Pathfinder-UK: Compulsive Helping and Meet a Tree

Thursday, 22 September 2011

Compulsive Helping and Meet a Tree

When playing 'Meet a Tree' I can usually tell if a person is a compulsive helper, for example in one game a sight guide took his partner to one one the most prominent trees in the woods.

This was to make it easy for their partner to find their tree.

This would also happen in rehab, they would find the biggest tree or most obvious tree in the garden which usually stood out on it's own.

If this happened then I would do an intervention on the compulsive helper.

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Experiential Workshop: Friday, 24 February 2012 at 18:00 until Sunday, 26 February 2012 at 15:00

What is a Natural Awareness weekend?

The weekend is made up of a series of activities, games and practices from some old traditions. These include teachings distilled from the Lipan Apache and Shaolin lineages. They are designed to help get you out of your purely logical mind and re-connect with nature, intuition and something often called spirit.

Many of these practices were co-opted in the “new age” movement, lost their essence and became the subject of scepticism. Also, the mechanisms by which they worked weren’t understood by western science and so they weren’t researched.

However, recent developments in Neuroscience have opened the way to understand how these old practices both work and affect people. Research on consciousness, the brain, mirror neurons, and effect of practices like Chi Kung and Mindfulness have opened the way for westerners to encompass them and get the benefits. During the weekend you will learn new ways to think about yourself and your addiction using this new information.

What can it achieve?

One problem is that in active addiction we develop patterns of thinking, feeling, relating and behaving that become ingrained. These patterns were sometimes part of the reason we got into addiction in the first place. Either way they can seem to become part of us – difficult to spot or change. Experiences on the Natural Awareness weekend help to highlight the ways we relate to ourselves, others and situations. They also open us up to how life could be if we make changes in trust, self-esteem and communication. We get to see and relate to ourselves in a whole new light.

Most addicts struggled in dealing with feelings, felt they had no power to manage them and resorted to other, harmful means to do so. Feeling good or avoiding feeling bad was taken out of their control and handed over to the drugs/alcohol they ingested or the behaviours they felt compelled to enact. The practices taught on the Natural Awareness weekend help you develop the skills to self-regulate and deal with feelings in safe, even pleasurable ways.

Many people in early recovery struggle with the idea of a ‘higher power’. We live in a secular society now and modern science has led much of dogmatic religion to seem absurd. The new scientific information and direct experiences on the Natural Awareness weekend open up a new avenue to exploring the spiritual. It opens the window to a sense of wonder and the possibility there is more to life than what we were taught at school and what our rational mind allows us to believe.

The Shorter PROMIS Questionnaire

The SPQ is a question paper that counsellors and researchers can use to measure an individual’s level of addictive tendency in each of sixteen distinct behavioural areas. The categories measured by the SPQ are: Alcohol, Gambling, Shopping, Food starving, Recreational drugs, Tobacco, Sex, Caffeine, Exercise, Work, Compulsive Helping Dominant, Relationship Dominant, Prescription Drugs, Food Bingeing, Compulsive Helping Submissive, Relationship Submissive. Jointly developed by Dr Robert Lefever and researchers at the University of Kent, the SPQ is recognised and respected as an accurate indicator of addictive tendency. Fill out the Questionnaire online: The Shorter PROMIS Questionnaire

The book is a series of nature-based games which are designed for you to either just to have fun with your children or on a more serious note to help show how they can be used as a powerful intervention tool for those of you who work with vulnerable people.

It is packed with ideas for you to use as well as sharing with you my experiences there are wonderful colour illustrations to support the game instructions. There are references to support the text as well as personal accounts from people who have used the games. At the end of each game there is a quick game guide as well.

You are encouraged to take the games and to be creative with them, don’t just take my word for it, this is what Pablo had to say about the games…

“I was extremely interested in the games highlighted in Geoffrey’s book. I liked his detailed explanation of how to run the games, the expected outcomes, and especially his own experiences when running the games. It is quite obvious that Geoffrey has an exquisite affinity with nature, and he is passionate about passing the message across for the benefit of those either requiring therapeutic interventions or those just wanting to utilise nature’s playground. Even if you have seen some of the games before, you may want to consider Geoffrey’s observations as you will soon realise there may be new aspects to explore with your own participants. My only question? When’s the next book due out?”

Pablo MA Cert Ed MInstLM

Teacher Trainer - Woodlife Trails

To receive your (FULL COLOUR) copy of the book direct from me send in your payment of £19.50 UK & Europe or £22.50 for outside Europe (this includes postage and packing) to:

Pathfinder-UK - c/o Geoffrey M^cMullan - 5 Rock Park Terrace - Barnstaple - Devon - EX32 9AQ

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Thursday, 22 September 2011

Compulsive Helping and Meet a Tree

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