Maintaining Self in Relationships

• Introductions of Leaders and Participants
• What brings you to this workshop?; what do you hope to get out of it? Leaders emphasize that in this workshop we will be suggesting a framework to help people think about this important topic but that we realize that in a brief workshop we can only make a beginning, not provide all the answers for people.
• What are some of the ways that you feel you have difficulty maintaining your sense of self in a relationship? (Have participants write 2 or 3 ways down on index cards or paper and then share them with the whole group.) One leader will write down the group list on blackboard.
• Hand out and read the "Bill of Rights" and "Neither You Nor I Have the Right To..." Reactions?
• Have participants pair up and discuss a specific situation, which they feel comfortable talking about with another person, in which they felt the had lost themselves in a relationship.What basic rights were they not exercising in that situation? What got in the way of exercising their rights?
• Process with entire group what it was like doing that exercise.
• Conclusion: Exercising one's basic rights is the key to maintaining one's self in a relationship. Emphasize again the basic rights and the need to remember them and exercise them in order to maintain a whole self which one can bring to a relationship. Conclude with a recognition that it is an ongoing challenge to maintain one's sense of self in a relationship but that that is the key to having a healthy and satisfying relationship.
• Hand out Counseling Center brochures and talk about particularly group counseling as being one way of addressing and working on the issue of maintaining self in relationships.
• Have participants fill out and hand in the evaluations of the workshop.