Update on Group Support and Maintaining a Therapeutic Environment
Hi Community,
We have acknowledged your insightful and useful feedback on the protocol to help make 7 cups a safe and healing space for all users. Thank you for helping us evolve things. We understand that many of you have expressed your own mental health journeys and we want you to know that we have read each and every single message.
The key concept is that group support does not work if there are behaviors that take away from it being a therapeutic environment. The cause of the behaviors does not matter. A person could be deliberately trying to troll other people or could be genuinely suffering and inadvertently causing disruption in the group. The latter happens frequently in offline settings like clinics. When this happens, the person is asked to leave the group and to talk with a person in a 1:1 setting. That same principle applies to the work we are doing on 7 Cups. This occurs not only to ensure there is no disruption within the group dynamics but to also ensure the individual receives the best support for their recovery.
Offline groups do not identify all of the different sorts of behaviors that might fall under the broad category of taking away from the therapeutic environment, because it would be impossible to identify them all. Being overly descriptive actually hurts the principle here. We will be following this same line of thinking on 7 Cups.
The mods and other users know what behavior looks like that takes away from the therapeutic environment. When it happens, the person behaving in that way will be removed from the group and encouraged to seek help via 1:1 or through another service. The goal here is to keep the group therapeutic for as many people as possible.
Ultimately, yes, this is a judgment area of the person leading the group or discussion. Some people may interpret some behavior as more disruptive than others. There will be some narrow band of variations just like there is now and that is okay. Sometimes life and things on 7 Cups have degrees of uncertainty or variability. Part of navigating life involves learning how to adjust to changes here and there. We will continue to evolve as a community, which means there will continue to be changes.
To further clarify, the emphasis is on behavior that takes away from the therapeutic environment in the group environment. No behavior that happens outside of a group (e.g., 1:1 or forums) will be used to make judgments about behavior that is happening in the group support environment.
Also, as previously highlighted, all users are expected to follow our community guidelines. Any violations of guidelines will be looked into under our Behaviour Points System and appropriate actions will be taken. This is to ensure the safety of the user and our broader community.
Finally, there have been many people that have had nuanced and thoughtful comments that have helped move this discussion forward. Thank you. Please keep in mind that the principle of maintaining a therapeutic environment in group support rooms will stand as outlined above. Please do not ask for exceptions or for this principle to be compromised. In this thread, lets also remember to keep things respectful and neutral to positive. Attempts to make this discussion more challenging, difficult, confusing, divisive, or inflammatory will not be accepted.
@Hope
If the key behavior guidelines could be captured in a few catchy phrases, that might help people absorb them and live by them ere.
@Hope
How about creating a bullet list of the desired behaviors
then create a contest for people to
come up with catchy short phrases?
@Hope I am glad to see how this is being approached now, it looks way better than before. So it sounds to me like chatroom rule 4 is going to viewed more strictly than it has in the past? I do hope that moderators at least reach out to those who are going through a hard time and are compassionaite. I think care also needs to be taken about suggesting vs. telling people how to manage what's going on - when people are told it can be rather flippant, dismissive of issues and done as an order - those things are totally avoidable and I hope the mods (and listeners in general) get some information on how to do this well.
I do have concerns based on the previous posts that some users may be targetted with this rule, or feel targetted even if they aren't. I do hope that it's clear that just because the rooms aren't the best place in the moment, that they are welcome in the future. I also hope that warnings aren't being given quickly, rather the suggestion of other options is given, plus a space for the person to at least respond/ask questions for other help before warnings occur.
I also hope that just because one or a few users are triggered by someone in the group support room this isn't applied. The mute option is still available, and there are many situations I can imagine where what someone posts affects the theraupeutic environment to some in the room, but not all and the mute button is a better option rather than an individual having to leave.
@Hope
Thank you for the much needed clarification
