Some random thoughts from University of San Diego’s group relations conference
When you are thrown in a virtual group setting for three full days with no task other than to focus on the “here and now,” you notice a state of unconscious anxiety slowly building up inside the room. At some point, it feels like you are navigating a heartbreak map in the absence of directions and destination. That’s USD’s Human Relations Conference themed “Future is Now” — an experiential learning event that allows you to reflect on how you show up in group spaces through an understanding of where boundaries, authority, roles and tasks begin and end for each group member. Here, I share random thoughts and key learnings from the conference in the hopes that it will cement the learning for myself, and perhaps inspire you, who is reading this, to be curious and ask the hard questions.
One thought-provoking question that came up in one of my groups was “do we only empathize with those who we look like and have shared lived experiences with?” Applied to our context, is the unconscious anxiety that we all seemed to experience due to the clash of our different lived experiences and identities and subsequent inability to empathize with each other?
How would you define empathy? For me, empathy is willingness and ability to be in touch with the feelings of those around me and seeing the world through their eyes. I don’t think empathy has any bounds. Yet, shared identities and lived experiences may make us more sympathetic to each other’s plight. While I may be empathetic to your experiences and pain, I may not know how to take part in it if I haven’t lived through it myself. So maybe, as Brené Brown stipulates, it warrants a distinction between empathy and sympathy. Perhaps part of the reason for the unspoken anger in our world stems from the false assumption that shared affinities and lived experiences are necessary for empathy to arise. If we all opened ourselves to the possibility of understanding each other’s pain, we would perhaps be kinder and more accepting of each other.
Another question that came up for me was what happens when there is a gap between our perception of our role within groups and other’s perception of us?
The conference highlighted the importance of being aware of one’s early formative experiences and their impact on our interpersonal functioning through the roles and authority we take up in group spaces. How we do life today determines our future. For example, early childhood experiences in which I was called on to take care of my parents’ relationship threw me in caregiving roles throughout my life (mentor, teacher, counselor, mother). Yet, it was not until this class that I experienced push back to my tendency to please others and keep peace. Each of us brings so many unresolved experiences from our past at the heart of which often lies fear of being hurt by others or fear of hurting others. I need to negotiate how and when I authorize myself to participate in groups and be more mindful of the roles I take up in collective spaces. This was the first that I realized other people could see me as obtrusive and as taking up too much emotional/intellectual space.
I saw over and over again that where there is unspoken anger, there is deep repressed hurt. So, while our intent to care may be innocent, other’s receipt and interpretation of that care depends on their lived experiences and repressed emotions. I learned the importance of being still and waiting for others to reveal themselves to me and honor the silence that binds us. I learned that there needs to be a collective desire and effort to learn about each other and our lived experiences for cohesion and trust to thrive. The more we keep an open mind and recognize that we also don’t know what we don’t know, we’ll be more apt to find ways to know.
In thinking about the conference’s theme “Future is Now,” it seems that future is everything left unresolved from our past. So, if we each do the work of self-reflection and take responsibility for our unhealed parts, then the pain from our past will no longer be haunting us. There is light in knowing our individual and group shadows so we can stop recreating them. Once we do, time will be irrelevant because we will have understood how to coexist with compassion and in awareness of each other’s interconnectedness in the here and now.
My other key learnings include the following:
· Importance of developing the capacity to manage our own inner world and be aware of defense mechanisms from our early childhood experiences that we use to spare us pain.
· The valuable role of a leader in
✅helping us reimagine the present by creating a safe container where we can express anything without shame (Monroe, 2003)
✅ Allowing us to be confident in the exercise of our personal and organizational authority (Ramsay, 1999)
✅ Noticing the unconscious aspects of the group and what’s unsaid (Simpson and French, 2006; Green & Molenkamp, 2005)
✅Allowing us to try out different roles to avoid role ambiguity/conflict (Simpson and French, 2006)
✅ Helping us manage anxiety (a la Bion) and make sense of the confusion (Petriglieri, 2020) by being curious and present
✅Appealing to the needs, aspirations, and fears of others (a la Burns) and helping us start the inquiry so that we allow the right inputs into the system (Zagier, 1994)
At the personal level, I have become more aware of the invisible aspects of my being (my fear of hurting others, self-imposed roles) and how I need to negotiate the boundary between my inner world and the total system.
At the interpersonal level, I’ve witnessed how splitting and projection leads to hostility and the need to own our aggression and pain. I also saw how deeply we need connection with each other.
At the group level, I learned the importance of paying attention to the unconscious processes at work and the role of leader in creating the space needed for new thoughts to enter.
At the intergroup level, I saw that groups like to escape into familiarity and may only perceive the best part of themselves. Lived experiences at the intergroup level affect our interpretations.
At the system level, I realized that the system has a life of its own and it’s undoubtedly messy. We hold back more in the larger system when we should instead be doing the hard overwhelming work of replacing our fear with curiosity and empathy.
The challenge is to be brave enough to flexibly examine our lived experiences and open up to the joy of our interconnectedness.
References
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