.

I didn’t have such a positive experience with the facilitator. If an emotion comes up naturally, sure, let’s utilize it and work with it. But there is a very huge difference in facilitating a meeting by shepherding the ebb and flow of the topics along and forcefully leading a crowd that is kicking and screaming along a path that only the leader wants to go down. .  .

Luckily we plan on having different people run the group each week

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My ground-water environmentalist friend came by the house Monday before the Men’s Group. She had some incredibly great ideas, and I hope to use some of them. Unfortunately I am going to add more concrete around the house to divert the rain water. She understands my fear and supports whatever I choose to do, and I plan on using her ideas to move the rainwater off of the concrete and into a Bioswale   so I will have a nice relatively maintenance-free yard. My whole goal is to get as much groundwater away from the house so the mold does not come right back into the basement after all of this expensive work.

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WWW has invited me to a party on Saturday night. Apparently her crowd really enjoys the naked hot tubbing.  I guess I’m game after all.  I will see WWW tonight at the regular Wednesday night dance but we won’t have much of a chance to talk, as she leaves right away to go to another late night event. 

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like you are in charge of the situation(s)
    instead of the contrary. Good!
    Thanks for being such a sweet blog friend-


    Warm Aloha from Honolulu
    Comfort Spiral

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  2. I have recently encountered such people. Putting effort into invoking whatever primal emotions they can, claiming it to be a "healthy release" although I really find no use for such behavior. I am quite content in maintaining an even temper and resolving any dispute in a rational manner.

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