Faulkner Group - March 2006
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: February 27, 2006
Janet and Pat attended group today. Kerri (resident) and Denise (staff) were away when OT arrived, so not sure if group should wait for Kerri to arrive. She chose not to join in when she did arrive. Communication was the topic today, and we completed a collage exercise like this:
1. Everyone looks through magazines and cuts out 3 faces of people showing emotion.
2. The faces are all glues on a blank piece of paper, and small scrap papers are distributed to each participant.
3. Then one person chooses one face from the collage, and the rest of the participants silently write what emotion they think is being shown. The emotions are then glued around the face and a brief discussion had about why they chose each emotion. We did this 3-4 times.
4. The group is tehn asked what they learned from this.

Our group today did not have any difficulty recognizing the value in doing this- they easily saw that even though it was the same face, everyone thought it was a different emotion. Lesson- there is more than what meets the eye, especially with non-verbal communication. We need more information about the past, present and future situation before we know how to interpret the interaction. We then related this to realy life, and how we can get overwhelmed by negative assumptions when we allow ourselves to mind read this way.

We then did a quick overview of the four communication styles (passive, assertive, aggressive, and passive-agressive). Pat was easiyl able to recognize that she is passive, but not sure about Janet. Query need for individual assessment.