RE: Dealing with emotional content ( Was cats: Wow!)
From: Forbes Jan (jan.forbesdhhs.tas.gov.au)
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2001 19:26:01 -0600 (MDT)
Rob

Thanks for clarifying.  From what you say here the solution is a simple
although there's an emotional aspect not only for the cat owners, but also
for the rest of the community that is perhaps not so apparent to the rest of
those involved.  

In the eyes of the rest of the group the cat owner appears to be the one
with the problem.  To resolve the conflict, the rest of the community needs
to own their emotions about having a member choose to leave.

If the community requires that all cats wear bells and a particular
household refuses to put a bell on their cat, then it needs to be clear that
the household is free to exercise their choice to leave the group.

If the community has agreed on what its boundaries are, it needs to stick to
them.


Jan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rob Sandelin [SMTP:floriferous [at] msn.com]
> Sent: Friday, 7 September 2001 8:54
> To:   cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject:      [C-L]_Dealing with emotional content ( Was cats: Wow!)
> 
> I think Jan Forbes missed my point, which was, it is in my experience,
> very
> difficult for most cohousing groups to deal with emotional based content.
> Pets are one of  the  topics that often go undealt with because of this.
> Of
> course there are probably some cohousing groups who deal with emotive
> content excellently and handle pets and kids and such issues just fine. I
> just have yet to observe one myself, thus my reference to my experiences,
> which are always expanding. And the truth  is my experience of course is
> very skewed, being formally a person often called in to facilitate and
> work
> with the group under these circumstances.
> 
> For example, it is a common behavior that when people form emotional
> attachments to specific outcomes they draw "bottom line" requirements for
> themselves and then stick the group with them.
> 
> Consider the following example: "If I have to put a bell on my cat, I am
> leaving. I can't possibly live here with my cat so limited."
> 
> This is probably not the truth. In the light of later perspective, the
> person would be very unlikely to really sell their home and move away over
> a
> bell. The point of the statement is draw a bottom line and try to force
> the
> group away from certain outcomes. It requires a fair degree of facilitator
> or group intervention to catch this sort of  manipulation, and to keep the
> group on a positive, creative course under these circumstances. The "line
> in
> the sand" is only one of several dozens of behaviors that can pop up
> during
> discussions of emotive content. It is, in my experience, wise to
> facilitate
> such processes with good preparation.
> 
> Rob Sandelin
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
> [mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Forbes Jan
> Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 10:36 PM
> To: 'cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org'
> Subject: RE: [C-L]_Cats. Wow!
> 
> 
> Thanks for sharing your perspective here Rob but despite your good
> intentions I don't think you've managed to smooth things over.
> 
> Pet owners and parents may be emotional and therefore in your opinion
> irrational, but what sort of a world would we have if people were
> motivated
> entirely by reason?  In fact, would that be enough to motivate them?  And
> without feelings could you say they were truly human?  Would we even have
> community if people were not influenced by their emotions?
> 
> The same goes for the other side of the debate.  When people fight to
> protect wildlife they are primarily motivated by feelings not reason,
> which
> is why for example here in Australia there's not much trouble finding
> supporters for the fight to save cuddly koalas, not so easy for the other
> 99%, the invertebrates.
> 
> 
> Jan
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:       Rob Sandelin [SMTP:floriferous [at] msn.com]
> > Sent:       Tuesday, 4 September 2001 15:23
> > To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> > Subject:    RE: [C-L]_Cats. Wow!
> >
> > Let me put on my  group facilitator hat here: Just to belabor the
> obvious,
> > Pets are a major conflict issue in pretty much every community. They
> rank
> > right up there in conflict issues with kids, work, food and
> relationships.
> >
> > I have seen an interesting pattern in many communities I have visited,
> > especially cohousing groups. The conversation goes like this:
> >
> > Pet Owner: We don't have any problems with pets.
> > Non-Pet Owner: Our biggest undealt with problem is pets.
> >
> > I have worked with groups dealing with pets and kids and both bring up
> > similar emotional attachment blocks for many people. They can talk about
> > lots of things, but as soon as you bring up a subject where they have a
> > strong emotional attachment (pet/child) they lose the ability to
> maintain
> > any sort of subjectivity and rationality. It is common that emotionally
> > attached people take any general criticism of pets/children personally
> and
> > often respond with the defensive methods they characteristically use.
> >
> > In my experience, when dealing with either kids or pets it might be a
> good
> > approach to work on abstract goals first. What do we want to accomplish?
> > Then, once you have a set of goals, you can work towards specifics of
> > accomplishing them.
> >
> > It is pretty common to find cohousing groups that espouse environmental
> > goals which then do nothing to regulate the carnage on local wildlife
> done
> > by the pets. Constraining pets is simply too hard for most groups to
> work
> > out.
> >
> > Now I put on my naturalist  hat:
> >
> > Cats in natural systems are super predators, their population is not in
> > anyway linked to the prey populations. In a natural system the
> population
> > of
> > the predators is directly linked to the population of the prey. When the
> > prey drops to a low point, it causes the predators to die or move on,
> > leaving a small remnant prey population to then rebuild its numbers.
> Super
> > predators keep feeding on the prey base until it is locally extinct,
> > because
> > they do not rely on the prey for survival. There are over 200 studies
> now
> > of
> > cat predation effects from all over America, and there is a good
> abstract
> > of
> > this research available from the Audubon society. It used to be on their
> > website.
> >
> > Rob Sandelin
> > Ex-facilitation trainer
> > Natural history teacher
> >
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