There are some days that I don't seem to be able to write anything. So I decided to blog.. So far nobody reads my blog so it's safe to continue writing nonsense. About the time I get on the crest of a wave I'm sucked back into the past. But reworking the past is Not as much fun as it might seem; more honestly one returns to the past the more ridiculous it seems.  When I look at 2015 I realize that a lot of things have started. Some may be completed and some won't. The dementia scare brought me to get a trainer and begin physical exercise. So I'm into it now about five months and my trainer Gary  thinks things are a little better  and I see some improvement myself. The most remarkable thing looking over the last year  was the wonderful to visit from the grandchildren from Minneapolis. Their collective and individual personalities were so harmonious as to defy description. But even with that harmony  they are total individuals. They seem to listen to each other very carefully and avoided  but not appeared to avoid negative comments. It's practically an impossibility for siblings to be this good.  But I have to accept what I see.

 It is giving me the courage to  launch a trip to Dominica. So far Ariel is aboard, as well as Dougie, and now Harrison. I wish I could find a way to get Bennett over here but I guess he's a bit young to travel along such a distance.  I think that Hannah and Erin are too tied to boyfriends at the moment to consider a grandfather trip.  I wonder about what Kaitlin  would like?

The book is complete except for a possible final chapter called "conclusions". But I can't seem to write it so it may not be there. Meanwhile the big decisions about the house has been made which I hope I don't renege on. I will give up the house and hope to obtain an RV that David and I will tool around in. I hope to go to local prisons and encourage officers to submit to the group process of the double circle group. I will offer almost anything but beer to get them involved.

 I am enjoying the pleasantries of platonic relationships with several ladies. That's not necessarily my wish but it is my ultimate testosterone. There is no intelligence in testosterone but a great deal of unconscious stomping about and waking up as if out of a drunk. One friend says I need to have at least five orgasms a month or more. These  solo ones lack pizzazz,  but lack the danger of experimental relationships.

We decided to have regular meetings of the Double Circle Training Group at the Alachua Presbyterian Church.  They will be held at 2 PM each Sunday.  I hope that you can attend some of these meetings.   Although the Double Circle Group is a central topic we are experiencing a great deal of attention to the correctional officers and their plight.  So in some sense the meetings will be a correctional officer booster club.  We hope that some family members could be attendance.  We also hope that by having the meetings at Alachua that we will be able to get  participants from Suwanee, Lancaster, RMC, UCI, FSB and even Columbia eventually.

  We have set a meeting of the double circle group process at the Starke Cedar River restaurant.  It will be on October 15 at 7 PM which is a Thursday.  Doug is bringing several people from Lancaster.  I am now in the process of inviting correctional officers from this area.

I am happy to report that after four weeks of physical training with a certified trainer I can now say you feel the difference.  Perhaps it will be possible for me to go ahead with the long-term project for the supportive person endeavor.  I am extremely grateful for many friends including those in  AA  who have helped me get this far along in the process.

Meanwhile we completed the rough draft of the  Janus- Springer  group guide.  It is now being submitted to readers and if you are seeing this blog I would like to be your reader please contact me by  phone 352-213-4610.

 I need all the help that I can get in setting up this first dinner meeting.  It will be held at the Starke   Cedar River restaurant.  We need to find a time that works for most correctional officers.

Is now two weeks into my exercise program and I firmly believe that it is working.  It is very difficult and I am very conscious of being short of breath and weekend my legs.  But that is getting better and what is most interesting is that my enthusiasm for writing and carrying out my chores is improving.

  Meanwhile I have selected the the Cedar River restaurant in Starke Florida as the site of our meeting.  Hopefully this will include quite a number of correctional officers but it will take a great deal of effort to get them there and hope that they find some usefulness in what we have to say.

I am reminded by what happened in our meeting this morning that  Bill Wilson was a great  risk taker.  When one looks at the big picture, the risk of starting an AA program that became worldwide, was without a doubt beyond any comprehension on the part of Wilson and others that it would ever come about.

  I am very encouraged by the reader program as I have already been told of serious issues within the manuscript that have to be dealt with.  I am grateful to  several who have already helped a great deal.

    And I now need to  develop a formal business plan and a regular meeting of the folks who have been crucial in the development of the program so far.

Recently I have been focused on consciousness.  Several weeks back I attended the Mickey Singer Temple of the Universe service in Alachua.  Mickey focused his talk on consciousness.  Since then I have been reading about consciousness as the ultimate reality rather than what we see as matter.  I will keep working on this issue but it is difficult for me to think of consciousness as ultimate reality.

Meanwhile in a less troublesome arena we were able to have a supportive person process meeting on Sunday using my four grandchildren and one of the grandchild's boyfriend.  It was a great help to all of us who have not been getting much input from young people.  The input to the grandchildren and Ben gave was very helpful.  I am now beginning to move ahead with the book in seeking readers will no doubt will help us make the book have more clarity.

I hope to stage the next support a person group process meeting and some place in  Lake Butler and right now it seems to be the hospital.  I hope to get some correctional officers to participate in the group along with our regular crew.

On a personal note I have decided to begin an exercise program with an exercise specialist.  I have now completed four sessions and hope to continue through a full set of 24.  My shortness of breath and muscle weakness is probably mostly due to inactivity  as well as age, diabetes, and lung damaged by heavy smoking.

I am excited about what is happening with our group and I am also excited about what is happening with the correctional officers.  I know it is a long shot to focus on the correctional officers but I believe that it is our tradition to turn to those most in need of help.  We will meet again on Sunday at the 3 PM and I hope that we will get some of the correctional officers to come with us to talk about the problems and about the solutions that might be within the group process.

For the past 2 1/2 years my hope has been on writing about a phenomenon but instead I continue to write about myself, my struggle, my misgivings and my lack of courage. The phenomenon itself is a bit obscure and ill defined. But the clues keep slapping me in the face until just today some light shines through the mist. I have not previously thought constructively about the bottom up process as opposed to the top down oppression handed down from the rich and powerful. How can the poor ever achieve a place in the sun. Is democracy dead? I think not. As long as we poor have our wits about us there is a chance though slim to gain some ground while the rich count their money and gloat over the stupidity of the poor.

As I was riding with several correctional officers  back from a fishing trip at Steinhatchee, I heard them talking about rounds, guns, different kinds of loads. They thought I was asleep so their conversation was easy and unfettered; very technical and they seemed to be in their element. I was struck by the intensity of their conversation and the knowledge that they shared. They knew their guns and ammo. It was obvious that they had all studied firearms carefully. But why bother with firearms as an issue? How would that save them from the economic disaster in the road ahead? 

In my half awake state I began to ponder about parallels. What are the parallels? Well, for the past several years I have been studying about a group process method while they have been studying about guns and ammo. Bingo....they are parallel because both group process and guns and ammo are instruments. Like knives and forks they wait to be picked up and used in some particular task. My knife and fork is "group process" and I have to find a way to bring the parallels into focus.  For that matter, I will really have to work hard to get theses officers to see group process as anything but fluff.

This is a draft of the Preface but is in continual revision

Janus Group Guide

Philip K Springer, MD

Shelby Havens, ARNP DNP

Preface

5/24/15

      Throughout most of my adult life I have been in professions that were centered on helping others. I have been a family physician with a practice based in Southern Mississippi. And, for ten years I worked with Head Start children as part of my regular medical practice.  In retrospect, I recall how many politically astute people bitterly fought the Head Start Program. And, concurrently, I believe that programs such as Head Start helped prevent many of the incarcerations of the inmates I treated in the Florida State Prison System.In..1960 I left my family practice and enrolled in the Residency Program in the Department of  Psychiatry at the University of Florida.  Following the completion of my residency requirements, I became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry.   In this position, I was heavily involved in the training of medical students, psychiatric residents, nurses and a broad cross section of other mental health professionals as well.  During the last ten years of my professional life I served as a staff psychiatrist in the State of Florida prison system.

     I learned a great amount of information and gained extensive and valuable experience from service in each of these venues.  That knowledge and experience served as the primary objective in writing this paper (book).  More specifically, I am especially interested in describing the development of a treatment modality which my colleagues and I designed for use in psychiatric and other environments.    It is known as The Supportive Person Group Process (SPGP) and my interest in the Process can be traced back to my days at the University of Florida.  

While performing my training and administrative duties in the Department of Psychiatry, I became very interested in group dynamics and began to develop a program we identified as Supportive Person Group Psychotherapy (SPGP) The book you are reading was inspired by a desire to write about what is and has been happening in my life from a personal and professional perspective.   I say desire because I am not a writer of experience.  I am a recovering alcoholic, a father, a widower, a retired psychiatrist, and former country doctor. When I look for answers to important questions about life ’ s meaning, I am looking for something from the heart.  When I say to myself “ written from the heart ” it is with humility and compassion and a strong sense of urgency inasmuch as I am reaching an octogenarian mindset, but this does not imply any form of frenzy but rather a firm sense of urgency about what I need to do to make it on this planet for a few more years.   As for now, it is with considerable excitement that I bring to light SPGP as a method of therapy that I had let lie fallow for many years.  

However, we are now ready to bring this group process forward.  That is, I recognize that there are stimulating new developments in understanding how the brain works.   As psychiatry falls apart right under our eyes, a broader and deeper effort to nurture our mental health therapies is finding it ’ s way through a bottom-up process in a multitude of self-help groups.  With this supportive person group process (SPGP) we hope to shed some light on how people communicate with their feelings as well as with what they say.   It is acknowledged that many people today are feeling overwhelmed and in search of new methods for dealing with mental health problems.  There are several books just out looking at dyadic relationships, or the power of two, as a method for dealing with the problem of being overwhelmed. Dyadic relationships are simply an attempt to work effectively as a pair rather than as a single individual.  These supporting personal group processes are just that kind of effort.  With one person supporting another in a group session they find that they need to develop techniques for being supportive rather than simply meddling in the partner's affairs.  So what began in the 1970s as an effort to deal with mental health workers and others in a busy psychiatric service has become available to us to use as a learning tool for becoming more effective in dyadic relationships.

There are many ways to explain bottom up processing, but for the purpose of understanding how the process works in group situations, the evidence is clear that emotions are activated more strongly in bottom up processing than top down processing. Lofty and often incomprehensible statements come from top down processing such as psychological theories from single theorists, such as Freud. But bottom up processing come from a deeper emotional level and is strongly felt rather than simply thought about and easily discarded. Bottom up processing is more democratic than top down processing.

         At present, science is expanding our knowledge about how the brain functions.   Through neuroimaging, we are also becoming more aware of simple techniques in human interaction, which can improve our lives by being involved in   quiet conversation or in groups such as AA. We now have the tools to watch the human brain in action through the miracle of functional magnetic brain imaging (fMRI). Science and technology have made it possible for us to follow emotions and thinking as they travel through the brain. However, the real test is how we sense what is going on in each other through the magic of just being close and intimate. We can get 20 hugs and know how it feels and, at present, we can also find, through an fMRI, which the brain lights up in response to these feelings of appreciation and affection.  One of the most startling recent findings is that the aging brain can set up new areas to store memory in the right-brain even while the memory area in the left-brain has gone into decay and disuse.  There are many mysteries that lie ahead that can be illustrated by the fMRI. However, this brief discussion is not focused on technology, but rather, on  human interaction at a very elemental level.   It is also important to note that the discussion presented in this chapter is focused on group processes and not necessarily on group therapy only.  There is an intelligence in groups which is at first difficult to see and which can never be seen unless you actually participate in a group.   Our thoughts are communicated not simply by words but we are finding that through the medium of the fMRI that these thoughts can be transmitted from person to person without so much as a word being uttered.  Thoughts can be read without words. It is possible that we humans can be aware of someone silently standing behind us.

During my stint as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Florida (1976-83) I had to  provide inpatient clinical experiences to the medical students and residents.   The question that kept nagging me and the other members of the Staff was how can we educate and/or treat this menagerie of groups we had on our Service.  In addition to patients. on any given day. our Unit often included  faculty members, psychiatric residents, nurses and medical students as well as  a host of other mental health professionals .  This diverse collection was a considerable challenge to the Staff. We had to find ways to communicate what we knew about both personal and group therapies.  

During my psychiatric residency one of my colleagues kept urging me to attend the summer sessions of the National Training Labs located in Bethel, Maine.  I eventually went to the Lab meetings and the result was a total conviction that group processes and group therapies will be our ultimate pathway to mental and spiritual health.   Many of the ideas presented in this guide have evolved through my experience at the National Labs.

    In the 1960’s a considerable amount of psychiatric and training was committed to educating future psychiatrists so that they could become psychoanalysts in the tradition of Freud.  We are now in a different era, an era that is devoted to promulgating new diagnoses and new medications to combat the assumed new diagnoses.  Since the 1960’s we have moved abruptly from discovering and nurturing the patient’s individual positive personality features to stamping out, in cookie cutter fashion, a diagnosis based on a checklist and yielding a convenient (to the drug companies) a medication treatment.

     (Drawing of the double circle group)

Using a large single circle to begin with I found that the medical students were prone to put the patients in an awkward position of having to defend themselves. Part of this was the awkwardness of the questioning employed by medical students, which I think must have come out of their experience of watching Perry Mason on television. So eventually I put all of the staff and students in an outer circle behind the patients and the patients were placed in an inner circle with the group leader, generally myself.  With this simple beginning, SPGP was instituted in 1978. A great deal has changed since then so I will present the basis for the changes as well as the rationale for SPGP.

The word supportive requires some clarification. Generally, the failure in this process is seen as a one-person meddling in another persons business.  However,  I found while working with the Staff of  the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind that a staff member who knew the child well could be very supportive.  Being supportive is very delicate process and the teachers and counselors at the School were amazingly adept at being supportive.   But they became supportive through an understanding of the sensitivity of the deaf child and the understanding that the deaf child was willing to be supported if the counselor knew them, as they understood their own self.

    In this short book I will bring to your attention both the mystery of the interaction between people at a very elemental level and a method of exploring human interaction with a simple technique within a particular style of group process. This done by use of the group configuration by moving the circles inward and outward and also by moving the individuals of the group inward and outward providing perspective to each participant. The mystery is provided by the manner in which the flow of energy among the participants creates a balance for the group and smoothes the jagged egos of each individual. With this supportive person group process (SPGP) we hope to shed some light on how people communicate with their feelings as well as with what they say and perhaps become as astute as some of our dogs. Many people today are feeling overwhelmed. It is obvious that many divorces stem from expectations of each other in the marriage is simply are beyond our reach. We are also seeing our young people back away from society because they feel overwhelmed.  Should we now look toward new methods for dealing with this problem? There are several books just out looking at dyadic relationships, or the power of two, as a method for dealing with the problem of being

Using a large single circle to begin with I found that, particularly, the medical students were prone to put the patients in an awkward position of having to defend themselves. Part of this was the awkwardness of the questioning employed by medical students, which I think must have come out of their experience of watching Perry Mason on television. So eventually I put all of the staff and students outer circle behind the patient's and the patients had the inner circle with the group leader, generally myself. With this simple beginning Supportive Person Group Psychotherapy (SPGP) happened in 1978. A great deal has changed since then so I will present the basis for the changes as well as the rationale for SPGP.

   The word supportive requires some clarification. Generally, the failure in this process is seen as a one-person meddling in another persons business. But I found while working in the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind with the staff and the student in a conference setting that a staff member who knew the child well could be very supportive but not interfere with what the youngster wanted to say or do in the future. Being supportive is very delicate process and these teachers and counselors at Florida School for the Deaf and Blind were amazingly adept at being supportive. But they became supportive through an understanding of the sensitivity of the deaf child and the understanding that the deaf child was willing to be supported if the counselor knew them, as they understood their own self.

In this short book I will bring to your attention both the mystery of the interaction between people at a very elemental level and a method of exploring human interaction with a simple technique within a particular style of group process. This done by use of the group configuration by moving the circles inward and outward and also by moving the individuals of the group inward and outward providing perspective to each participant. The mystery is provided by the manner in which the flow of energy among the participants creates a balance for the group and smoothes the jagged egos of each individual.   With this supportive person group process (SPGP) we hope to shed some light on how people communicate with their feelings as well as with what they say and perhaps become as astute as some of our dogs. Many people today are feeling overwhelmed. It is obvious that many divorces stem from expectations of each other in the marriage is simply are beyond our reach. We are also seeing our young people back away from society because they feel overwhelmed. Should we now look toward new methods for dealing with this problem? There are several books just out looking at dyadic relationships, or the power of two, as a method for dealing with the problem of being

to know about their job. But that is the way of the World; is it not the one we often desire.

    One of the paradoxes of serving others is that the serving person loses energy and the person being served gains energy. In my opinion the better the process of serving the more drain at the end of the day these serving person experiences. I believe that this is why many people hold back on offering their full attention and energy in the serving role. Intuitively they know what can happen at the end of the day. They feel extraordinarily drained when they have done a good job. We may have avoided serving I just went through the motions idea of the day they might feel my brain did all. So this is a real problem for each person who is trying to do their best and serving others.   One way that one can counteract this problem is to provide methods for energizing those serving. A frequent group process involving the serving one's can be a remarkable rejuvenating force. There are many companies and even institutions that practice this method of rejuvenation using a variety of group methods. In 1947 the T group was developed for this very purpose. We will be discussing in detail the Supportive Person Group Process (SPGP) in this guide.

     Before getting too deeply into the issue of supportive person group it is very important that we at least try to grasp the difference between content of the group and process of the group. Specifically content would be that it contains 12 or 16 members, for instance, arranged in a circular fashion made up of people about particular discipline etc. The process is more difficult to understand what essentially is an unseen moving, often complex interaction between members. For instance in baseball there is a very complex interaction process that goes on between the area of second base and first base. The content can be the first baseman, the second baseman, or the shortstop most commonly but what they go through in order to complete the double play is a process. Some of this can be so rapid that it is difficult to see how it actually happened. When a mother is attempting to make contact with a new infant she is participating in a process that cannot be readily seen. However it is easy enough to see that there is a mother and a baby in the same place doing something but we do not always know exactly what they are doing.

    There is also urgency about how the flow of information is leaning toward the top down rather than from the bottom up. Someone say that I am a hopeless whom may prove politically out of sync but time will tell. My OPTMISM is based on my I recall during my ten years of working with Head Start children in Mississippi as a part of my regular practice. I also recall how bitterly many politically astute people fought against the Head Start program. The Head Start program was and still is an enormous benefit to the developing child. I argue that more similar activity would have prevented many incarcerations of inmates that I treated in Florida State prison and Union Correctional Institution. Short-term thinking generally wins political battles.

     We now live in a system, which is based on economics and extremely short term thinking and planning. If we were to stop and think for a moment our world system could be based on raising healthy human beings. We fail over and over again to spend money on the very young and turn around and spend it on fantastic war and dreadful prison costs. If one thinks of costs in four-year segments it remains seemingly intelligent to stick with the economics but if one thinks in terms of the lifespan of a human being then we are on the wrong track.

Yet another story leads me to bring up the matter of personality. My wife and I brought 7 children into the world with such strikingly diverse personalities that I believe that current personality theory must be reviewed in detail. I ask a very simple question concerning personality but the answer requires a detailed explanation. The question is: would it not be preferable that we approach mental illness treatment from a strengthening of personality approach rather than from a diagnosis of pathology approach? The personality is the humans ’ immune system and as time ravages on within chronic mental illness, the personality is gradually eroded and misshapen. The patient ’ s pathology is not the fulcrum. The discovery of balance and inner strength within the individual demands our reverent attention. I say reverent because we as humans through centuries of trial and error have gradually developed a soul. We find that this soul development is somehow crucial to the survival of our planet, as we know it. Perhaps the soul is the seat of what we are all about and once damaged we can become tools of the state.

During my stint as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the  University of Florida (1976-83) I had to  provide inpatient clinical experience to the medical students and residents in  psychiatry.    However, this was a considerable challenge to the Staff  because there were so many students and residents as well as the patient's who needed to learn as much as possible about  psychotherapy.  The question that kept nagging the Staff was how could we educate and\or treat the menagerie of groups we had on our Service.  In addition to patients on any given day our Unit often included faculty members, psychiatric residents, nurses, medical students as well as a host of other mental health professionals.  Our high priorities included a desire to provide an inpatient clinical experience to those who functioned on our Unit.  However,  this was a considerable challenge because there were so many different professional groups. The ideas presented in this guide have evolved through my experience in National Training Labs and as such emphasize the enhancement and enrichment of the personality in contrast to waging war on mental illness.

    Dyadic relationships are simply an attempt to work effectively as a pair rather than as a single individual. These supporting personnel group process is just that kind of effort. With the person supporting another in the group session they find I need to develop techniques for being supportive rather than simply meddling in the partner's affairs. So what began in the 1970s as an effort to deal with medical students and a busy psychiatric service is now become available to us to use as a learning tool for becoming more effective in the dyadic relationship

At times I realize that people take issue with what I am saying and I understand that because I am not a particularly good student of psychiatry.  I never intended to be but have mostly been interested in the knives and forks, magnifying glasses, microscopes, and other devices which help people communicate honestly with each other.  So the supportive person group process is not meant to add much to the field of psychiatry and psychology but what it does mean to me is a way of processing what we have to say to each other.  So I am not interested particularly in the content.  People bring things to me that tells me that I should be more involved with understanding this particular  proponent of psychology and psychiatry.  But this effort is but a vehicle in the vehicle and could be used inappropriately and I worry about that.

Most recently have been thinking about how we disallow disallow Crosstalk in AA.  So when someone speaks in a meeting it is  a soliloquy which is responded to by other soliloquies.  In the supportive person group  my intent is not to encourage soliloquies but to encourage dialogue.  In a dialogue people could possibly cut each other off often unwittingly but the spontaneity of all the dialogue is what I treasure.  At its best dialogue is relatively free  of ego.  When several people are involved in your reaching toward each other's feeling state rather than their thinking  state.  In order to do this some feelings are to be stepped on or overlooked.  However the net effect is to reach each other  at a feeling  level.

I hope some of you know what I call the "team" are reading this because I do not know when you have the next meeting.  I would prefer that we need every week from here on out but that is a big order and I do not know whether we can find the right time to do it.  I would appreciate anybody's comments on this.

  This past week in particular I have felt a product of reaching 82.  When I am sure breath I realize that I have gained some fluid intake the diuretic  but having taken the diuretic I become weak from the effect of the diuresis.  This is meant to say that I am running out of steam and will probably not be as effective from here on out.  Luckily I have folks who are truly interested in this group process and I trust  will carry on.   I could be caught  whining because I have selected George  Warheit    who is 87 to be the person who writes the  forward to the book.

Something very strange and wonderful has happened to me.  It has not been a something but it has been building over a number of years.  It begins with my loss of faith in God during my crisis years with a woman who worked for me as a research assistant.  At that time I turned away from God entirely and made a virtual bargain with the devil that I would be granted special help with my research.  As time went on pretty much everything in my life fell apart.  Since the death of Frieda I have gradually been working along the way to find spiritual help.  In addition to my daily AA meetings I opted to begin rosary and daily mass.  But I could not do both so I finally settled on doing mass and rosary on Monday Wednesday and Friday and AA meetings on Tuesday Thursday Saturday and Sunday.  I attend the Alachua Presbyterian Church on Sunday as well.  I have been reading heavily in the early AA literature in trying to understand Bill Wilson’s concept of God.  A relative newcomer to our AA group told me of Sermon on the Mount by Emmet Fox.  After I read it I began to realize that much of my conflict lay within the region between formal religion and life of Jesus. The book by Emmett Fox helped me a great deal.  I have full stop playing formal religion with the fault that is my own.  With the help of techniques offered by Eckhart Tolle and other help from those closest to me I have decided to make a conscious effort to put Jesus into my life as totally as I possibly can.  From that initiation whatever is religious will have to tag long as a caboose.  Then  yesterday I caught the biggest fish of my life a 32 inch red.  Then when I got the mailboxes this morning there was an extraordinarily large refund check from the IRS sitting there quietly waiting for me to take it to the bank.  There were a number of reasons why this refund check was unlikely.  I will not try to explain it now but will in time.

Sunday was a very special day as well because they were caring at the supporting person group workshop.  It was a very special day because of that and because of the warmth and caring that I felt in the room.  Following the workshop some of us went to dinner at Tony and Al’s.  I now feel that if the supportive person group process is going to work it will be because of people that came to the workshop on Sunday and those that wish to, as well.  I do believe this Sally D has said that I am a dreamer but I hope that it will be possible in time to bring this kind of group process to correctional officers as a way of improving the overall system of criminal justice.

 After the Group Session I realized that the process was a bit stilted because each person is reciting a soliloquy but we really need a conversation.  There is a difference between soliloquy and  conversation.  There is a tremendous effort in AA meetings to avoid what is considered to be cross talk.  To my way of thinking part of the problem with that form of interaction is that it detracts from intimate conversation.  Although Crosstalk can be a dangerous problem to chairpersons that has to be a way of finding a resolution.• I cannot control anything that happens in AA and do not wish to.  But I do hope to improve on what I think of is intimate conversation in our supportive person group.   This morning as I chaired I a group I realize that many people in giving their soliloquy address several different problems that are  not always related Our minds are full of stuff.  Somehow we have to find a way of  finding the carrier wave in  riding it together.

The fishing trip was great but I still have the unanswered question as to how I can totally place my trust in God.  I see many others around me who do such and seem to be very happy with the decision.  Perhaps I belabor the point too much.  But in any case the quandary gums up the rest of my work with the book.  I am not about to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

 My seven children are in the best place that I have seen in many years.  Louis is working hard and feeling accomplished I think.  Stewart has fallen in love and said today how important it is to him.  Michael has called and found that his heart is doing fine and realizes that he is just dealing with tension and stress.  Douglas is recovering from his ankle and foot fracture.  Susan had a remarkable visit here.  Thom is headed toward an African vacation.  David is recovering from his foot fracture. Stewart and I visited his mom's columbarium today because it is Frieda’s birthday.  Who would dare ask for anything more?

Admittedly I am an intermittent blogger.  Last week is been spent trying to figure out why do not have any energy.  I discovered that I slipped in atrial fibrillation.  My doctor put me on atenolol buy it caused depression so I switch over to Corig with his blessing my still do not have any energy.  I opted against taking the BCG treatment for bladder cancer for the next three months at least.  I am somewhat stalled on the way in which to proceed.  We need to complete the Janus Group Guide without fail  but I do not seem to have the energy that it takes right now.so Doug and I will go fishing tomorrow which may solve the problem.

I have been very remiss in blogging recently.  But I am encouraged that we are going to have a very special occasion on April 9 when Susan will be here and others who will help generate enthusiasm for the supportive person group process.  This week I have been reading a book recommended by Shelby which is about serving.  It is written by a person who has lived in Gainesville in the past and was in the same church that Shelby attends.  I very much enjoy the book and recommend it and is called SERVING THE GREAT and is by Matt Tenney.

Meanwhile our book, the Janus group guide continues to take shape and will hopefully be ready within a few months. when I think about the supportive person group I really have begun to think that it has a life of its own now.  There have been many books written about the problems of modern society and books written about the negative effects that ego can have on people's peace of mind but the supporting person group is not about a book is about an instrument.  Just as one would use a spoon or fork this group can become an instrument for whatever meal you want to prepare.  Whether it is going to be fully self-sustaining without professional help remains in question that can only be answered by groups getting started and actually continuing over a period of time.

Ultimately the Janus group will reach a tipping point that cannot be predicted but only hope for and worked for.

I am not sure what is holding up my writing but my intuition tells me that I am working at a level that is deeper than I can express in words.  I am having to grapple with my faith and with my relationship to God and also my relationship to the other people in my life who have a variety of relationships to God.  It started with the Eckhardt Tolle reading and has continued now for several weeks.  It should be easy enough to integrate what Tolle is saying but that is not really the problem the problem is my continuing ambivalence about the existence of God.

But if a person such as myself is part of a relay race for which there are an infinite number of runners and the baton carries the message of God then it really does not matter whether I can see the finish line.  I am but one of the runners.  It is not my place to question what is in the baton or what the race is all about but it is my place to run and carry the message as fast as I can.  That being the case I should not continue to dillydally about with questions about God's existence.

Yesterday was a very special day for me.  On the way to the church I kept thinking that that I use people.  But when I got there those folks help me a great deal in getting of that thought.  So we move on and we decided to have another session on the 15th which is Sunday at 3 PM in trying to get a compliment of at least 12 folks so that we can do the double circle.   meanwhile I am still stuck with my writing but  that will clear up.  I am spending a lot of time  listening to Eckart Tolle but it helps me come down and helps me not worry so much.  I have to look at that as being healthier than many other things that I can do distract myself from worry.  So I will continue in my immersion into the Catholic church activities including rosary in five days a week and mass five days a week with two days a week of AA meetings and one Protestant service on Sunday with the Rev. Hardesty and his spouse Karen at the little Presbyterian Church in Alachua.  I love those folks.

  the past week has been interesting because I am moving in a more spiritual direction and as Steve said some time ago that I was cramming for finals.  There is no doubt that trying to reach beneath my ego.  I have been listening to the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and it has and a greater effect on me than last year and the year before.  More and more committed to search for nonverbal communication.  I am searching for some of the problems in ego through my experience in AA and now more recently in my church.  I plan on going to a three-day retreat to Conyers Georgia in the hope of finding more about what is inside of me it is worth saving and what is inside of me that I need to blow away before my goodbyes.

I made a commitment to Fr Jeff that I would offer my services as a coach for those suffering mental health problems and particularly problems with addiction.  He accepted my offer and so I move ahead.

I will continue to seek participants for the supportive person group process workshop and to the list of issues under investigation the phenomenon described in the book Blink called adaptive unconscious.  He describes in a more vernacular fashion the power to think without thinking.  This is the interaction that I hope to demonstrate within the two persons within the group setting were in support of each other.

addendum

There will be a meeting of SPGP on March 1st Sunday at 3 PM. Both Karen and Gary believe we should have at least one more meeting because to them at least it went well last time. I am willing to be embarrassed if this is a stale message. I very much believe in what I am doing.
What this group may do for you:

1. help go beneath your ego to a richer level of interaction with people
2. Find that there is non verbal presence in this group but you have to be "in it" to feel it.
3. find that you can not only be supportive without a lot of words but you can experience support from another person in a new and refreshing way.
4. develop the experience of having someone "at your back"
5. realize that this group does not require a professional of any kind
6. I hope that you experience the Balance that this method offers.

to name a few things............but approaching 82 I am pumped up but hopefully it is not my ego doing the pumping.

Although I have been reading Eckhart Tolle for several years some things are just drifting into my awareness.  Although the supportive person group process is designed to attenuate or dampen the effective the individuals ego and group, I did not really appreciate the implications that Tolle makes in the Power of Now until very recently.

    Based on Gary and Karen's recommendation I am going ahead with another session at the Alachua Presbyterian Church on March 1 at 3 PM. on reflection I do believe that the supportive person group process is a good thing to promote.  For one thing it should be free and should be able to function without any professional leadership.

        This is what I have and this is what I fear. I fear that God will forsake me because of my fear. God is real but fear is continually shoving him/her aside. Hence the daily meetings as I quietly listen; but the noise in my head is loud but not clear. At times the honesty of others in the room peeks through and I am relieved but only momentarily.  Then I turn and read what is being said on the various websites and realize that few hit the nail and much of the rhetoric is hollow. The room that I go to will be filled with honesty as the others arrive.

I am an alcoholic but at a deeper level I am a fearaholic.

     I become disoriented when struck by fear and like a drowning man pull my rescuers in with me. Alcohol and other liniments are not the cause of my problem. I run in fear like the primitive humans did before the dawn of what we now call civilization. When in fear I become less of a man and more like the primitive beast of my ancestors. Can I find within myself a way to face the fear and make the next right move? So far I reach out to others who might have the answer to my built in primitive terror. They are kind as always.  They seem so wise and I feel my foolishness and slip away again into the haze of my private reality. Can I possibly find a shield against fear?

I have been fretting for several weeks over the issue of guilt and shame. I thought I understood this split somehow my guilt has gotten all tangled in the drawers of my shame. I have been getting some help from some of my friends as well as reading Ernest Kurtz small book called SHAME AND GUILT and I feel a bit better.

There are several purposes in the workshops not the least of which is getting to know oneself better.  I need come up with fewer surprises in my own mind's  inner workings.  One day they feel fine and the next day they feel suicidal.  We need to know more about this kind of problem.  There is also the feeling of being alone in a world made up of many friendly people.  

     So what is the supportive person?  Can we really effectively support each other and if so who were going to be people that choose us to be supportive are we choose to be supportive? I truly believe that we can find a way to consistently be supportive. Carl Rogers once commented that marriages were failing at a high rate because each spouse was expecting more of each other that was ever there to begin with; so divorce ensued.

     The workshop is designed as a safe way for each of us in participating in the supportive person process to feel safe and to feel as though there is something built into this that is protective. Can we work through our veneer of ego armor and offer up to each other  a glimpse of the  inner-self? Having found that can we be supportive?

I have given some copies of the book the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts to several folks hoping they would find it is useful as I did.  I have invited Dr. Shelby Havens to be my co-author of the  Janus group guide.  She has remarkable credentials and a grasp of what we are doing that to is beyond my expectations.   She has received her PhD in nursing which I see very little of outside the halls of academia.  I have fretted over the problem of getting in the middle of this getting sick so I hope that the worry over getting sick will subside now.  I am hoping some folks will sign up for the workshops on 1 February in 15 February because I do not have any idea about who is coming until I get some feedback to say they will definitely be there.

Gary and Richard and I had a luncheon meeting yesterday and have decided on the basis of several other people's suggestion that we continue the support person group workshops in February.  This will begin on Sunday, February 1 at 3 PM at the Alachua Presbyterian Church there will be a second meeting on February 15 at 3 PM at same location.  Further meetings will be announced very soon.

     One thing that prompted me was an email from Joe :

Phil; everyone is in AA of sorts as their part of suffering the human condition 6 billion are unaware or have cancer of “iam” EGO.others are happy because 6 billion others are lying about their happiness, wholeness holiness, peace, serenity, etc……….
You my dear brother are , honest, humble, caring, wise, and a gifted teacher and counselor. So stop your cry babying, ask in your deepest self for Gods guidance, and press on..
Perhaps and bulletin flyer, your church, garys, others, where allowed and in counseling office and hospital and police station and school board and colleges. Other people care and can understand the value of such a group and promote it. If this works you owe me a fishing trip. I have my motives also.
Pax
joe

If that doesn’t get me off my self pity routine I don’t think anything will.

I am gratified to find that several folks have wanted the Supportive Person Workshops to continue and mentioned the Alachua Presbyterian Church meeting two weeks ago as a very good meeting.  I am reconsidering and have talked with Gary about the Presbyterian Church as possible meeting site for Feb 1 and 15^th at 3PM But I would like to say something about my concerns for the future:

1.    When I was in the hospital I had considerable guilt over four main issues:

a. I am concerned that I am getting too many volunteers from AA which bothers me because they may feel obligated to me and also I would like to know how this group works with non AA folks as well. So I need to drop back and find a way to get volunteers who will show up and also have compassion for their fellow human being.

b. I am concerned about AA folks giving up their anonymity while in the group

c. I know only by instinct that learning about “being supportive and   willingness to be supported”is a very good thing. It could be a waste of time.

d. Since I am planning on selling  a guidebook on supportive group work I am self conscious about my own motives.

So if you have ideas or specific folks who would be willing to be a volunteer in this endeavor please send me an email or respond to the blog.

Phil

  I am not certain as to what happened in Sunday's afternoon meeting at the Presbyterian Church.  It was very puzzling to me, but what I have gradually come to realize is that there is a suspicion about this format that is quite justifiable.  So I need to make certain corrections and make reassurance that I can deliver something that is both positive and useful.   There were many questions about what the subject was or could be.  There were questions about the previous groups and  how disjointed  they seemed to be.
The next group meeting will be at my home on Thursday, January 15 at 6:30 PM.  I think we will be  having chili but I have to con  some cooks into the idea of cooking chili.  Meanwhile I will be thinking about some of the suggestions that I have gotten from others after the group that we might do on that Thursday so as to make it easier and more acceptable to enter into the  supportive person process.
I think that it is time that we explore the support person group process because I see my friends and acquaintances as becoming more ego driven and therefore becoming more fearful.  But on the other hand they rightly fear being pulled into a cult or something too  unfamiliar  and too threatening to one's personal integrity.

In my humble opinion the support person group process is designed to help people who are becoming more ego driven and more insulated for a variety of reasons.  Some of this in a distrust of the group and particularly a group that is so ill-defined at this point  as the supportive person or group.  I understand that fear because I certainly have that fear as well.  But in the words of Pogo" we have met the enemy and it is us"

While in a meeting today and it occurred to me that during my life as a psychiatrist I came to realize that people who have considerable AA experience listen in a different way than other folks.  But I also remember that a monk said there is a total difference between listening with intention and listening with  attention.  So I put those things together and came up with the idea people learn to listen if they attended more than just a few meetings in their lifetime then they have listened and listened again.  One has to realize that this thing cannot be detected as such but we often realize which later when somebody has really heard us.  So for all the credits that are given to Bill W and the other founders to me the real credit lies with the listener who listens again and again with attention but without trying to make anything out of it.