The Whole Story

Twice a week, the 7 of us would gather in the library room, around the table, with our 2 supervisors, one at each end. This was called interpersonal group process (IPG). This was an opportunity for any one of us to bring up issues with which we would like to deal. It could be about  anything and we would invite feed back from the other students as well as the supervisors. The goal was to give each of us space and guidance for growth. Sometimes it was personal growth, sometimes it was interpersonal growth and sometimes it was to feed back on new things in our lives.

Let me back up. This was part of the Clinical Pastoral Education Process, a further training for Chaplaincy and to help us look at personal growth issues. In our group the way it worked was that we would all come in and have a seat and at 10 it would begin. The thing was, there were no rules as to how to start. If anyone had something to bring up they would ask for the time and they would go ahead. There were times it became nurturing and other times it could become very confrontational, by the supervisors or by the other students. There were very few opportunities to hide from things we needed to hear.

I recall one session in particular we came in and sat down and no one said anything. It was quiet and no one volunteered to raise any issues. This happened a couple of times after that. So one time after about 15 minutes of silence one supervisor observed that we had difficulty functioning unless there was something wrong with us or some one else in  the group. We had come to be so accustomed to dealing with problems and sick patients it was all there was. No problems then no conversation. He sited some stats about how many of our patients actually go home, improved.

I bring this up because I have come to see myself doing that. I do want to learn to talk about other things again besides my illness. My brother, Dirk, asked me one time if we talked about other things besides Leukemia. I told him, "No, not really".  That seems to be somewhat true for my Blog. If there are tests and things like that I write a blog about them. It is time to expand the conversation.