Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Subject: Re: [C-L]_Dealing with difficult personalities

[Bob Stein (stein]

To oust or not to oust.

I agree with Juva's persistent optimism. I love group powers shining on 
member problems, whether it's sick kids or stuck unable to communicate 
something important.  I like a community that OVERDOES this tendency.  My 
new community (7 wks) has been numbingly helpful and generous to my family 
and I intend to participate vigorously in this lovely brand of neighborhood 
oneupsmanship.

I agree with Liz's Lincolnesque clarity:  the group must continue to 
exist.  It is mortally unwise to bleed without limit over any problem or 
person.  I suspect each of our groups has its own chronic, persistent 
hemorrhages, and we have deep concerns over our past and future handling of 
them.

There's a discussion group I know of that deals with some very personal 
issues and they have adopted the axiom:  No one needs fixing.  This 
heretical idea shocked me at first but made me realize that all fixing 
comes from within.  A difficult personality -- any person at all -- is 
going to change precisely to the extent that they make up their mind to 
change, no more no less.  All outsiders can do is help an individual in 
*his or her* efforts to advance.

Therefore I suggest that the evolved cohousing communities of the future 
will have worked out how to discriminate:  when to help, when to oust.  I 
suspect no group lasts without a capacity for both.  A hard question is 
where to draw the line.

One last thought, a group is at its finest when some new effort unsticks an 
old problem.

-- Bob Stein, Two Echo, Brunswick Maine (www.two-echo.org)


At 09:59 PM 4/22/2003, Juva DuBoise wrote:
> With some determination, lots of compassion and experience (belief) that it
> is possible. When people get needs met, wants diminish


At 12:34 PM 4/23/2003, Elizabeth Stevenson wrote:
> For crying out loud, this is a community, not a therapy group! If we had
> tried to fix everyone who wanted to be a part of our community but wasn't
> ready to live in community, we would never have gotten built.


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