The Eyes of Others

“Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.” – Sonmi-451, Cloud Atlas

“I want to be one of the rats. I think they were right.” It’s November in the early 2010’s and outside the windows the marine layer is starting to burn off of the Puget Sound. I usually love this part of the day – when nature is clearly shifting between two states and change is, quite literally, in the air. 

Today though the wisping fog backlights the man sitting in front of the window, which makes him look like a bull with steam rising off him to match the angry words and tone. What an introduction to group work.

One of the most common things that I hear around the workshops is a fear that it is a group process program. What this means is that there are others in the room who not only listen to our pain, our addiction, our self-protection, and our shame, but they actually participate in the work around it.

I have been doing individual therapy for years now as a therapist and before that I was a client in individual therapy. The format is familiar: one therapist and one client. We sit opposite each other, sometimes with a coffee table between us, often not. Sometimes the therapist has a notepad or a computer to track our work. Regardless of the mise-en-scène, it almost always involves an act of bravery to be honest about our inner world.

It can be terrifying to be honest with another person. I used to joke that I was ok with therapy, I just needed to pick out where to hide their body afterwards. My wife hates these jokes. I’ve found that most clients think the joke is good, and they wonder if I’ve picked out my own spot for when they are done with me – I’m thinking something poetic, like under an oak tree. 

The idea of someone walking around with bits of my story in their head felt far too vulnerable. Now let’s invite five other people into the room.

Back to that moment in Seattle: I had just finished reading a personal story from high school, one in which I painfully lost several friends over social standing, and I had described the experience as like being on a ship that was infested with rats. The rats would eat you alive if you didn’t find some way to get off the deck.

Well, one fellow group member misinterpreted something that I wrote. I had shared how after the betrayals I learned to test other people in small ways to see if they were safe. This probably sounds like a normal thing to you, and I certainly thought it was. The misunderstanding was that this person thought I meant that I put forward false information to trick people, something that had happened to him in his childhood.

Thus his reaction, essentially: I want to partner with those who harmed you. Thankfully, group work does not end there.

Part of what was unfolding was the high stakes of group work, it was a lesson on how our stories are activated by each other’s work and a lesson I learned in how we missed an opportunity to implement some safety guidelines. Such guidelines do exist at Noble, which I guess makes me a lab rat of sorts. Ironic.

Most studies done on group work have landed at the conclusion that those participating in the work (as in, not the lead person at the moment) get 70% of the level of work done just by watching or participating. I’ve often seen it be much higher. 

Trust and safety are earned, not demanded. We take that very seriously at Noble and do everything we can to implement the power of group work while navigating the high stakes nature of the work. For example: it is a policy that each participant signs to leave their last name, their occupation, and their phone at the door. This one element lets the lead pastor of a large church be on the same level as the plumber, the charge nurse, and the stay-at-home dad.

Often in my work in individual therapy I wish we could use the tools of group work to go deeper. It is one thing to talk about the pain we still feel from our father or spouse or our addiction and quite another to have a fellow human stand in place for that person. To look into another’s eyes and  tell them how they failed you or to ask forgiveness.

Yes, the stakes go up, but that is more true to life. We are surrounded by others. We live complexly interconnected lives. What if a part of healing meant being witnessed by others in order to practice walking out our freedom in the very contexts in which we live?