Life experience empowers support-group facilitators

By SUZANNE MOORE
Staff Writer

April 12, 2008 04:00 am

— PLATTSBURGH -- Jennifer Quaglietta-Tomolillo will soon lead a support group for parents who have lost custody of their children to foster care.
"They feel so pressured without help and support, and they give up," said the West Chazy woman, who has for more than a year worked to get her own three children back.
Gabriel Palmer, 15, has already planned activities for Club Teen Scene, the support group for teens with mental illness that she has belonged to for a few years now and is a program of National Alliance on Mental Illness: Champlain Valley (NAMI) in Plattsburgh.
She intends doing more.
"They've given so much to me, I want to give back," she said.
EMPOWERMENT
Personal experience was the motivator for everyone who took part in a recent two-day NAMI support-group-facilitator training at the office on Healey Avenue. Some cope with mental illness; others have loved ones who do so.
"I think that's one of the strengths of this (support group) model," NAMI Executive Director Marguerite Adelman told the trainees. "You are part of the group -- the group knows you'll be sharing with them, too."
NAMI offers myriad support groups that are all based on that same model, one that doesn't involve mental-health professionals except as occasional guest speakers.
"We have to empower ourselves to believe we can learn from ourselves," Adelman said. "The model is about your journey."
A support group's strength is in shared experience and in the employment of different coping mechanisms that help a person through a difficult time.
The NAMI model includes use of the Stages of Emotional Responses, which helps a person recognize that what they are feeling, whether shock or anger, grief or denial, is a natural part of dealing with a catastrophic event. Another tool is problem solving, when the entire group helps one member come up with solutions to one specific issue.
For the most part, keep the focus on the present, Adelman said.
"Now and tomorrow. Therapy is where (people) should be talking about the past."
Always end on a positive note, she continued -- emphasizing the member's personal strengths.
"That's what keeps that hope going."
STAY PRODUCTIVE
Quaglietta-Tomolillo lives with obsessive-compulsive and post-traumatic-stress disorders; she attends several support groups and sees a therapist.
"I still have a little anxiety" she said, "but the coping skills they teach have been very important for me."
Sessions of her new NAMI group for parents will also focus on listening and communication skills, for emotion often takes control when a mother or father is negotiating the system.
"You want your kids back," Quaglietta-Tomolillo said. "It's hard to communicate when you have a lot of emotions.
Lynne Matott struggled to start support groups at five different sites for 18 months in St. Lawrence County as part of Alliance on Mental Illness (AMI) offerings there, driving to each place herself for every meeting.
"The most that showed up was four at Massena," she said.
She and Violet Woodruff attended the Plattsburgh training to learn the skills they need to run the group they now plan to co-facilitate.
"This will help me handle it," Matott said.
Bonnie Muffett, who traveled from Ilion in Herkimer County for the training, belongs to a support group for the parents of children with mental illness.
"I don't know if anyone was ever trained to conduct our group," she said, "but it goes on forever.
"It's a lot of awfulizing. You don't go away from it feeling like there's hope."
It's the facilitator's job to keep things on track, Adelman said. Failing to do so can turn a group into a coffee klatch, she said. Letting members talk on and on robs others of the chance to participate and makes sessions nonproductive, so time limits should be strictly enforced.
"When there are problems in a group," she said, "people don't come back."
BRING KLEENEX
Strong emotion is often part of a session, Adelman said, as members face issues and share their pain.
"We go through a lot of Kleenex here."
Occasionally, a crisis does erupt in a meeting.
"If someone is feeling very fragile, we ask them to develop a contract with the group" to seek hospital care if necessary, Adelman said.
A simple registration form includes address and phone number "so we can check up on them afterwards."
Palmer considers Club Teen Scene a second family. The group helped her through crises without judgement and with empathy. She is waiting to hear if the group has won a grant that would pay her to be a teen facilitator.
"It's always kinda been my dream to be in the mental-health field," Palmer said.
Besides, she said of the training, grinning, "How good is this going to look on my resume?"
smoore@pressrepublican.com

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