Additional Considerations

The therapeutic benefits of support groups in the management of serious disease has been growing (and, for some strange reason, coming under fire). The greatest concern is the idea that in some cancer support groups there is the belief that one has created his/her own cancer for discoverable reasons, and, therefore, should be able to get rid of it; again for discoverable reasons. The corollary to that kind of thinking is that, should one fail to recover from his disease, s-he is a failure, which is the essence of what is known as “New Age Guilt.” The criticisms leveled against such thinking are all valid. Such thinking is an “awfulizing” of the sort with which we all have some experience. However, in criticizing, we hobble ourselves in our movement toward our healing by judging. We must reframe our thinking.

Many different support systems support healing though “working” a personal “process”. However, the basis of thinking for most of them is that something is “wrong” with the individual. This is the conundrum of medicine… it has heretofore focused on disease and illness, instead of focusing on health and wellness, which effectively prevents achieving the status of healthcare provider. This confusing contradiction makes it nearly impossible for medicine to focus on what we would want for our patients and ourselves; namely health, in the form of providing “healthcare”. The chief obstacle to our healing is our use of the word “wrong” when we use it in regards to the actual nature of disease. We fail to solve the problem because the problem actually contains its solution at a higher level! We need to allow medical science to be expert in therapy, which is “medical treatment of disease”. Then we need another kind of expert--an expert in healing--who can focus on what is "right" with a person's life… and could it be possible that both means of dealing with disease could take place in one physician's mind and practice?

Consider the practicality of nurturing that healer function while we train the professional. The Faculty of Medicine of McGill University has already developed just such a curriculum. They have created a new word for the curriculum… “Physicianship,” and will graduate 167 young physicians with four years of Physicianship experience in 2009. Is it possible to help the body of over 700,000 American doctors develop Physicianship in their current practices? Of course it is… Malcolm Gladwell (2000) describes how to get such an idea to catch on and “tip” into general use by getting 2.5% of the physician population--17,500 of them convinced of the need for just such an individual shift in consciousness. Healing takes place in HOPE Groups in part because thee is time to care--time for compassion and forgiveness.

The group is much like the individual; its experience is limited, and the ability to explore that experience is limited as well. The group must preserve the validity and integrity of each individual, or else the group is susceptible to the pitfalls of creating disease by focusing on “what’s wrong”. In any group, there may be members who perceive that they “got” their disease for certain “stress-related” reasons, while others perceive that “bad” genes caused their disease, and others look to viruses or cosmic rays or smoking, or what-have-you as cause. It is essential that such groups recognize and acknowledge of the validity of each experience. In order for any group to be effective, it must find the mechanism for such validation. The most famous example of such a mechanism is the “twelve step” program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

However, the specific “surrender” wording of that program is not always applicable to other conditions of illness, and for that, in my opinion and experience, the presence of a particular kind of group “leader” is necessary to establish the mechanism of validation. Since its inception, H.O.P.E. has been developing the concept of a “ HOPE Group guide” for its support group "leader". This “leader” adopts the role of “servant leadership” described by Robert Greenleaf as:

"It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead…The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant--first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: do those served grow as persons, do they grow while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?"

Moreover, to call such a guide a “facilitator” is, for the author, inappropriate, because to “facilitate” (make easy) is inadequate… some people need to enter their own danger waters in order to find their healing. That journey is very difficult and cannot be “made easy”. The person present to the other’s process better “guides” the traveler through the rapids by kind and loving means, knowing that the rapids must be navigated if healing is to occur. A guide is familiar with running rapids, and every individual has to find her or his own way through. Every guide must be physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually sound. S-he stays in contact with the rest of H.O.P.E. to demonstrate these qualities to the organization. It is helpful to have had a personal experience with illness and/or disease, however, it is essential that the guide have a well-established healing and recovery. The guide must not try to help the butterfly out of its chrysalis, for, as previously noted, the creature will die from being helped!