are A&E poly? everybody here is, so our assorted poly-skills and community-skills probably do all dovetail neatly. but - we also started this in our early 30s and have matured & settled down a lot along the way, individually & collectively.
Not doing something, or putting it off, can be deeply consequential
yes. we try to sort things by urgency & importance, and start with the ones that are both, but not to lose anything important to a wash of thigns that are merely urgent. things that are neither, but that we know we want anyway, may take years. (there's a hole in the ground out back that we affectionately call "the root cellar." it's not. it might be, someday! but it's literally just a hole right now.)
So they self-censor, swallowing things instead of speaking and only bringing up big things or easy things.
yeah. that is a pattern that will need to break, if it's there in your group. it's really human! and it really causes long term problems, resentments, cracks in the foundation. if the group is a genuinely safe space for each person to speak what's going on for them and to share hard things, and if a time is created where hard things are supposed to come up, are expected and even wanted (for the sake of keeping the group healthy), that can do a lot to support breaking those kinds of patterns. our Retreat is that kind of space/time - hard things always come up, the group supports the individuals in talking it out as needed, and hard things are expected. someone will have something, every year. and being able to air these things and work on strategies to correct them has been enormously helpful for us. when the ex was around during the years it wasn't safe for certain types of conversations to happen in front of him, then they happened withotu him at house meeting instead - though the whole "the fact that we're not safe with you means we need to change this radically" conversation took a long time to build up to. the whole thing was a huge set of lessons for all of us and i'm honestly proud of us for weathering it. with someone else, someone who didn't shut down emotionally challenging conversations or blame all hard feelings on other people, that would have gone very differently.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-03-17 12:15 am (UTC)are A&E poly? everybody here is, so our assorted poly-skills and community-skills probably do all dovetail neatly. but - we also started this in our early 30s and have matured & settled down a lot along the way, individually & collectively.
Not doing something, or putting it off, can be deeply consequential
yes. we try to sort things by urgency & importance, and start with the ones that are both, but not to lose anything important to a wash of thigns that are merely urgent. things that are neither, but that we know we want anyway, may take years. (there's a hole in the ground out back that we affectionately call "the root cellar." it's not. it might be, someday! but it's literally just a hole right now.)
So they self-censor, swallowing things instead of speaking and only bringing up big things or easy things.
yeah. that is a pattern that will need to break, if it's there in your group. it's really human! and it really causes long term problems, resentments, cracks in the foundation. if the group is a genuinely safe space for each person to speak what's going on for them and to share hard things, and if a time is created where hard things are supposed to come up, are expected and even wanted (for the sake of keeping the group healthy), that can do a lot to support breaking those kinds of patterns. our Retreat is that kind of space/time - hard things always come up, the group supports the individuals in talking it out as needed, and hard things are expected. someone will have something, every year. and being able to air these things and work on strategies to correct them has been enormously helpful for us. when the ex was around during the years it wasn't safe for certain types of conversations to happen in front of him, then they happened withotu him at house meeting instead - though the whole "the fact that we're not safe with you means we need to change this radically" conversation took a long time to build up to. the whole thing was a huge set of lessons for all of us and i'm honestly proud of us for weathering it. with someone else, someone who didn't shut down emotionally challenging conversations or blame all hard feelings on other people, that would have gone very differently.