Regarding Trigger-Setting Deacon
After everyone's useful advice I...didn't do anything, because our first meeting was yesterday and I had inertia.
Last night's meeting was nice! Nothing the deacon did was triggery or even rubbed me the wrong way, and I actively liked everyone else that was there. (Poor deacon has the disadvantage of a very Pentacostal background that probably means I will never really like her.)
We mostly chatted about science and recent research about how to get people to believe data (hurrah Episcopalians), then had dinner, then we "shared a bit of our stories." It was fun to hear our priest talk about how he came to priest-ing, his mother-in-law talk about how the priest and his wife met, and hear T.'s view of why he's Episcopalian. Hearing the deacon's story at least helped me think of her as a person with her own struggles that she has overcome, which helped. And I briefly touched on my awful abusive college church, so the foundation is there if I need to go to priest later and say, "I'm sorry, this isn't working, too triggery."
If the five more meetings we'll have during the next six months go the way this one did, I'll be quite happy with our group; if the PTSD triggers show up, I feel like I have established precedent for potentially needing to make changes.
(
comments at Dreamwidth. Comment there.)
Last night's meeting was nice! Nothing the deacon did was triggery or even rubbed me the wrong way, and I actively liked everyone else that was there. (Poor deacon has the disadvantage of a very Pentacostal background that probably means I will never really like her.)
We mostly chatted about science and recent research about how to get people to believe data (hurrah Episcopalians), then had dinner, then we "shared a bit of our stories." It was fun to hear our priest talk about how he came to priest-ing, his mother-in-law talk about how the priest and his wife met, and hear T.'s view of why he's Episcopalian. Hearing the deacon's story at least helped me think of her as a person with her own struggles that she has overcome, which helped. And I briefly touched on my awful abusive college church, so the foundation is there if I need to go to priest later and say, "I'm sorry, this isn't working, too triggery."
If the five more meetings we'll have during the next six months go the way this one did, I'll be quite happy with our group; if the PTSD triggers show up, I feel like I have established precedent for potentially needing to make changes.
(
comments at Dreamwidth. Comment there.)