TheBanyanTree: Hijacked

[Margaret R. Kramer]

6/22/04
Hi Love what day is it tomorrow?
 guess right and you win a prize.
 lOVE YOU
rAY&GEO.

Do you ever find yourself in a conversation or even in an office meeting and
another person totally takes over?  These people have a way of sucking all
the group’s energy towards themselves.  They choose the topic, the
responses, the reactions, and before the group knows it, they’re drawn in
like a nail to magnet with little chance to escape.  I call these people
hijackers.

Grief group today was simple.  We had no speaker.  There were about 10 of us
with varying types of losses (spouse, child, and family/friend) and we sat
in a circle for a general group discussion.  Well, this one woman who lost
her brother last year (he was 39, had oral surgery a couple of days earlier,
and died when his mouth started bleeding while he was sleeping, his lungs
filled with blood, and he basically drowned on his own blood) had to
dominate the entire hour long discussion despite gentle attempts from the
facilitators to change the topic or focus on other people.  She was a
classic hijacker.

Within a few short minutes, we learned her brother was in the midst of a
nasty divorce, she has no access to his children, her parents have Alzheimer
’s and live in New Orleans and she is unable to go there to take care of
them, because she just had surgery.  And on and on.

Anyone else’s grief or how they spent Christmas or anything else was not
important.  I sat and gritted my teeth while she continued.  I tried to
shift the conversation to a neutral topic, but it didn’t work.  She wrestled
the conversation stream back to herself.

I was so glad when the hour was over and we could leave, and leave her in
the dust.  I’m sorry about her brother, but her grief isn’t any better or
worse than anyone else’s.  I truly believe some people use their loved one’s
death to garner attention because they’re very needy people and are
reluctant to go through the grief process, because they would lose this
wonderful way of getting sympathy from others.

This was the last Saturday at this particular church and next Saturday the
grief group will move to a different church for the next three months.  We’
ll have new facilitators as well.  My current facilitator told me that she
thought I was doing OK trying to find my new “normal.”  Well, I struggle a
lot more than people know about, but I’m trying to move forward.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net
margaret.kramer at polarispublications.com
www.polarispublications.com

Christmas - that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so
intangible that it is like a fragrance.  It may weave a spell of nostalgia.
Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a
day of remembrance - a day in which we think of everything we have ever
loved.
~Augusta E. Rundel
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