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Part One: The book and the Changes community
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Part One: The book and the Changes community
Ferdinand van der Veen, Why Changes and a book about Changes are important to me
Changes is important to me because I want to live more authentically, according to my real feelings, my own experienced reality, and not according to " reality" defined by impersonal social institutions or by the " shoulds" of others. I believe that change toward living more authentically requires:
• Being more aware of my feelings and inner experiences
• Clarifying their meaning for me
• Choosing courses of action consistent with them. This includes keeping options open for myself and taking risks.
I also believe it is more possible for me to be authentic when the people and groups I live and work with value authenticity for themselves and for me. As long as I can remember, I have wanted to change toward being more aware of my ongoing experience, understanding it better and living more in accord with my inner values, and I assume I will continue to want to do so as long as I live. I have also always wanted the institutions with which I have come into contact to encourage authentic relating and effective social goals.
I see Changes as working toward these ends in two ways: One is developing and teaching skills for greater understanding and awareness of oneself and others; and the other is by being an authentic community itself, one in which meetings and functions promote rather than hinder the possibility for authentic action. Originally, Changes defined itself as a therapeutic community for providing a viable self-help alternative to an ineffectual psychiatric treatment system.
I believe this focus has gradually expanded so that now there is a general concern with enhancing psychological health and group interaction through the personal, family, work, educational, and treatment settings in our society. Changes people are teaching their unique brand of therapeutic self-help skills to many different people, such as mental health professionals and paraprofessionals, high school teachers and students, dental students, families, movement groups, and at many workshops.
I think I am accurate in saying that all of us involved in this book, as well as many others, have found that the Changes community and the particular methods that it teaches have been of profound value in our lives. Changes enabled us to make changes in ourselves, in our relationships, and in our lives that we wanted to make but were at a loss to know how to bring about.
The reason that I believe this book is important is that it may help other persons and groups find ways of relating and acting that they also have been seeking but have not known how to bring about. There are two main ways in which the book does this:
One is by describing the Changes community - how it came about, its unique qualities, and its ways of handling and thinking about organizational issues. I often feel amazed and incredulous that Changes continues to exist and function, since it has no membership requirements, no elected or otherwise designated officers (including treasurer! ), no voting procedure, and no written by-laws or constitution.
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And yet, since its beginning in 1970, it has provided a hot line, heavy people teams, training groups, co-counseling, and social contacts for several hundred people with an active core membership varying between perhaps twenty to forty persons at any one time. Other Changes groups have also formed, including a Changes North (Chicago), a Toronto Changes, a Vermont Changes, a Los Angeles Changes, and many more.
One of our objectives for the book, therefore, is to tell others who are struggling to build more personally honest organizations some of the special ways and ideas for doing that that have worked for us.
The other purpose of the book is to describe specific methods taught and used at Changes for living and relating more authentically. These methods have been powerful and enriching for us. They are embedded in a respect for the integrity and self-direction of the person, which is part of our client-centered heritage. In my experience, the skills foster understanding and acceptance of myself and others, in a way that makes both honesty andcaring possible, so that one need not happen at the expense of the other. They are also valuable because they may be readily learned and used, and their usefulness in many settings is easily demonstrated.
Many persons and organizations hold values of acceptance and understanding, or would if they believed such values could work. But they are at a loss as to how to implement them. They therefore behave in more traditional role patterns, according to values of lower personal priority, and suffer frustration and alienation as a result. We hope that what we present in the book will encourage persons to learn and experiment with the skills to see if they can thereby define and implement their own values in more satisfying and effective ways.
The book is therefore intended for persons and groups who want to find out as much as possible about " how to do it. " Most of the papers were originally written for ourselves, to help us conceptualize and use the skills and teach them to others. They represent the joy and excitement as well as the hard work that Changes has meant in our lives.
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