Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Managing Outbursts in Meetings

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

I think you are asking to remove strong emotions and passion from meetings.
This is probably not possible, and I am not sure it is entirely desirable.
It sounds like you, Lynn, have a low threshold for intensity. Others might
have a very different threshold. Part of living with a large group of people
is learning how to navigate community with very different people.

What can be  helpful is facilator intervention, to acknowledge the draw  out
the emotion, and more importantly, help the individual and group discover
what is behind and emotion. Think of emotional outbursts as  steam from a
kettle. The steam is caused by the heat underneath. To stop the steam you
need to remove the kettle from the heat.

A poised facilitator takes such things into account  during their meeting
planning. What will I do if there is an emotional outbursts during the
meeting? One thing is to acknowledge and ask. "From the tone of your voice
and your words you seem distressed. Can you help us find the cause of your
emotion?"

Sometimes groups may need to spend as much time doing checkin as they do
meeting. They find that peoples personal issues need support and by working
on personal stuff, they find greater understanding and acceptance during
decision stuff.  If I am all twisted up because of a fight with my dying
mother, it is possible that in my unacknowledged twisted up state, I am not
going to be a very compassionate or effective cooperative decision maker.
And of course, ANYTHING, which even slightly reminds me of my mother may
cause a completely irrational reaction from me. If I can check in and tell
folks, I am a mess today, sorry...It gives a slight warning to the group,
and also helps me recognize what is going on inside me.

I have been frequently astonished at how little some people understand what
is going on inside themselves, or how little attention they pay to it. But
that is how it is.

One of my favorite metaphors for group process is that  we are all in a
little boat on the ocean. Under us is fathoms and fathoms of ocean, of which
we can only see a tiny ways under the surface. The ocean is all that
pycho-emotive stuff we have. Its enormously deep, dark and to some folks,
very scary. Monsters lurk down there. So do incredibly beautiful things. But
that ocean is always under and all around us on our boat. So we steer
towards the best course we can approximate and we are wise to take
preparations so that the storms that arise from time to time don't sink us.

A great question for the facilitator team is: How will be deal with
emotional storms that arise? Sometimes some intervention work might be
useful as well. For details about intervention check out the online resource
at www.ic.org/nica/book/cover.htm

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood
www.sharingwood.org


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