Knowing Me, Knowing You*

Today, I'm going to take the liberty of sharing a list of questions that I imagined as part of a 2-hour session in which new individuals in any setting may be better integrated or healed. We don't have to experience difficult events or problems of any kind each time to benefit from such a group session. Why am I supposed to know this? Well, educationally speaking, I'm not. However, I have the experience of my own set of international student meetings, group therapy sessions, and other similar strange scenarios in which, if nothing else, I could surely see what else could have been added in such efforts. This is not a critique of any good meetings extended in my direction or anything I opted to attend to understand my new worlds and experiences better. This is just an attempt to enable better outcomes, erase any awkward silences, and imagine ones in which people are more likely to return, not just leave after picking up a donut or see such spaces just as a center for collecting people of their own kind for an authentic conversation later to be understood better as a person.

Protocol of behavior is what most people are searching initially in a first session, partly driven by past culture, partly by the eagerness of being perceived positively in the beginning. For this reason, when you have a facilitator who can introduce a more universally relaxed framework of human connection, the communication is supposed to become more meaningful instantly. The questions ahead are just one version of how such sessions may be in design, partly influenced by my learnings about facilitation practices from conflict resolution courses completed at the Carter School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Arlington, Virginia.

1. Breathing exercise with a meditative calming music for 10-minutes.

2. Names aren't shared in the beginning as would be the norm (for good reason).

3. Conversation prompts begin as follows:

   Share a story from your childhood with the person next to you in which you first learned about an identity that makes you different from others (e.g., your religion, gender, disability, ethnicity, etc).

   Share your three most immediate worries with the same person.

4. The participants then change seats or spaces and then a collective discussion follows in which you anonymously share what you learned from your peer-to-peer conversation so far.

   Ask 'Did you find any similarities? Or were you surprised to learn about something new?'

   
   

5. Everyone shares one of their most cherished and most difficult moments in life.

6. Then a peer-to-peer question is: 'What do you worry about the most these days?'

7. All participants then paint whatever comes to kind on a thick piece of blank greeting card. After explaining what they made, each participant gives the card to someone else in the session.

8. Then a group interaction question follows: 'If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?'

9. A reflection exercise, to generate more conversational potential, is introduced. The question is (not to be shared with anyone): 'What are some things from the past that still bother you?'

   
   

   Flute or soft and calm uplifting music plays for 10-minutes during a break followed by breathing exercise of 5-minutes as a way to resume a mindfully present session.

   
   

10. An unconscious measure of healing, for better revelation, is introduced. For example, 'Write a short story in the next 10-minutes in which the protagonist emerged after struggling with something difficult.' The stories won't be judged for creative talent and are just meant for better thinking and expression.

11. The stories are then shared randomly with peers. You actually give the piece of paper to another person.

12. The session ends with a few individuals sharing their journey in life so far with others, as part of a group session, by choice. The facilitator's accepting unconditional reflective response is then supposed to encourage possibly a few others speaking similarly in a candid manner because of watching how the earlier candid responses were handled.

13. The group completes a painting together on a large canvas. One person begins with a shape or formation possible to make in a minute, and everyone follows similarly for a minute adding to the painting, with the intent of extending the painting, not painting over someone else's design. In the end one big painting is completed in this manner.

    
    

14. The session ends by hugging or shaking hands with at least one person you met in the session that day. You then tell them your name.

Note. *Knowing Me, Knowing You is a song by ABBA, which may seem a bit of a contradictory title for our purposes here. However, the idea is to shed light on a shared psychological space in which people are okay with sharing difficult human experiences. Once people are allowed to leave during difficult conversations and not forced to reveal who they are, they are likely to return if they find even one thing useful in the first session.