Thomas Rowland Counselling Services
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outside therapy | online therapy.
info@thomasrowlandcounsellingservices.com 07422 651829
THE AIM
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to share honestly our spiritual stories and truths and experience being witnessed.
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to listen across our differences with respectful curiosity, even wonder.
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to learn from each other as we try to authentically tread the path of our own personal spirituality.
WHAT IS IT?
An encounter group . This is a certain kind of group that values authenticity, otherness and dialogue.
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Authenticity: we are the authors of our own experience and living. The task is to find the right words, metaphors, or symbols that encapsulate our experience, and then to communicate that. This is both a discovery and a creative process. It is not about what we should be experiencing, believing, doing, or saying.
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Otherness: when we are authentic, we encounter the otherness in each other. We are different; our spiritualities are as different as they may be shared. And it is in the encounter with the other that we discover ourselves: our own experience, meaning and spirituality.
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Dialogue: this is the ongoing process of becoming ourselves as we are open to the other. We open ourselves up to be touched, challenged and changed by the other in their difference and authenticity, even as we hold on to our own meaning, experience and sense of our selves.
WHAT IT'S NOT
This group is not....
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A discussion group. These tend to primarily focus on our thinking. An encounter group invites us to bring our whole beings: mind, body, heart, and soul.
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A support group. We are not primarily offering each other support on a certain struggle. We offer each other the opportunity of an encounter with ourselves and others, in our uniqueness and difference.
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A religious group. These are usually for those who share an affiliation with a religion or for the purpose of letting people explore a certain religion. Sacred Conversations is for anyone who can commit to respectful listening and honest participation, without trying to persuade, convince or rescue someone. We do assume some sort of shared experience that we might call spirituality and that this can find expression in many different ways within or outside religious communities or creeds.
THE STRUCTURE
7.25-7.30: Log in to Google Meet.
7.30 - 8.55: The space
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Check-in: Where are you at and what has brought you today?
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Group discussion. Authentic communication, listening and responding to ourselves and one another with whatever is brought.
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Check-out: What might have been missing for you today? What might you be taking away?
9.00: Leave
THE FACILITATOR
I will be facilitating the group. I see the role of the facilitator as to hold the boundaries of the group (i.e., to provide the online space, keep the timings, and help hold the ground rules), as well as to participate.
I do not see the role of the facilitator as to make something happen or give answers. The responsibility for what happens in the boundaries of the space is all of ours in the way we participate.
GROUND RULES
All attendees agree to:
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Confidentiality. What’s said in the group stays in the group, unless you or someone else is a risk of serious harm. If we share what is said outside of the group, we guard each others’ identities..
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Respect. Respect yourself first, and then each person’s story and the space.
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Honest participation. Be honest with yourself. Then be honest in the group, without masks and without trying to change others. If this is too difficult for whatever reason, you can always say ‘pass’.
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Ownership. Use ‘I’ statements rather than ‘you, ‘one’, ‘we’. This lets us listen to your experience without sacrificing our own.
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Responsibility. I am responsible for myself: no-one else. I am responsible to others and the group: to show up with honest participation and respectful listening
To find out more....
To join us or simply find out some more about it, get in touch by clicking the link below or emailing info@thomasrowlandcounsellingservices.com.