Facilitator skills: Mutuality
Welcome to a collection of personal reflections from our dedicated facilitators and peer specialists. Each member, bringing a wealth of experience and insight, has written a piece as part of our facilitators manual to share their wisdom and highlight the unique strengths they offer. We hope each reflection shows the gift of shared experience and the healing possibilities of a supportive community. Explore these reflections for inspiration and guidance on your own learning journey.
Laura: Mutuality
When I move into mutuality, I challenge and redefine how I have come to understand help and support. I think about why so much of the past help I received was not helpful, and the way I was given answers to questions I wasn’t asking. Being helped was being told what I was, and what to do about it. A problem to be solved, someone who may never be fixed but could be managed. I learned to treat myself in this way, and with all questions and answers based around challenge, I never considered how the answers could be inside me, and yet all I did was think about ‘me’. This can be understood as a ‘socialization into self-preoccupation’. It also then makes sense that how I was helped can influence how I help others.
Peer led movements like Better Together showed me who I was, and how I could be of value. I had to really think about power and how it can easily shift when we do onto another as was done onto us. As a facilitator, I am first and foremost a Better Together community member. Meaning how I am and what I do has a ripple effect on the community. Every time I facilitate a group I have an opportunity to have reciprocal conversations that create a mutual space of giving and receiving. I try to be mindful of what I do when I become overwhelmed by what someone is sharing, or at a loss for what to say. Often it results in me offering advice and what feels like quick solutions in service of my own discomfort. When I remember that I am not responsible for someone in a peer based relationship, I can listen with curiosity and seek to understand rather than respond. So striving for mutuality and reciprocity regulates me as a facilitator and as a community member. While I don’t take responsibility for each member, the skill of mutuality has helped me to recognise how power can form in group dynamics. Without intention we can return to what we know, moving back into hierarchical structures and seeing some people as above another. As a facilitator I see my role as creating a space in every group for all voices to be heard and valued equally.
Mutuality is not about sameness, I think it is about being open to different worldviews and knowing the value in learning through diversity. The diversity of members and living experiences on Better Together is our greatest strength. Facilitators act as guides toward both individual and collective wisdom and resilience of our diverse community. When I seek to be mutual I trust in the group and create a place for each member to contribute to the cultivation of a supportive and inclusive community where all members are recognized as valuable contributors to each other’s journeys. It is the essence of what makes a true peer led community.
When I am in mutuality it feels natural, it’s effortless, it’s not something i’m doing but it’s about how i’m being. It’s why some definitions of peer support work won’t say ‘peer support is’, instead it will say ’peer support happens’
When we are mutual we are relational, and this has been very healing for me. I often think of something Pat Deegain said:
“It is healing to learn that one needs and is needed, cares and is cared for, and can receive as well as give.”
