warming up to self-disclosure

[Adam Blatner]

Deborah Kanner's introduction was heartwarming. Hi Deborah! Is that the name you prefer? Welcome!
    Your introducing yourself is excellent. I awoke contemplating an email to all the "lurkers" out there--folks who read grouptalk but rarely contribute. Perhaps it is not so easy to jump in. Do people want to hear from you? Well, I do, and I suspect most of us do! It's a fine opportunity to build some community.
     Then I thought about what goes into it, and it struck me that the process requires a bit of warming-up. Thoughts don't always come neatly packaged. 
      for example, back on 4/19/2007  deborah.karner at rcn.com  introduced herself.
Well, hi! 
    Some warm-up questions: Where in the country, city, world are you? Who are some of your connections? I hope you will share with us any frustrations you encounter in joining or participating in ASGPP or Grouptalk, because I (for one) want to diagnose where the glitches are in our systems. How can we make things easier?  How might we inadvertently make things more difficult?
        Your background is intriguing. For example, have you ever heard of Tobi Klein's paper on psycho-opera?
              Also, about intergenerational groups... consider (a) checking in with Rosalie, if you haven't yet... she used to do that kind of thing; and also with the drama therapists. (I have a chapter by the later Roz Wilder on using drama with elders in my latest anthology on Improvisational & Interactive Drama.)

            Back to the processes of entry that you allude to. As a new member, your impressions of the conference, feedback, and so forth will be welcome. 
        So thanks for introducing yourself, and I hope others reading this who haven't contributed much lately will use your email as a model for others to do likewise. 
              Warmly, Adam Blatner (www.blatner.com/adam/)

   (Re 4/19 email where you write: Hello Group Talk,

I would like to introduce myself, Deborah Karner, a student of sociometry, 
psychodrama and sociodrama and a new member of ASGPP.  I fit the new but not 
the young category.  My past life has been in theater and opera and in work 
with intergenerational and older adult groups helping people to allow 
themselves to act from their own spontaneity and creativity.  My path has 
brought me to this place of sociometry and psycho and sociodrama.  I feel as 
if I have entered the Magic Shop.  I would like to be an active part of this 
group of people who seem to be open minded, inclusive, creative, 
spontaneous, and unafraid to sit in the fire of differing opinions, 
disagreement, perhaps even conflict, and who are willing to use that energy 
of tension, of give and take, to keep moving together and trusting the 
process at the micro and macro level.  I have never met anyone through 
e-mail before, nor felt compelled to stand forward in a new group until I 
had thoroughly evaluated where my safety connections might be.it has taken a 
leap of hope for me to write.

I understand that electronic communication is imperfect in its facelessness 
and unforgiving delivery of meaning through words yet it is a rare 
opportunity to speak my truth and exercise risking being vulnerable among 
people I hope to meet and come to trust.

I look forward to meeting those of you who will be at the conference.--DK

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