Let’s Gather and Grow​

The best way to create personal and emotional growth is by connecting to others. Let us explain why growth groups will help you make the changes you have not been able to make before.

3 Essential Elements Community Provides

1. Motivation, drive, and ambition

2. Normalization, of behaviors, feelings, and thoughts

3. Reinforcement, both positively and negatively

I am sure you have tried listening to podcasts, reading self help books, watching YouTube video, and maybe even therapy or medications. But here you are still looking for answers. Please know it’s not you! The problem is that when in comes to changing something as profound as who you are or how you feel you need a community. Alone you can’t change yourself because you simply fall back into old patterns and habit. Here is how connecting to others can help.

First and most importantly, community provides drive and motivation.  Getting myself up and going to the gym, or getting to a yoga class is hard. Well, the idea is easy particularly when it is the day before, but the morning of, it is hard getting up and going. All I want to do is stay in bed and sleep. 

But if I know there is someone else waiting for me, or expecting me, then I feel an obligation to be there and support their workout as well. I can let myself down in a hot second, and I do so frequently.  However when someone else is counting on me then I have a reason to go that is greater than simply myself. 

Community creates a feeling of being normal, while sitting in the waiting room of a shrink’s office does not.  Let me share an example, Thursday nights is my current men’s sex addiction recovery group. The guys like to call each other “porn buddies”. They are a pretty diverse group from a truck driver to a dentist.  Yet, when we are all connected together talking about our lives, our pain, our past, our struggles. We are a family.  All of them have lived in secret shame around their addiction. And when we are together we support and help each other feel loved and lovable. “Wow, I am not the only one that feels that way.”

As a psychotherapist I have told every patient I have ever seen, that they are normal. What they are thinking and feeling is part of the struggle of life we all feel.  My words fall empty. It is only in being in community that we can see our humanity.

Gatherings also facilitate a sense of accountability. I have my guy texting each other every day.  My growth groups use What’s App to keep up with each other.  There are weeks that my groups do better than others, but when they are consistently communicating it helps all of them do our best and be our best.  Jim’s one of the best at sharing his experience from his morning meditations.  In our growth groups we are given an idea to consider or meditate upon, and Jim consistently comes through with messages of encouragement. 

Jim will write, “I woke up feeling anxious today, but as I considered love as my driver I could feel my fears fade away.”  Typically, several others will write back with kind words of encouragement. “That’s wonderful. Keep it up.”  

These kinds of reminders help everyone, even me as the group host to get up and go meditate.  They produce drive and motivation.  And then when any of us do our practices, the group support helps us feel encouraged to do more. I want to encourage you to sign up for a growth group to help you be your best and do your best.