Al Anon Group Reflection

I have been a gradate student in John F Kennedy University since 2014, and I have learnt a lot about myself since the beginning of the program. As it was the last assignment for the Group Process class, I chose to go to Al-anon group meeting to observe as my participation and/or observation of group. I was curious about how these group works and how the facilitator who is one of the members works in the group. The facilitator, who was called the chairwoman, opened up the meeting by going over the ritual of the Al-anon meetings and then she introduced herself and the topic of the day, which was “choices” in our lives. Then she asked the member next to her to introduce himself and it went around the circle in the room. As a new member, everybody welcomed me warmly, when I introduced myself. It came to my attention that when the facilitator had difficulty to finish a sentence or mention something in the group …show more content…
One of the members started crying while sharing his bad choices in the past, and other members soothed him down easily that even the leader didn’t need to get involve, though she was observing all the members, and their comments. I observed the high level of support for each other and mutual aid with empathy among the members. Hope and being optimist was one of the most notable therapeutic factors that I noticed in the meeting. The sharing emphasized on the universality of the problems and especially the same stories made each member to link in and share the story. The altruism, which is one of the main principles of the AA and Al-anon meeting, allows the member to gain the sense of value by helping other members. I saw how other members felt better when they soothed the crying man down. Most of the members shared about their own experience and coping strategies to deal with their bad choices in the