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Student essay competition prizewinner basket weaving: Sharingstories in a group settingKate Compston aa 44 Western Way, Alverstoke, Gosport, Hampshire,P012 2NQPublished online: 24 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Kate Compston (1999) Student essay competition prize winnerbasket weaving: Sharing stories in a group setting, Psychodynamic Counselling:Individuals, Groups and Organisations, 5:3, 357-372, DOI: 10.1080/13533339908404145

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PSYCHODYNAMIC COUNSELLING 5 .3 AUGUST 1999

Student essay competition prize winner

Basket weaving: sharing stories in a group setting

KATE COMPSTON

ABSTRACT Participating in a self-awareness group (in this case for counsellors in training) is an exercise in give and take - an inter- weaving of stones - through which we share ourselves with our peers. This paper explores some personal dwoveries about the processes at work in (a) listening to others, (b) relating my own story - and assessing thereby the extent of my belonging, role and investment in the group. A dream alerted me to our shifting to another dimension of story-sharing by the end of forty sessions. The imagery I use is of basket weaving and creating a mandala.

KEYWORDS ‘Out there’, ‘in here’, re-play, healing

The freedom to let oneself be known is also the freedom to be oneself (Ullman 1984: 120-30)

Pychodynamic Counselling ISSN 1353-3339 0 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd

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INTRODUCTION

In the traditional craft of basket weaving, vertical stakes or ribs are slotted into the base (slath). Willow rods, eased with a bodkin, are woven through the stakes to form a basket.

Festive table, and the fimily around - uneven stakes, w i l l s wedged into the slath, each member with a story that must be told, some reined into silence by the reigning; I a sleuth

observing, yet involved, noting the weak and strong, hearing the individual tales competing for attention, wanting to see them woven, neatly strung and binding stake to stake, but contemplating

my own need to be heard, have my own story voiced, wanting, sometimes, to break the bruistd reeds with a sharp word cutting them down; more usually self-effaced in weaving, wielding the bodkin, easing rods

between each rib, and integrating - eager to ply woman’s particular craft of holdmg all together, bringing the quieter members into play, seeing their stories bound into the whole. . . . And meanwhile questioning how radically I need to place (as they do?) all my own eggs here in this one basket’s warmth and hurt; for much would be denied should I not weave, and waver too, not elsewhere.

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This poem was written some years ago in an attempt (a) to work out my role in a large family in which I was a second wife to my husband and a stepmother to four adult children; (b) to express what I had learned painfully in one-to-one therapy: viz. that seeing myself as a carer does not preclude, indeed demands, an acknowledgement of my own vulnerability (including my competitiveness) - and hence of my own need to be contained and cared for; and (c) to look at the question of ‘breaking O U ~ ’ in the face of perceived pressure to concentrate my energies in the home, and conform to a traditional wife/mother role.

When, during counselling training, I became a participant in a self- awareness group, the issues I had explored in this poem seemed to re-assert themselves. In working out the purpose of the group and my own role within it, in trying to establish a balance between giving time and care to others and claiming it for myself, and in deciding how much of myself to ‘give away’/invest in the group, the poem seemed very pertinent. Its image of weaving seemed to say much about how I experienced the group’s activity - which I understand and describe here in terms of sharing stories.

SELVES AND STORIES

In this context, I understand story in the way that Rowan Williams seems to see it:

The self is . . . a process, fluid and elusive, whose present range of possible responses is part of a developing story. The self is - one might say - what the past is doing now. It is continuity; and so it is neces- sarily memory - continuity seen as the shape of a unique story, my story which I now own. . . .

. . . to act as a self is to act out of the awareness of this resource of a particular past.

(Williams 1982: 29-30)

Stephen Crites (1971) also develops the idea that human experience expresses itself in narrative. Therefore I believe it is not too vague or far-fetched to talk about self-disclosure in terms of story-sharing. I have used the phrase ‘sharzn8 stories’ rather than ‘telling stories’, because we express the self in a group setting - as in individual therapy, and indeed in all life - not only by the conscious verbal- izing of our experience and the meanings it has for us, but also by the (largely unconscious) re-enacting of it, in projection and trans- ference, body language, etc. As we become more adept a t beckoning

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the unconscious towards consciousness, so we also discover hitherto hidden elements (sub-stories) in our experience, which may come to have a greater significance for us than the initial presenting story.

Having, for three periods of time in the past, been a client strug- g h g to articulate my story (and undoubtedly also sharing it in ways of which I was never conscious) with therapists in one-to-one settings, what interests and excites me about the group experience is the different effect of participating in the process of interweaving a variety of stories/selves. Although self-awareness groups in a training context are not therapeutic groups, nevertheless their aim (of developing insight and sensitivity) clearly has therapeutic elements - so that occasional comparisons will not be inappropriate.

VARIABLES AFFECTING THE SHARING OF STORIES IN A GROUP

Just as the purposehl self is located in a social matrix (viz. human life is conditioned by physical, psychological, historical, cultural and polit- ical/economic factors), so the content (what people share) and the process (the way they share it) of conscious self-disclosure is conditioned by similar factors operating within a group. Even were the independent variable the same (i.e. the group’s stated aim of enhancing self-awareness and empathy towards others), if placed in a different group of, say, very mixed ages, races and educational levels, I imagine the content and process of my conscious self-disclosure might be different from what it was in a group where ages ranged only from 35 to 55, all were white English-speaking Europeans, and the participants’ educational background and articulacy were similar. This raises for me the question of whether I (part-consciously and part-unconsciously) tailor my story to suit/respond to the group of which I am a part - as in ordinary social intercourse - or whether, in fact, the self is so complex and fluid that I would simply discover and realize different aspects of my self according to the group in which I found myself.

Other ‘constants’ in the group experience - apart from the stated aim of the group - were provided by (a) location, (b) strict time- keeping, (c) facilitation/leadership, (d) an understanding about confidentiality. More immediate variables than those mentioned above may be instanced as: particular absences, input in the preceding seminar, here-and-now external events ( e .g . interruptions, noises), and so on. There are a great many variables affecting content and

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method of self-disclosure, even given the similarities between group members. However, I see these variables not as disruptions in the process of sharing stories, but frequently as the ‘grist to the mill’ of sharing.

PARAMETERS OF PRESENT EXPLORATION

I shall deal here with my experience and perception of story-sharing during the first forty or so sessions in the life of my group (four terms). It will be a subjective account, and I shall end at the point when a dream relevant to the group marked a transition in my attitude to its communications (and ‘foretold’ a transition in its objective life).

OVERVIEW OF THE GROUP’S LIFE IN ITS FIRST FOUR TERMS

We started with twelve members, including the facilitator. Two members left - one, quietly, at the beginning of the second term, and the other, more dramatically and painfully, at the end of the third.

More than half the members of the group had prior experience of personal therapy: four (including myself) had experienced psycho- dynamic therapy, and two others had had counselling of a different kind. There was, therefore, a fair degree of ‘knowing what we were about’, and an acceptance that we did not waste time in small-talk or in intellectual discussion of the foregoing seminar.

I was not alone in being aware from the beginning of feeling closer to some members than to others, but no exclusive factions or part- nerships were forged.

After two initial sessions of ‘goblet issues’ (Schutz 1966, citing Semard) - so-called because of the practice of sizing up people through a cocktail goblet at parties and the like - the group quickly became cohesive and mutually supportive. Experiments in sharing our stones were undertaken, and always rewarded. Although there was some jockeying for attention, this elicited only gentle comments, and it took some time (session 8 was probably the first occasion) before anyone risked jeopardizing the support of the group - or disturbing the perceived fragility of some of its members - by chal- lenging another or expressing anger or hurt. It was shortly after this that the first person left the group, very probably because conflict had begun to surface. Thereafter, it became easier to risk challenging,

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but it was not until the third term that the courage to point out defensive responses and to express real anger with one another began to emerge. What elicited such responses at that point was the issue of commitment on the part of two members, one of whom was often absent and the other of whom was signalling a ‘put-down’ attitude towards the group.

This said, it was accepted - as long as members attended and contributed regularly - that there would be variations with regard to the significance each member attached (at different times) to the group. For some it was a lifeline, a needed ‘womb’ and source of nurturance as external changes were made; for others, it was never the sole support system or stimulus, there being other interesting and enriching activities/relationships going on outside. Investment in the group was therefore greater on the part of some than others: although investment and commitment are closely allied, they are clearly not the same.

From time to time, the hcilitator’s role was questioned and her interventions challenged; the transference responses of some members to ‘mother’ were openly discussed. However, I rarely had the sense that we were competing specifically for her time or approval: the jockeying for space and attention seemed to be more in relation to the group as a whole. She was perceived in three main ways: as chief interpreter; as a safety net - to contain any damage, should it occur; and as an observer/assessor - someone who would be involved in deciding whether those who wished to counsel were ready to do so.

DISCLOSURE: SHARING OUR STORIES

I now want to look in some detail at my experience of listening to the stories of others in the group and of voicing my own story.

Listening

I found several processes going on within myself as I listened to others. Occasionally, a story was so riveting that I seemed to be doing nothing except ‘losing myself’ in the narrative. Mostly, however, there was a to-ing and fi-0-ing of response: an entering into (empathy with) the story and the speaker’s feelings; a curiosity about what was going on by way of process in the speaker and in the group (why is this person speaking now? why is s/he telling us

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this story at this point? how are others responding? why do there appear to be parallels or mirrorings in operation?, etc.); and, finally, a relating of the narrative to my own story - in one or more of the following ways:

Comparison How similar or dissimilar to any element of my story was the experience related? Did I feel the urge to ‘cap’ a story with something of my own - or did I feel my story was so insignificant by comparison that it would elicit no response? Did I feel connected or cut off) I sometimes felt an envy of others’ facility in contacting their feelings and reflecting on their experiences, but gradually learned how to do this more effectively. Comparison happened, predominantly, early on, when we were still feeling our way with one another.

Affirmation Often I felt elements of my own story were affirmed and given dignity by hearing similar stories from others. This was especially true of those parts of my story about which I had felt some shame. Usually hearing of a similar experience or response - especially if this were recounted without shame - prompted a great feeling of relief: I was not as odd or isolated as I’d imagined . . . . This is what Yalom (1970) describes as the experience of universality, the ‘welcome to the human race’ factor. It was tremendously releasing for me to hear, in particular: that others felt as ridiculous and inadequate as I; that others continued to make similar misjudge- ments and experienced similar failures in their relationships; and that others, too, often questioned their sexual experience and orientation and wondered about their ‘normality’. Hearing others’ stories gave me courage - both within and outside the group - to explore my own story without the cringeing shame I had felt in one-to-one therapy and elsewhere.

Awakening I often found, through hearing another’s story, that some element of my own story came to life, having lain dormant or forgotten, or having been denied. Sometimes I had simply lacked the vocabulary to express feelings or reflect on the ‘fog’ inside. This was particularly true of early experiences but was not restricted to them. For instance, through hearing others speak of certain experi- ences (and feeling anger on their behalf), I was fiequently put in touch with my denied feelings of anger towards significant people in my own life. This was an awakening, not only in the immediate

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area of memory and means of expression, but also in a wider sense: I discovered at first hand that recognizing and expressing anger freed me from the exhaustion that denial had hitherto caused.

Re-envisioning To hear a story similar to my own recounted by another person often seemed to give a new perspective, a new angle, on my experience. Even hearing the story in terms of different imagery from the imagery I would have used, gave the experience new meaning and power. For instance, somebody described in terms of ‘gift’ an experience which I had described in terms of ‘burden’ - and, because no judgement was expressed about my own way of experiencing, I was prompted into an entirely new, more creative, way of perceiving this element of my story.

Theft or devaluation On rare occasions, I had the feeling that another person’s story stole from me, or de-valued, an important element of my own story. For instance: one member of the group was highly committed to her painting, and spoke a great deal about it. In fact, she spoke so exhaustively about her artistic work and the process of creativity that I became very impatient - particularly as this interest was presented as something elitist, something that none of the rest of us could be expected to understand. The consequence was that I felt unable to voice in the group that element of my own story which involves creativity - believing any such attempt would elicit only a loud groan from the others. An important aspect of myself was silenced. Unable to take responsibility for this at the time, I secretly blamed the other person for silencing me.

Bearing projections and cballendes Entering into the stories of others often involves bearing their projections. One member of the group, intensely involved in working through her own painful history, was open about her (transient) hostile and angry feelings towards several other members. I was one of the first to come under fire, and found it an uncomfortable but (because of some previous experience) an acceptable position to be in. I was able to carry, without disintegrating or retaliating, this member’s envy, and the accusation that I was a disabling, de-skilling person. I actually believe that her observation has some basis in reality (this was not the first time I had received such criticism): however, she herself came to see it as projection, acknowledging that I looked and spoke like someone significant in her life who had made her feel small. What

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was interesting was that, while she was re-enacting an early part of her story, I was testing out an only recently learned, hence ‘new’ facet of mine. Had this exchange occurred only three years earlier, I would have felt either diminished (‘she must be right, I am a heel’) or else very defensive: now I was able, with some understanding of projection and working with transference, to hold the attack at a distance and carry it (this at the same time as feeling, and admitting, that there was some justice in the charge made). Mutual bearing of, and examining, each other’s projections became part of our ‘group- story’, and was, I believe, a powerfbl factor in our cohesiveness.

Speaking

Certain turning points were apparent to me in the telling of my own story.

Conscious self-discloszwe To have my ‘secrets’, especially the embar- rassing and shameful ones, accepted by the group with no lessening of liking or respect, was extremely empowering for me. I thought it might take a long time before I could venture to share some aspects of my experience, feelings and ‘shadow’, but the desire to make the experiment of sharing in a group was greater than the desire to hold on to the ‘good’ image. Although it always felt risky, and I did not do it with great aplomb, I felt able - within the first ten sessions - to make some reference to all those areas of my life which (except in one-to-one therapy) I had kept strictly under wraps. When my ‘revelations’ were accepted and honoured - and when, furthermore, others offered some ‘me too’ comments - I felt a tremendous sense of release: one-to-one therapy does not offer any ‘me too’ comments, and I therefore discovered that the deep dark secrets were not as isolating or shamell as I had imagined. I was grateful to other members of the group who, sometimes expressing ahead of me some shared experience or feeling, enabled me to find my own voice.

Reflecting on ‘what the past is doing now’ (Williams 1982) Towards the end of session 13, I made a comment which contributed, along with comments from one or two others, towards what I perceived as anger on the part of the facilitator. There was no time then to examine this occurrence and its precise causes - and I went away feeling bewildered and queasy, and had a bad week, ‘taking it out’ on others. I examined this feeling and concluded that, since it was - on any

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rational estimate - way out of proportion to the actual event, some- thing fkom the past had been re-activated. It was almost certainly the sense that, unwittingly, I had ‘made mother angry’ and that therefore anything might happen. . . . abandonment, damage to ‘mother’ or to myself, the disjointing of the world in general. . . . I raised this imme- diately in the next session, asked for help with understanding the anger that I felt had arisen, voiced my reflections on the re-living of a past relationship - and found that I had, indeed, vastly overreacted emo- tionally. I had been unaware of how strong was the transference at that time to the ficilitator, although I had recognized, outside the group, my tendency to appease anyone whom I viewed as in a ‘mother’ role.

Expressing. anger or negative affect towards others in the ~ r o u p It had been rare for me in the past to contact, let alone express, my own anger openly. I therefore experienced a real sense of break- through when finally able to do this in the group - and to have my negative affect accepted, at least by the majority.

From the very beginning, I felt a difficulty in relating to one member of the group. Thinking that I was alone in this matter, I struggled to like her and to express my valuing of her good points. Finally, but only in session 27, I was able to voice the feelings she evoked in me - whereupon I discovered that some other members experienced a similar difficulty in relating to her. She herself seemed very resistant towards what I owned as my feelings of being held at arm’s length, and was furious with me for making my protest: however, others expressed relief that their own feelings of being distanced had now ‘found a voice’, and could be examined.

The attempt to work through what was happening here spilled over into nearly all of the subsequent session. The temperature rose, hurt was expressed, tears were shed - and we had to wrestle with the pos- sibility that there might be some scapegoating going on. I was amazed by what had been unleashed by my first tentative admission of angry feelings, but equally amazed to discover that the guilt I was accus- tomed to feeling over causing distress was now overtaken by a sense of pleasure: that I had been able, before I knew I had any support at all, to voice the negative feelings I had been harbouring. Certainly, there were strong emotions around in consequence. But the world had not collapsed.

Expressing warmth and positive affect towards others in the g.roup I did not have the same sense of breakthrough in expressing positive

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affect, since I had been used to a praising and encouraging role; but there was some shifting of ground, in that I increasingly found myself able to say directly to someone, ‘I like you/value YOU’, instead of merely ‘I like what you do/the way you do it’.

BASKET WEAVING

The first time the image of basket weaving recurred for me in the group setting was when a member left at the beginning of the second term. Although the person in question was very quiet and had not shared much of her own story, nonetheless her gentle presence had ‘spoken’ to us in a way difficult to quantify; and for some little time there was a sense of something unravelled. She had gone away, taking our emerging stories with her, and we were left with a sense of disap- pointed anticipation with regard to her own story. A ‘rib’ was missing. Inevitably, in time, we made good the rupture, and the interweaving continued. But, from that time, I was very much more conscious of how we both enable, and (more rarely) disable, one another in the process of self-disclosure.

Questions re-played

Looking back at the poem I had written about my role in the f d y , I became aware of how the questions I was asking there were re- played in the group:

(a) To what extent did I belong? This is what Schutz (1966) char- acterizes as the ‘in or out‘ question.

(b) What was my position? I felt a certain conflict (as did we all) between the listening, supportive, ‘strong’ counselling role - in which one’s own story is withheld in the interests of drawing out another’s; and the pressure (inward and outward) to be vulnerable, to seek help, to have one’s own story - and particu- larly one’s pain - heard and honoured. How much time and space might I legitimately claim? How assertive could I be? What mys- terious sense of timing is involved in deciding that I have listened long enough, and may intervene - sometimes risking cutting across someone else’s story - in order to be heard myself? To what extent is one ‘heard’ by the conscious decision to withhold one’s own experience in order to hold another’s? This is one aspect, perhaps, of what Schutz sees as the ‘up o r down’ question.

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(c) What was my investment in the group? Did I place all my ‘eggs’ in this one basket? Was my desire to invest also in other people/projects to be seen as resistance to too close an involve- ment (fear of engulfment) in the group - or as a realization that part of its purpose was to practise, ‘outside’, the behaviours learned and validated here? This is what Schutz describes as the ‘near or far’ question.

I resolved to my own satisfaction the three questions posed by both the family and the group - by rejecting the either/or scenario, and opting for a both/and one. It is acceptable, I concluded, to be - and to express myself as - sometimes ‘in’, sometimes ‘out’; some- times ‘up’, sometimes ‘down’; sometimes ‘near’, sometimes ‘far’. There is no need for polarizations. To be whole is to be both/and.

Dream

In the penultimate session of the fourth term, I told the group of a dream I had had - and I relate it here because it seemed to me to

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reflect a change of perception in myself and a transitional stage in our life together. It occurred two or three days after a seminar on Jung and individuation, where mandalas were probably mentioned in passing, but anyway were certainly in my mind; I had also been doing some thinking, in another context, about metaphors - and had reminded myself that ‘metaphor’ means, literally, ‘carry across’.

Dr H, who until nine months earlier had been my supervisor in a group of (mainly medical) NHS trainee psychotherapists, appeared in the dream - probably because of his role (similar to that of a hcil- itator), though possibly also because of displacement (onto a previous good experience of being in a creative group).

I leave a dark, secretive room and go outside into the sunshine. A group of people, some of whom I know slightly, is sitting round a long table drinking wine under climbing plants trailed over trehs- work. I hover on the outskirts of the group, wanting to join, but not wanting to push myself forward. Dr H sees me and invites me to join the group. As I sit down, I see that he is holding a large shning silver filigree circle - rather like an outsize cake doily, though it is firmer than paper or cloth. The members of the group, I slowly discover, are engaged in a game involving poetic images and metaphors. Whenever anyone produces a good metaphor - which seems to have to connect to what was said immediately beforehand - Dr H crochets a new scallop-shaped stitch/loop onto the silver doily.

Fascinated, I watch it grow: there is a purposefulness and beauty about its creation whch goes beyond the word-game. The woven circle is more than the sum of its parts.

Commentary

I woke from the dream aware that it was simultaneously to do with my experience of the group, and about my changing perception of myself.

T h e p m p I had become more and more aware - largely through the process of story-sharing - of the significance of the group matrix, although I was not at that time familiar with the term. Nor was I then aware of a definition (Foulkes 1964) of group matrix as the ‘hypothetical we&’ of interrelationships and sharings that evolve in a group, determining subsequent meaning and interpretation, with the individual seen as a nodal point within this network. (Discovering this, I thought of how, in Hua-yen Buddhism, cosmic interrelation- ship is expressed in the image of ‘the jewel-net of Indra’: this is a world-embracing canopy within which every aspect of creation - each jewel at each node of the net - reflects all the other jewels. . . .

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I was intrigued that there were certain similarities between the pro- cess of basket-weaving (a symbol already, by then, much in my mind) and the process of ‘crocheting’ a mandala (symbol of the dream).

The dream also seemed to speak to me of the microcosmic nature of any group - that it re-enacts, ‘in small’, societal processes, and particularly the issues and conflicts that arise in the primary and later f d y .

Self I was also aware of the dream as pointing to the macrocosmic nature of a group such as ours (the replication, ‘in big’, of facets in the individual): I could see the dream as being about myself and my growing sense of personal integration. It seemed to say much about the personal heating that was taking place since I became a member of the group. I began to look in each member of the group for aspects of myself - seeking to understand better both my attach- ments and hostilities.

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The group story

I believe that the group was gradually moving into a new phase of its life at around the time I had the dream. We had long before begun to deal with inter-member issues within the group, but the emphasis was still on sharing our ‘out there’ stories of past and present. Now I began to be very conscious that there was a slight impatience with ‘out there’ stories: they were simply appetisers to the main course of our meeting. A different group story was being woven - a story that depended a great deal more on the here-and- now than the there-and-then.

Of course, all members existed on the interface between the ‘in here’ group and the ‘out there’ world of past history and present relationships, so that it would be ingenuous to draw hard and fast lines. But, in retrospect, I am sure that my dream mirrored the new and more intricate pattern beginning to emerge in the weaving of the basket (or the making of the mandala), as the emphasis shifted from ‘sharing my story’ to ‘creating our story’.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful thanks to Rowan Williams, Bishop of Monmouth, for permission to quote from his book (see p. 359).

I should also like to pay tribute to everyone in the group of which I was privileged to be a participant. There was no-one who did not contribute in a positive way towards my personal growth - and I shall always remain grateful. All possible care has been taken to disguise examples of group interaction so that no identifications can be made. The group facilitator and the eight group members I was able to contact have all generously given their consent for the publi- cation of this essay.

Kate Compston, Counsellor 44 Western Way, Alverstoke,

Gosport, Hampshire PO1 2 2NQ

NOTE

This paper was an assignment offered a few years ago during the three-year Certificate Course (now superseded by the four-year Diploma Course) at the Southampton Pastoral Counselling Service ( W F affiliated).

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