Special Sauce at WW
Well, it turns out that just about everything is about being in a group. This comes as no surprise to any social worker or therapist or person who works with people who need some kind of help. I am not even talking about "belonging" in this case -- it is more about finding support in being with others who are having the same questions, the same challenges. My sister has spent her entire career working on getting people together to learn stuff. She is now the nation's leading expert (and probably therefore possibly the world's expert) on teaching surgeons and other medical professionals to be better communicators. It is undoubtedly more sophisticated than that, but she has been developing a program and publishing papers and spreading this program throughout the country, trying to get the medical world to do a better job talking to patients and families.
I asked her if this sort of thing can actually be taught. She says they don't know yet, and they are studying that. The teaching method is brilliant -- she writes scripts for scenarios where "actors" play out real life situations where a doctor needs to come into a room and give a family some news. The learning is in real time. They are not watching a video, they are trying to deal with a family dynamic that is unrolling before their eyes, and they are trying to figure out how to manage all the players to get to an outcome that is helpful. My mother and my sister's son have both been drafted to be actors in these scenes and they enjoy it a lot, giving feedback to the nurses afterwards, thinking through what could have happened differently.
In a different setting, about 15 years ago, I experienced this same sort of learning situation. I was part of a group that traveled to different cohousing communities once a quarter, spending a weekend with the community, learning about the things they were working on. Then this group of learners would facilitate real meetings. Each of us was in the hot seat for maybe an hour, and there were four meetings over the course of the weekend. It was so hard. We had to de-code the dynamics of the situation and we had to come up with useful strategies to help them untangle their issues. And then we had to spend just as much time afterwards debriefing the meetings with our coach. It was an intense way to learn, and we learned a LOT.
Just last week I realized once again that I was sitting in a group that was learning from being together. It was a Weight Watchers meeting (they call themselves WW now for some reason...too cool to mention anything about weight anymore). I went to Weight Watchers with great commitment about twenty years ago. Their approach has evolved a lot since then, and it is much more holistic and health-oriented, both mental and physical. They barely talk about weight at all. You still stand on a scale when you walk in but there is no sense of shame or even celebration, it is just a record that is kept. If you ask for congratulations in the group, you get it. But otherwise you are allowed to keep your progress to yourself. I like that much better. They have a lot of bells and whistles now where you use your phone to keep track (I have not made so much progress with this, as I am resistant to such detailed recordkeeping, even though my brain understands that is the key to WW success. I am of course hoping for a modified version where I don't have to do SO much tracking.) and they have various games you can play with yourself, trying to get a "blue dot." I am slow to adopt those practices. I want to learn to do this and have it be part of my regular everyday behavior without consulting my phone to see how I am doing. I may not succeed but I still have hopes.
So at the meeting that I have decided to attend regularly (have not missed a week since my first one), the seasoned coach uses lots of humor, good listening, plenty of questions, and affirmation. She has done this a bazillion times. There is nothing new under the sun but she still brings a lively attention to the conversation. The people speak up, sharing their successes and questions. It feels like a good use of all of our time, and obviously some people are learning the lessons more solidly than others. For sure there is a strong message that this takes a lot of time and practice to learn. Like your whole life.
And this is why I wonder whether my sister's program can affect change with such a brief interaction. She says there are ways to reinforce the lessons, but it is a slow boat. I guess learning any life lesson is a slow boat, and getting a push is always helpful. That is what the group is for -- giving us all a push. We still have to do all the daily practicing ourselves, but all those support organizations have come up with lots of tools. We should not think that it is best to do things all by ourselves all the time. There are so many opportunities to learn faster and differently. Clearly we all spin our wheels, alone. This is not bad, it is just so slow. We only have about 70 - 90 years to make all the improvements we need, and we are so distracted that we usually don't focus enough.
The WW coach said (sounding as if she had said this thousands of times before, but still delighting in it): "You want to know what the special sauce is of WW? It's the meetings. That is the secret to success."
Once again, we turn to the theme of the power of meetings. Groups. Supporting each other, getting stuff done. If you haven't been in a group for a while, get going. You don't have as much time as you imagine. Stop trying to invent the wheel all by yourself.
I asked her if this sort of thing can actually be taught. She says they don't know yet, and they are studying that. The teaching method is brilliant -- she writes scripts for scenarios where "actors" play out real life situations where a doctor needs to come into a room and give a family some news. The learning is in real time. They are not watching a video, they are trying to deal with a family dynamic that is unrolling before their eyes, and they are trying to figure out how to manage all the players to get to an outcome that is helpful. My mother and my sister's son have both been drafted to be actors in these scenes and they enjoy it a lot, giving feedback to the nurses afterwards, thinking through what could have happened differently.
In a different setting, about 15 years ago, I experienced this same sort of learning situation. I was part of a group that traveled to different cohousing communities once a quarter, spending a weekend with the community, learning about the things they were working on. Then this group of learners would facilitate real meetings. Each of us was in the hot seat for maybe an hour, and there were four meetings over the course of the weekend. It was so hard. We had to de-code the dynamics of the situation and we had to come up with useful strategies to help them untangle their issues. And then we had to spend just as much time afterwards debriefing the meetings with our coach. It was an intense way to learn, and we learned a LOT.
Just last week I realized once again that I was sitting in a group that was learning from being together. It was a Weight Watchers meeting (they call themselves WW now for some reason...too cool to mention anything about weight anymore). I went to Weight Watchers with great commitment about twenty years ago. Their approach has evolved a lot since then, and it is much more holistic and health-oriented, both mental and physical. They barely talk about weight at all. You still stand on a scale when you walk in but there is no sense of shame or even celebration, it is just a record that is kept. If you ask for congratulations in the group, you get it. But otherwise you are allowed to keep your progress to yourself. I like that much better. They have a lot of bells and whistles now where you use your phone to keep track (I have not made so much progress with this, as I am resistant to such detailed recordkeeping, even though my brain understands that is the key to WW success. I am of course hoping for a modified version where I don't have to do SO much tracking.) and they have various games you can play with yourself, trying to get a "blue dot." I am slow to adopt those practices. I want to learn to do this and have it be part of my regular everyday behavior without consulting my phone to see how I am doing. I may not succeed but I still have hopes.
So at the meeting that I have decided to attend regularly (have not missed a week since my first one), the seasoned coach uses lots of humor, good listening, plenty of questions, and affirmation. She has done this a bazillion times. There is nothing new under the sun but she still brings a lively attention to the conversation. The people speak up, sharing their successes and questions. It feels like a good use of all of our time, and obviously some people are learning the lessons more solidly than others. For sure there is a strong message that this takes a lot of time and practice to learn. Like your whole life.
And this is why I wonder whether my sister's program can affect change with such a brief interaction. She says there are ways to reinforce the lessons, but it is a slow boat. I guess learning any life lesson is a slow boat, and getting a push is always helpful. That is what the group is for -- giving us all a push. We still have to do all the daily practicing ourselves, but all those support organizations have come up with lots of tools. We should not think that it is best to do things all by ourselves all the time. There are so many opportunities to learn faster and differently. Clearly we all spin our wheels, alone. This is not bad, it is just so slow. We only have about 70 - 90 years to make all the improvements we need, and we are so distracted that we usually don't focus enough.
The WW coach said (sounding as if she had said this thousands of times before, but still delighting in it): "You want to know what the special sauce is of WW? It's the meetings. That is the secret to success."
Once again, we turn to the theme of the power of meetings. Groups. Supporting each other, getting stuff done. If you haven't been in a group for a while, get going. You don't have as much time as you imagine. Stop trying to invent the wheel all by yourself.
Hana, this is so true. As you know I've always been a group-y type of person. I've been in lots of groups of women and have led /facilitated a prenatal group (that substitutes for most of prenatal care visits), led some educational therapy groups, and my Quaker Meeting has a Women's Group that has met monthly for the past 27 years. Now in my psych/mental health NP education, I've encountered a wonderful psychiatrist, Irvin Yalom. Sadly I haven't encountered him in person, just on paper and in videos (he's in his mid-80's and lives in CA). He's written the major textbook on group therapy, and many other books about his life and learning and his life as a psychotherapist.
ReplyDeleteI think you'll appreciate seeing the list of what Yalom calls the Therapeutic Factors in group therapy, and see that they apply in a big way to what happens at WW and in many other groups. Not all apply outside of group psychotherapy but I'll give you the complete list since many DO apply:
1. Instillation of hope
2. Universality
3. Imparting information
4. Altruism
5. The correct recapitulation of the primary family group (that one maybe not in WW)
6. Development of socializing techniques
7. Imitative behaviors
8. Interpersonal learning
9. Group cohesiveness
10. Catharsis
11. Existential factors (like, we're all going to die some day)
I've also learned from my preceptor this semester that for people who've experienced trauma, participating in a group with other trauma survivors can be a major part of effective treatment. People with similar challenges can learn so much from each other, especially when they can see others whose lives have been affected by something shameful, and have empathy for those people where it might be hard to find empathy for themselves. Being "fat" or out of control with one's eating can fall in that same category of shame.