Elizabeth was recently a student intern at CHANGE Unlimited. This article and accompanying boxes were published in the September, 1999 issue of Between the Cracks, a Newsletter of CHANGE Unlimited. Transitional Services Incorporated of Buffalo, New York, helps supports CHANGE Unlimited which is a self-help group for mentally ill chemical abusers.

This month, as CHANGE Unlimited approaches its ten-year anniversary, we decided to look at the group from another vantage point. How has CHANGE Unlimited developed over the past decade? What are the characteristics that make this group unique? What has the group become?

In answer to these questions, we found that CHANGE Unlimited has come to resemble a community more than anything else. However, our definition of community does not necessarily conform to the conventional image of a group of people living or working in the same environment. CHANGE Unlimited is a community not because its members simply coexist, but because, as a group they communicate honestly with each other, develop personal relationships that run beneath the surface, and find ways to mourn and rejoice together.

As M. Scott Peck, M.D. describes in his book, The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace, a true community operates on a foundation of inclusion (rather than exclusion), and celebrates individual differences (rather than trying to minimize them). To achieve this kind of community requires commitment, as in a stable marriage. CHANGE Unlimited members know that a sense of commitment to the group must continue even during the roughest of times, for those are the times when people are most in need of community support.

Besides requiring commitment, a community can become a self contemplative group. Members are thoughtful about themselves and about how the group is functioning as a whole. By habitually thinking about the community, individuals can recognize problems and fix them before they cause damage to the group.

One of the best aspects of CHANGE Unlimited, and what strengthens the group and community, is its role as a safe place in the lives of its members. Individuals can feel free to be themselves, to let down the guard we all use in everyday situations. Members respect each other for whom they are, instead of molding each other into someone they "should" be.

Of course, just because the community provides a safe place for its members does not mean that there is no conflict within the group. Conflicts may exist, but they are resolved without injury to physical or emotional welfare. As Dr. Peck puts it, people within a community "fight gracefully."

Finally, a group like CHANGE Unlimited has a unique atmosphere that nurtures the growth of a community spirit. This spirit is not a product of competition, as one might think of the team spirit of screaming fans at a Sabres game. Instead, community spirit thrives in an atmosphere of peace, love and acceptance. In this kind of atmosphere, members are freed from the minor concerns that preoccupy them to find joy in everyday life. It is this community spirit that makes CHANGE Unlimited a special place, where the recovery process is truly a group effort.

1^ST BOX TO FOLLOW

Adapted from a pamphlet by Timothy H. Stevens, M.S.

Community building is also an EXPERIENTIAL process that brings a group together into a sense of true community. Community Building is also:

1. ENERGIZING: Participation in a community group is a tremendous influence on personal and professional growth and creativity. Participants are filled with a new sense of zest and vitality, which enhances every aspect of their lives.

1. EMPOWERING: The power which is community makes it a body through which profound change can take place. A personal sense of power and integrity – fostered by the genuine respect and love found in the group – spills over into the individual participants’ lives making them more gratifying and fulfilling. Power is the realization of this potential.

1. ESSENTIAL: Building community gets to the heart of the matter, down to what really matters: getting along with others by being our genuine selves.

1. ENGAGING: The whole of our selves is engaged in the community building process. Not one aspect of our lives remains unaffected. Through ongoing participation, the transformative power of the group is made manifest in all of its members – and it just keeps getting better as time goes on.

2^nd BOX TO FOLLOW:

"Community" . . . the word means a lot of things to a lot of people. It can mean a geographic space, such as the community of Buffalo, New York, but it also includes a sense of belonging, an emotional identity. That is what we are exploring in the CHANGE Unlimited program, a sense of community. We seek to help people affected by mental illness find this sense of belonging, to create meaning in their lives, to overcome the alienation they experienced in the past.

Social workers tell us that community is the arena in which people acquire their most fundamental and substantial experience of social life outside of the home. Dr. Mehdi Kizilbash, a ten-year supporter of our program as well as a Transitional Services Incorporated board member, agrees that community is not just a place, such as a neighborhood or a group of people with shared beliefs, but a whole lot more. It is a "sense" of who we are, from where we come. This sense of community is here in CHANGE Unlimited – members reaching out to each other and helping each one find the way back to his or her core, to that place of inner strength.