4 Issues You Will Encounter When Leading an Illness Support Group
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After planning for your new illness support group for weeks, or perhaps even months, it’s finally time to have your first meeting. You’ve gone through the steps of preparing a proposal to start up a support group. It’s been approved by whoever is in charge, such as an organization or church. And you’ve put together a welcome folder for all the people who will attend. You have topics to discuss, speakers scheduled, and perhaps even a study planned.
So, does this mean that your illness support group meeting will run without a hitch? Unfortunately, despite all of your hard work, there are a few frustrations that you will likely encounter during those first few meetings. They are worth being aware of so that you are prepared in advance.
(1) Only a couple of people come.
How it feels: Disappointing. After all the work you put into it, not to mention the passion you feel about doing this, it seems like such a wasted to just have one or two people show up. Understand that this can be typical, especially at first, when everyone feels a bit intimidated. Try not to take it personally. To be honest, you are fighting an uphill battle in getting people to attend a chronic illness support group, because when people feel ill, they usually want to stay home, not go out and socialist. But when they are feeling well, they’d prefer to do something more fun then sit around and talk about their illness.
What to do: Hope for the best and prepare for the few. As a Christian organization, the HopeKeepers small group program founder says, “Although it’s disheartening when just a couple of people show up, I know that God created that appointment. When I led a group once, just one person came, but we had the best conversation and she admitted that she was extremely shy and likely would not have even spoken if other people had attended the meeting.”
Keep a summary of your lesson plan, even including the topics that were discussed. This way you can easily “replicate” the meeting another time with little preparation. Lastly, consider calling people and, without adding undo pressure, ask them what challenges are preventing them from coming? Is it transportation? Is it the time of day? How could you make it easier for more people to come?
(2) Your lesson plan is completely ignored.
How it feels: It’s easy to feel as though your lesson isn’t interesting or brilliant enough. It can feel like people don’t like your ideas or that they just don’t care about the time you spent preparing.
What to do: Allocate more than usual flexibility in your timeline at first and then add in more structure as the group meets and you begin to see how it flows. It’s most likely that people are so excited to meet one another who understand what they experience living with daily chronic pain, that they just want to talk. You’ve provided a forum where the floodgates of pent up emotions are sure to spill over as soon as they realize they are allowed to be honest and vulnerable. It’s impossible to hold up a book and point people back toward your lesson plan when one of the members is sobbing over her daughter who has told her mom her illness is “all in your head” and until she gets over it they are done. This type of situation can occur at any meeting, but it may be more frequent during the first month.
Talk to your group about your desire to allow people to share, but also that you want everyone to leave feeling refreshed. So regardless of what happens during the meeting, you will plan to end with an uplifting article, scripture, poem, prayer, devotional, etc.
(3) Everyone complains about relationships, the medical professionals, their illness-everything.
How it feels: Like you are expected to manage a small riot. There are many built up emotions where people have experienced deeply wounded feelings, unjust consequences, and even medical errors. It can seem they want you to fix the situation or else they will talk incessantly about it to everyone.
What to do: Set up some basic guidelines before your first meeting if possible, and include the “venting guidelines.” Read “10 Ways to Make Your Illness Support Group Uplifting.” Set a timer and allow everyone to have 60 seconds to share their most frustrating experience of the week. Start a contest with a prize for who handled their situation the best or most creatively. Or be silly and give an award for someone to take home for the week, like “Aggravated the Alligator Award” (a rubber alligator)
Allow people the freedom to share their concerns and frustrations, but include others in the discussion. Say, “Jane, we can relate with what you are sharing. Can someone else tell us how she or he has dealt with these emotions?” If you are doing a study you can say, “Since we have limited time, lets go ahead and move on to the next question. If anyone has some encouragement for Jane, they can share that with her after our meeting.”
(4) One person dominates the conversation and seems to take over the meetings, disregarding any plans you have or other’s need to talk.
How it feels: Infuriating! After all your preparation it can be annoying to have someone override your entire meeting and take the group down a path that lacks the encouragement you want to provide. You justifiably could be concerned about her impact on the group and how many people she could scare away.
What to do: Set firm boundaries from the beginning. While it’s vital that people are encouraged to communicate their frustrations, they are also responsible for respecting others in the group. They need to watch their language, the quantity of time they dominate a conversation, and how they comment on people’s treatments or decisions.
Put together some simple guidelines at the beginning that you hand out to new members in a welcome folder. Then if the person dominating the meetings doesn’t get your hints, speak with her privately. You may also want to put her in charge of a certain part of the meeting so she can have a designated time to talk and be in a leadership position. When situations like this occur, people can be gently reminded of the guidelines they received when they first joined the group. It won’t feel quite as personal as you correcting their behavior.
To wrap this up, know that facilitating a support group is often assumed to be a simple task. It’s a myth that you let people know you’re getting together to share and support one another, lots of people show up, and everyone’s personalities just click. It rarely works this way.
It takes a extraordinary person to lead a group; one who can effectively communicate. One who has a gift in gently guiding people in the direction you wish them to go, so that the group is a place to lay down one’s burdens, not pick up more arms. A leader should be able offer compassion, but also set boundaries and sometimes diffuse anger. As conditions arise, look to other leaders for ideas and support and perhaps even mentoring. And don’t ever forget that there are no leaders that feel one-hundred percent proficient. Having a willingness to learn and listen is one of the best ways you can become a leader blessed with a group where lives are changed.
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[...] August 23, 2008 Challenges of Starting an Illness Support Group Hit Home with Reader Posted by youcansellmorebooks under Thanks - Spreading the Word | Tags: hopekeepers, small group challenges, starting an illness support group, support group start up | Have you read Lisa’s new article, “4 Dilemmas Illness Support Group Leaders May Discover.” She was delighted to receive this comment on it over at Scribd (a great place for articles to read!) The article was also recently featured this week at MyQ10: Pharmaceutical and Medical News Blog. [...]