One method to help with finding effective alternative activities for resisting behavioral urges or to help your group learn new concepts is to adapt current activities already enjoyed by your group into teaching tools.
Are there any activities that are enjoyed by more than one member of your group? Do several of the children particularly enjoy cars or blocks or drawing? Do any of you enjoy the same sport? Are there any shared interests? Are there any shared hobbies? Or, do any members of the group want to try something that someone else already enjoys doing?
Looking for existing commonalities, or creating commonalities of interest, can provide a good place to start as far as introducing options to those parts who don’t yet know what they like or what they want to do. They are also good choices as alternatives to help the group to resist behavioral urges, whether programmed or not – the more people who are interested in the alternative activity, the stronger the resistance will be. These activities can even provide a concrete means by which difficult abstract concepts can be taught.
Lacking any better way to explain this, I will provide a personal example.
Several members of this group share a consuming interest in computer and video games. This interest is not by any means universal – some are much more interested than others, some will try any game while others stick with their few favorites, and some are merely tolerant of others playing. However, given that a number of group members already share this interest, it tends to be one of the first activities we use with those we’ve just met or those who are ready to try safe or fun activities for the first time.
It hasn’t been universally effective, any more than the games are universally enjoyed, but it has proven to be useful in some surprising ways.
- For some group members, a new game is a powerful attraction, and their desire to stay present and playing can be of immense help to the group as a whole in resisting certain programming – especially if obeying the programming would put an end to the game play for any reason.
- A game that involved the concept of moral choice in an appealing setting helped one particular person learn some of the nuanced differences in these choices. The manner in which the game responded to his choices helped him to understand in a very visual and immediate way how each choice was viewed in a social context.
- One person has learned to accept imperfection through being rewarded for outstanding (but not perfect) skill in a game.
- Another found, for the first time, that he could release some anger in a way that fit him without being harmful to himself, the body, or anyone else.
- It has provided a corrective learning experience to several — that virtual media can be interactive without being painful or traumatic, that they can participate without being forced to learn anything or do anything, that virtual “death” can mean nothing worse than starting over, and that it can even be sort of fun.
- Two parts whose relationship had been strained for years were able to establish a more cooperative bond through their shared interest in two specific games, which they played together.
- The distraction and absorption of a game which requires detailed planning and micromanagement can, for us, compete with the obsession of self-injurious or suicidal urges and help us to combat them.
- A game that demands a lot of focused attention but not a lot of thought can help us to get through any stretch of time where we don’t have the energy to think about a game, but we don’t want to listen to our own thoughts either.
Who would have thought that video games could be so useful…
What does your group enjoy doing? What other group members could be invited to try those activities, and what new concepts could they learn through their participation?
A sport could help to release anger, or teach concepts like leadership or teamwork or persistence. Playing a musical instrument can teach physical control and coordination and the value of regular application and practice. Enjoyment of the same toy or game can teach the children how to accept each other, share with each other, respect each other, and work with each other. A shared interest in music or cars or photography or anything can help to build a connection between people who might not have realized they had anything in common. It can help the development of tolerance and reduce conflict and tension within the system.
Almost anything that your group enjoys doing can be adapted to the purpose of helping you build strength and learn new concepts – the things you’re doing already might have a lot of helpful potential if you look at them from this perspective. And in addition to everything else that can be gained, this particular approach fosters the development and growth of relationships within your system, which alone makes it worth doing.
Healing from our various histories is largely about reuniting our selves into a cohesive group (rather than simply a matter of spewing trauma memories until we run dry). Whether or not “group cohesion” leads to “integration”, our lives and our minds and our worlds can only heal if and when our systems can come together as a team.
I imagine that none of us would get very far in therapy if our therapist treated us the way we can sometimes treat the members of our own systems – but the fact is, if we are treating our system members in any way that we would not find acceptable from our therapist – then we are doing just as much damage to our own healing as a therapist would if they treated us the same way.
Focus on the person who experienced the trauma, instead of the trauma alone, and the memories will emerge at a natural and manageable pace – and in the meantime, you will have gained something a lot more valuable than another bad memory. You will gain relationships with the parts who experienced those memories – in the most fundamental sense, building a relationship with yourself.
So – what kinds of things do you and your group need to work on? How can you adapt your everyday activities, or the activities you enjoy, so that the things you do are also helping your healing? What interests do you share that could help your progress? You might already have some very effective tools for relationship- and skill-building just in the things you’re doing already.
If we work together...
