Self Help groups

What is a self-help group?
A self-help group is a small community of people who meet to face and share a mutual embarrassment. A participant feels able to open himself/herself more easily because he/she is talking to people who have been living the same situation for years.
There are many types of groups, some are dealing with problems of social integration or drug addiction, and others – as ours – are formed by brothers and sisters of people with psychological-physical disability.

What are the characteristics of a group?
The most important characteristics of our groups are spontaneity and liberty: every participant is free to talk or to simply listen, and this liberty is for us a value non to be renounced.
Another characteristic is informality. The meetings are held in turns in the participants’ homes and there are a few simple rules.
The duration of the meetings is usually two hours and every group has between 5 and 8 participants who are asked in the beginning to attend 3 meetings in 3 weeks. We think this minimum commitment is necessary for the participants to be able to express a conscious evaluation of this new experiment. Afterwards everyone is free to decide whether to quit or to continue.
It goes without saying that outside the group the participants show a reasonable reservedness about what has been said during the meetings.
Finally, there should be a “moderator”, a sibling who has already participated in several meetings. Although he remains a sibling among the others, he has the task of supplying the group with the necessary stimuli and hints to exchange experiences.

What do we talk about?
The subject of the conversation is not our brother or sister with Down’s Syndrome, but rather us in relation to their situation. The discussed themes are many and surprisingly diverse. From problems - also practical - of living together with the disability of our brother/sister, to the difficulties of accepting him/her and of making others accept him/her, to how our brothers and sisters influence our own personal life or in professional choices. Also maybe less evident discomforts are discussed, but therefore not less important: for instance many of us have had the chance to tell childhood episodes, sometimes painful or embarrassing, having found the courage to talk about it for the first time only within the group.
And inevitably we often talk about the future of our brothers and sisters before as well as after the death of the parents. Linked to this we discuss about the so-called “residential issue”: questions as “where and with whom will our brothers and sisters live?” get more urgent when they get older. In this sense being part of the group has meant for many of us a serene awareness of the family situation. In short it has been a way to begin to - freely! - take up our responsibilities, feeling - finally! - active individuals in the lives of our brothers and sisters.

Which aims do the participants pursue?
The fundamental aim of a self-help group is to get relief by telling an experience and listening to those of other siblings. All of us have gained a lot, which is proved by the fact that we are here talking about it. Besides the scope of the self-help group itself, with time we have formed a mutual store of knowledge representing a deep solidarity which we can lean on.
In the self-help groups people are supported by the others since disability is accepted without any problems. And in a way this helps us to feel less alone, even beyond the meetings and the time we dedicate to them.

A testimony about self-help groups

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