By Anisha Pandya | Authentic Communication Groups

I feel a mixture of both excitement and trepidation as I share that my article, titled “Murdered Vagina and Lynched Pride – Reflections on Working with Victims of Gang Rape,” has been published by Routledge.

This work represents some of the most vulnerable and challenging experiences I have encountered as a psychotherapist. In this paper, I present two psychotherapy case studies of women who have survived gang rape. These cases serve as examples of what I call “secret garden work”—deep, transformative therapy focused on reclaiming female power, desire, and sexuality in the aftermath of sexual violence.… Read more

Here’s a short version of a group interaction.

Katherine: Angie, when you corrected Ying’s grammar, I felt a wave of nausea. It made me wonder—do you believe the way you speak is superior? Grammar rules uphold class hierarchy. So when you insist on speaking “properly,” I’m curious—what does that give you?

Angie: I never thought about it before. It’s just a habit. My mother drilled it into me.

Ying: I like to know grammar. Please correct me.

Katherine: Grammar is a form of social signaling. The way we speak marks us—education, status, intelligence. But let’s be real—who decided what’s “proper”? Enforcing those rules reinforces stereotypes about who’s competent, who’s credible, who’s worth listening to.… Read more

A guy I admire for his tenderness and care, was shaken because a dear friend started treating him like “just another white guy.” He felt concerned about a Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion initiative that the friend had initiated. He was hurting. He wanted mutual acknowledgment of their deep long-term friendship. He didn’t want to oppose the initiative, until she dismissed his suggestion to call the initiative “Belonging.” This left me thinking something deeper was at play. I wondered: How often does personal hurt, even when it’s unintentional, derail broader conversations about systemic change?

We don’t get anywhere by keeping quiet—but if the way we name oppression shuts people down, we’ve already lost the conversation.… Read more

By Martha Lasley

Decision-making is a rigorous, liberating, spiritual practice. At the heart of participatory decision-making process is full empowerment for everybody.

As a group searches for a solution that meets the most needs, one way to facilitate the process that honors both individual autonomy and group collaboration is for all participants to determine their preferences privately, silently, and then share them aloud in turn.

As facilitators, we keep it light, easy, and playful, but we don’t avoid the first crucial step of determining personal preference. In this way, we continuously discover where each person stands.

This process keeps our relationships clean, creative and respectful, by avoiding collusion, control, or going along with the majority.… Read more

This process is adapted with gratitude from the work of many practitioners: Marshall Rosenberg, Susan Skye, Robert Gonzalez, and Meganwind Eoyang.

1. Describe the stimulus of my distress
   1. What triggers me? 
   2. Describe the moment I first felt pain.
   3. What am I seeing, hearing, smelling, etc?
2. Express my reaction
   1. What am I telling myself? 
   2. What is my judgment of others or myself? 
   3. Voice all the judgments until I have clarity about my core belief or deepest judgment.
3. Scan my body
   1. Sense my body from the inside and experience the wisdom of the body.
   2. What physical sensations do I notice?
   3. Notice any desires in the body – for attention, expression, or movement. 

… Read more

1. Diagnosis: including evaluations, analysis, criticisms, comparisons, projections, labels, moralistic judgements (ideas of rightness/wrongness, goodness/badness, diligence/laziness, appropriateness/inappropriateness, etc).  In using communications similar to the above, we are using static language to diagnose who we think people are instead of communicating what is important to us.  Such language increases the likelihood of defensiveness, argument or returned criticism and lessens the likelihood of understanding and connection.

2. Denial of Responsibility: including words like “should”, “ought” “must” “can’t” “have to”, attributing the choices we make to “company policy” or “superiors orders”, or attributing the cause of our feelings to other people or extrinsic situations (“You make me feel frustrated!”).

… Read more

By Gary Baran & CNVC

1. Spend some time each day quietly reflecting on how you would like to relate
   to yourself and others.
2. Remember that all human beings have the same needs.
3. Check your intention to see if you are as interested in others getting their
   needs met as your own.
4. When asking someone to do something, check first to see if you are making a
   request or a demand.
5. Instead of saying what you DON’T want someone to do, say what you DO want
   the person to do.
6. Instead of saying what you want someone to BE, say what action you’d like
   the person to take that you hope will help the person be that way.

… Read more

– by Martha Lasley

One of the things we do in an authentic communication group is to interact in the relational space in the present moment. We call this level 4. Let’s look at all four levels of interaction.

Level 1 is chit chat and requires very little listening. We talk about the weather, what we saw on the news, where we went on vacation. This is the opposite of “here and now” and known as “there and then”. There is nothing wrong with level one or any other level. They are not good or bad. Many times, chit chat warms us up so that we can go deeper into the next level  And occasionally we go too deep too fast, and a part finds that unsafe, “takes a flight” back to level one with a joke or some other banter.… Read more

Issues of power and privilege are often invisible to people who have higher rank, but are more visible to people with lower rank. As facilitators we can move groups towards understanding and effectiveness when we can see the dynamics of rank.

What is Rank

Rank is the sum of our power and privilege that arises from social, psychological, contextual, spiritual or cultural norms. Whether conscious or unconscious, earned or inherited, rank determines much of our communication behavior.

Types of Rank

Social Rank

Social rank is based on the values, biases and prejudice of the mainstream, dominant culture and comes with privileges and more opportunities in life.… Read more

Our inner critic is the part of us that generates self judgment. Marshall Rosenberg developed a process of transforming that judgment into awareness of feelings and needs, as behind judgment are unmet needs and pure energy that is waiting to be understood and tapped. We can help clients release that source of energy.

When we support full connection to their needs, we help clients move toward self acceptance, understanding and awareness. Through deep awareness of needs, they come into alignment. Only after that, do we support them in creating strategies to meet their needs. Some common self judgments and underlying needs follow.… Read more