Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Re: Private vs Community Issues (Abuse, Alcoholism, etc.)

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

This is a boundary defining place, what is private, what  is community. You
will blunder into this in a variety of ways, and that's pretty normal from
what I have seen in the Communities world. I think an important thing when
you do is to do a community debrief about it. How did this feel? Do we want
to continue doing things like this, or scale back? What did we learn from
this experience? These types of debriefs are good to do regularly when you
are a new community, so that you capture the important learning's.

Some responses from questions generated towards me.

2.  I understand that triangulation is when two people are in conflict
and one or both parties tries to draw in support from one or more third
parties.  Is that right?

No, support in conflict is a good thing. Triangulation as I have seen it
defined is where person A, who does not like person B, tells person C
something negative (and usually slanted or untrue) about person B. Its a
game that can be very subtle, and a really effectively done triangulation
leaves you feeling negative about a person, but you don't really know how
you got that idea. I recommend Strongly discouraging negative remarks about
people not present to defend themselves. A simple statement like: Hey, since
Bill is not here to defend himself, it doesn't feel right to say negative
things about him. Would you agree to go talk to Bill about it? This type of
statement will make you very unpopular with gossipy types, but it usually
will curb the behavior, at least in your presence.



3.  Rob, you talk about healthy talk and unhealthy talk.  I'm wondering
how this relates to  Non-violent Communication which some of us are trying
to learn more about.  My intuition tells me that Non-violent Communication
could be very helpful.   But I'm having trouble visualizing what it would
actually look like in such a situation.

One example of healthy communication would be a process of clearing. For
example, I might harbor a certain idea about a person, in the process of
clearing I might say something like, "I have this idea about you that I'd
like to check out with you to see how real it is." If the person agrees (and
they are free not do so, or to do so later, I might say, "When you and Jim
worked on and did the repair on the window I felt you excluded me because my
ideas for the window were more than you wanted to deal with."

They might respond either way, that yes, that is true, or no that's just a
fantasy projection on my part, or some partial in-between. In this kind of
communication pattern, you can immediately check on things which might be
giving you personal issues, and clear them up very directly. It takes
agreement on the participants about when and how to do this, and often it is
good to utilize a standardized type of format in order to get started.  This
kind of work is often most successfully started as a subgroup of people
rather than the whole group. I have found that in cohousing world, this kind
of thing is WAY too touchy-feeling encounter groupish for some  folks, but
fits others really well. Staring a clearness group can get the ball rolling.

There is a good set of articles about this kind of communication clearing in
recent issues of Communities magazine. There are people  who train groups in
this kind of stuff as well as books on it. This is just one kind of
communication pattern, NVC might be another, reflective feedback is yet
another. Often people who have training as therapists learn several models
and can be good local resources.


4.  Rob, you also mentioned that communities need to have a list of
tools they can use for such situations.  Would you specifically name what
some of those tools might be?

Again, a local trained family therapist can give you lots of ideas. A couple
I have used with good success.

One would be revealing and bringing out assumptions. You can even start this
in a group as a meeting opening game to get people used to the tasks. Start
off with something which is widely assumed but not agreed to, such as: I
assume that smoking is not allowed in the commonhouse. Then you brainstorm
with the group:
What actions lead me to assume this?
What have I heard that leads me to assume this?
What have I said to others that leads them to assume this?

Then do a fingers poll about the assumption; everybody that assumes that
smoking is not allowed in the commonhouse show one finger, everybody who
does not assume this show two.

If you practice this a few times with the group before taking on a loaded
assumption, in my experience, when you try it on a loaded assumption you
will get better results.

You can probably come up with other ideas how to examine and take apart
assumptions, and this is an important tool for a group to use.

Another useful tool is structured communications. This can be used  when you
want to discuss how people feel about a topic but want to have some control
over it and make it useful. A simple structure, is just a fill in the blanks
sentence which is done in writing first, then can be communicated aloud. One
simple, very general form looks like this:

When (describe a behavior) happens, I feel (describe how you feel).

When people shout at dinner I feel irritated and bothered.

This format can be modified dozens of ways. Marshall Rosenburgs work  is
sort of a modification of this process.

Another tool is simply to break up the larger group into smaller subsets and
give them a discussion topic to chew on. Things which will fall flat in a
large group discussion can take on great liveliness in a group of three.

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, writer, and group advisor
Sharingwood  www.sharingwood.org




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