Frameworks of groups

The framework of group work, especially in the case of spiritual work, is perhaps more important than the content of the group process itself. There is a lot of talk these days about the importance of learning to protect our boundaries, and yet I find that when it comes to spiritual group processes, boundaries are crossed on a daily basis. It seems that opinion leaders who verbally proclaim the importance of personal boundaries seem to think less of it when it comes to the boundaries of the participants in their own groups. I’ll explain a bit what I mean…

Anywhere, anytime, where people are together, there is a framework, a set of rules, a group norm. It may be written or unwritten, but it is known to the participants at some level. It’s not just about knowing personally in a group what the rules are there, it’s also about being able to trust that others are following the same rules.

Most of these group rules are not written down anywhere, yet we know them and accept them by participating in the group. All group participation is in fact a mutual contract where we accept our common framework out of respect for each other. If the group has a leader, it is the leader’s responsibility to make the framework clear. Since it is not always possible to explain everything, we tend to draw attention to those parts that are perhaps less well known or that we know may give rise to disagreement. Frameworks create the foundation for group trust. And this trust is necessary for the experiences that we can go through in a group. The bigger the trust, the more diverse and special experiences can we allow to happen to us.

A great advantage of therapy groups is that there is a strong emphasis on setting boundaries and accepting them together. However, there are also many groups nowadays that deal specifically with spiritual and emotional processes, but their frameworks seem to be flexible. As participants, it is important to be aware that frameworks exist even when they are not written down, printed out, posted on a wall. You always have an idea in your head of what will happen in the group where you participate and what is presumably NOT going to happen. This idea in your head may be wrong, but it is good to know that you have formed it based on some outside information. Something you saw on the invitation, in the text or the picture, or someone told you something about the method or the leader, based on which you have formed the framework in your mind that you will attend the event. If your perception of this is wrong, so if you are wrong, it is mostly not your responsibility, but the responsibility of the group leader. And if someone in the course of the group work breaks the framework that you had in your mind, you have the possibility, and even the responsibility, to point it out. Even if it did not happen to you. Breaking the boundaries, whoever does it to whomever, affects the whole group and all its participants.

When boundaries are broken

If you feel that the boundaries you thought were valid in a group are no longer valid, you can accept the new boundaries. Maybe you were wrong about the framework, or maybe the framework changed along the way, however it happened, you can always accept the new situation. You also have the opportunity to draw attention to it, for example by asking the leader if what has just happened is okay. And you also have the option to simply leave the group.

These options are all open to you, but I would advise caution with the first option. Most of us are socialized to submit to power. If you always accept every change in the common framework, if you always find a rational explanation for why each one is good, you will gradually erode your own autonomy. This can create an interesting contradiction, the result of which I see every day: people go in search of spiritual and emotional growth, and while they go through many experiences, experience many things, and have the experience of developing, they lose their autonomy and become more and more vulnerable to group leaders, teachers, gurus who subtly but regularly abuse their power.

There are some recurring explanations, that try to lessen the boundary issues:

“you have to follow the flow, if you don’t you are the rigid one, you are the one who cannot change”
“you are not yet at the level of consciousness to understand what we are doing, why we are doing it, so just accept that it is good for you”
“you’re selfish, you don’t realize that everyone else in the group has it all right, but you only think about yourself”

Such thoughts are unfortunately harmful and slowly contribute to participants becoming dependent. This happens particularly often in my country in Eastern Europe, where for a long time it has been the social norm to repress the minds of ordinary people and to keep them in a childlike state.

If you are involved in any kind of spiritual group process, listen to your intuition. If you think the group boundary is violated, report it to the leader as soon as possible. And if you think that the leader is not listening to you or trying to make it look less important, find someone to talk it through with. Listen to your intuition and follow it. Confrontation is often feared, and I encourage you not to do that, but to take small steps that you can take without any confrontation. Ask your group mates questions about the framework, how they see it. Ask questions of the leader to help you clarify your doubts and seek out people outside the group process with whom you can discuss the situation. The end result may be that you just leave the group quietly and never go to that leader again. You don’t have to make a revolution, but you are responsible for your own boundaries and you should protect them. No group process is worth giving up your own boundaries, because you are giving up yourself.

Some typical situations where group norms tend to be violated or disregarded

Make-believe situations
Each group is implemented in a make-believe situation. It is like in the theater: the actor pretends that what he is performing is true, and the spectator pretends to believe it is true. But they both know that the actor on stage is not acting as himself, just playing a role. This element is present in every group process at some level. The group leader becomes, by mutual agreement, the ‘boss’ for the duration of the group, and the group members submit to the leader, becoming ‘subjects’ for a time. During the group process, there are also often other small make-believe situations: for example, as the leader of an improvisational dance group, I may ask the participants to pair up and one person would show a movement and the other person would follow. So one member of the pair would be the leader and the other the follower. They act as if they are in a superior-subordinate relationship, when in real life they might have the opposite relationship at work, or they might not even know each other.

In most group processes, the leader puts emphasis on closing these make-believe situations. At the end of the exercise, the leader can declare that the exercise is over, the roles can be released, or even the group members can express this to each other. For example, they might say to each other “I release you from your role and set you free”. The individual sessions of the group process should also be closed in some way and if it is a close-ended process, the whole process should be closed. Because if these processes are not closed, participants can get stuck in roles that they can take with them, causing unwanted side effects in their lives. For example, an aggressive role taken on during a group process may be taken home by a participant and may lead to a fight with a partner who did not give a reason for it. Even more serious consequences can occur when a group leader deliberately confuses group roles with real roles and transfers the authority he or she has as a group leader into real life. This is the guru phenomenon – when a person has not only a group leadership role but also a community leadership role. If this is clear to everyone, then there is no problem, but if the leader abuses the authority they have gained within the group and extends it in some way and carries it forward in a manipulative way, this can be a serious abuse of power.

Related to this topic, but a different kind of situation is when a situation of power and leadership that already exists in real life continues within a group process. For example, when a church community leader runs a drama group for the members of his congregation, or when a parent educates his/her own children at home. These situations can also work, but it must be made clear in some way who is in what role when.

Shame
Experiencing shame can cause serious pain and the fear of shame is a constant burden for many. Because shame is associated with social, group situations, group processes are situations where it is more likely to occur than, for example, in individual therapy. It is also an opportunity, because it is in group processes that we can most effectively shape and improve our individual experiences and beliefs about shame. Moreover, precisely because of its significance, shame is something that most of us are very good at hiding. For this reason, as a group leader, we need to be particularly alert to situations where someone may experience such shame.

Fear of shame can be an important group cohesion force. We pay attention to the rules of the group, to the current ‘energy’ of the group, not only because we are curious about the group, but also because we fear possible shame. For example, if the group collectively agrees that everyone will wear white at the next meeting, the one person who forgets this and shows up in a jungle print outfit could find themselves in a very uncomfortable situation. So, the presence of the possibility of shame sharpens our awareness of the information and knowledge about the group. This is the benefit of shame, so it helps to build group cohesion.

For this reason, I think it is worth distinguishing the experience of shame from shaming as an action. Shame is always in the air as an option in every group situation. There will always be situations where someone experiences shame for something. It is the role of the group leader to spot these situations and help the participant to recover from the situation. This is in stark contrast to the practice of using shaming or the threat of shaming to motivate participants. I am thinking of something like when the leader suggests to the participants that if they do not achieve a certain target performance, they will be worth less. The one who achieves less within a group is looked down upon by the others, i.e. the person is shamed. The threat of shaming is often not said out loud, but everyone gets it. For example, if someone encourages another by saying “come on, come on, you can do this because you’re good” – there is inevitably the other half of the sentence unspoken: “and if you don’t manage to do it, it shows you’re not as good as I thought, which means you should be ashamed of yourself.”

In any area of life, shaming should not be used as a motivator because it leads to a constant sense of fear, increases stress and ultimately reduces performance. In particular, it should not be used in connection with spiritual processes, because instead of spiritual development, liberation and creativity, the opposite is achieved: closure, conformity and a feeling of inferiority. I sometimes hear of cases where, in a sweat lodge ritual, it is required to stay inside even if the participant feels the heat is too much. The suggestion is that enduring the pain, the hardship, will help the participant to purify or grow. This might even be true if there were no sense of shame attached to it. If one does go out in the process, one is shamed, and thus the whole process and all its participants have contributed to making one feel less. Instead of spiritual progress, they regress. Positive examples are situations where great emphasis is placed on ensuring that participants are not shamed in any way, despite the fact that the group members are facing something challenging. For example, in many fire-walking rituals, participants can decide at the moment of entering the coals whether to walk on the coals or beside them, and the whole group is prepared in advance that both options are completely equal and that there is no advantage or disadvantage in choosing either way, so nobody would be shamed.

Shaming is sometimes used by the group leader not as a motivational tool, but as a means of self-defense. If a disagreement arises in the group between a participant and the leader, the leader has the option of shaming the participant instead of discussing the conflict or admitting his own fault. Due to the dynamics of groups, the group as a whole will always side with the group leader, even if individually the majority would sympathize with the participant in the situation. Often this is done in an implicit way, for example by the leader claiming that he has a lot of experience and is good at these things – which implies that the participant does not understand what he is talking about and is better off keeping quiet.

Sexuality
Shame is not bad in itself, but the experience of exclusion from the group through shame is what is really painful. Similarly, a positive view of sexuality is not just about itself, but about what it symbolizes: intimacy, closeness. We fear shame because it means separation, and we think sexuality is good, because it means connection. Somehow society evolved in a way that most of us most of the time, if asked if you want more sex in your life, most of us would immediately answer yes. Then of course we would specify under what circumstances and with whom and how, but the point is that we have a basic sense of lack in this regard. Because of this, it is an area that can be easily manipulated in group situations.

It is possible to depict the cultural changes of the last hundred years in a way that sexuality became something independent of everything else, something easy that everyone should try in as many ways as possible. Yet the sexual revolution did not want to turn sexuality into a meaningless toy, but free it from outdated laws and customs. It is not an old custom that our emotions are closely linked to our sexuality, but a fundamental human characteristic. Nor is it some obsolete article of law that we will become attached to whomever we have physical contact with, but a truth of our humanity encoded in our genes. No one has rebelled against these, nor would there be any point. So a group process that does not take these human traits into account is not trying to help us in fulfillment.

If a group process is designed to facilitate the physical intimacy of the participants and to steer participants in the direction of making the most of this freedom of the group setting, then the make-believe situation discussed above can easily be violated. Sexual connections will trigger emotional effects and bonds may be formed that will not disappear at the end of the group. So the make-believe space of the group starts to blur into the space of reality. The participant may find him/herself in a situation where he/she experiences that the intimate connections necessary for his/her mental health can only be obtained in the group. In other words, through sexuality, he becomes dependent of the group. The group leader can also steer participants in this direction by suggesting that it is normal, even desirable, to experience sexuality ‘freely‘, without commitment. Either by promoting this through concrete practices or by setting an example for the group. I have heard of a group process that was not a sexual group, yet right from the beginning it was expected that all the group members stood around completely naked. This may sound strange out of context and we may not understand why someone would do this if they did not feel like it, but if we add to this the methods of humiliation discussed above, the situation is not so unthinkable.

In group processes, it may also be the case that someone who really wants intimacy, emotional closeness and support wants to find it through sexual contact. This is a fairly common pattern of behavior and makes life difficult for many. Even if there is an opportunity for this in a spiritual group process, it does not help the development of the individual, and in fact hinders it, because it reinforces the wrong pattern. A more appropriate direction may be to recognize and express sexual attraction, but to keep it at the level of attraction. If attraction is present but there is no opportunity to experience the physical connection itself, then it can create a tension that helps the participant to move forward. It helps them to see what they really miss, what’s behind the sexual attraction: perhaps they long to be noticed by others, perhaps they long to be in a trusting relationship with others, perhaps they seek to reduce their sense of threat from others. Uncovering these hidden motivations can indeed bring a more fulfilling spiritual life. And when our sexuality is no longer driven by hidden and unknown motives, we will be able to experience it with a partner in a situation that we really want.

Even in groups that deal specifically with sexuality, there is no need to experience sexuality in a concrete way or to deliberately arouse sexual desire. Groups create make-believe situations. We can act out, we can practice make-believe situations, which will then help us to live real situations better in real life. It’s like a first aid course: you can learn and practice CPR very well by rhythmically pushing on the chest without having to push anyone under the bus. Group courses are good because they create make-believe situations. That is their advantage, not their disadvantage.

Emotional opening
An atmosphere of mutual trust is a prerequisite for groups that also deal with spiritual issues. We can only deal with our spiritual processes if we can perceive them, and we can only perceive them if we do not have to hide them. This is why it is important for the group leader to create an atmosphere of trust. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the appearance of deepening becomes more important than building real trust. The apparent level of intimacy can be easily manipulated, drawing on all the previous chapters: the leader can manipulate the make-believe situation, making the participants believe that this is not an ‘as if’ group but that they have been brought together by some real force, that they have been chosen in some way, that they are in some way predestined to belong together. The leader can also manipulate the participants through a sense of shame, pushing them into an emotional disclosure they were not ready for. But it is only a seeming opening, and it will not lead to progress. And sexuality can also be a ‘fast track’ to group intimacy – at the cost of causing attachment problems for participants in the long run.

Physical touch, even without any sexual implications, can quickly lead to real or apparent deepening. We have a psychological functioning that if we appear to be spiritually close to someone based on certain external signs, we are more inclined to believe that spiritual closeness than to change those external situations. I observed this in a university. I worked in a fairly large building, with thousands of people moving around every day, but the lifts were quite small. Because of this, people were always physically close to each other in the lifts. People who otherwise had no contact with each other didn’t even know each other, so normally, on the street or in the corridor, they would never have let each other into their intimate space so close. However, in the lift this was unavoidable, so the easiest way to resolve this internal conflict was to pretend for that one minute that there was human intimacy between us, and everyone always said hello to everyone else. People who would otherwise have walked past each other anywhere else and not even met eyes.

The same effect works when we come into physical contact with someone because of a situation. For most of us, physical contact is a very close human connection. So when people come into physical contact in a group setting, it automatically triggers a feeling of spiritual closeness. Even if they would not otherwise feel so close to the other person. This perceived spiritual closeness can then lead to rapid emotional opening up, which may seem good for the group, and sometimes truly good, but if we are too forward in intimacy, these openings can be followed by regret, shame, even stronger closures.

All of these manipulation methods essentially sacrifice the possibility of long-term progress for the sake of quick apparent success. It can make the person a perpetual group experience seeker, looking for a momentary solution in new group processes, or it can make the person never again allow themselves into any group process. Both outcomes are harmful and sad.

The reality is that the trusting group atmosphere is not created by one person, but by the group together. The leader can do much to help it, but it is not the leader who creates it. Both as a leader and as a participant, it is necessary to follow the path the group takes together with patience and openness. No two groups are the same, and no two group processes are the same. And there is no silver bullet here, trust requires patience and commitment.

Last words

Spiritual development in a trusting group atmosphere is a wonderful invention of the last hundred years of humanity. Industrialization, urbanization and finally the information society are creating unprecedented difficulties for individuals on a spiritual level. Traditions and models of life that have been lived and passed on unchanged for thousands of years have become obsolete in a few decades. Today’s man is disconnected, rootless, lonely and aimless. However, these challenges can be addressed, the human psyche is malleable, new life models can be found, new community spaces of experience can be created. In order to move forward in these areas at the societal level, I see group processes based on personal experience in an atmosphere of mutual trust as the most important tools. These are the places where lived practice can emerge from theories and the places that are flexible enough to adapt with sufficient speed in our rapidly changing world. Family patterns take generations to change, religious patterns hundreds or thousands of years. In comparison, spiritual group work has changed more in a hundred years than, say, Christianity has changed in a thousand. So let us honor group work and honor ourselves and each other by taking its framework seriously. One of the greatest gifts we can give each other is to respect and acknowledge each other’s human dignity and free will.