Group Agreements via EVRYMAN – for Nevada City
These agreements are from EVRYMAN’s set of agreements. Please review them. Every man will be asked if he read them and agrees to them before we start the first meeting. Having an agreed-upon set of rules creates emotional safety, a key to a group’s success.
INTENTIONS
Take responsibility for your life. Live with integrity of thought, word, and action.
Celebrate and honor each other’s success and wins, but also celebrate your attempts and struggles.
Practice letting go. Honor and celebrate openness and vulnerability, practice expressing care for others and be willing to ask for help.
Cultivate a life of purpose and action. Stay connected to your biggest dreams and aspirations.
Have fun and connect. Create and enjoy brotherhood.
Tune in to yourself and others. Ask questions that direct a man towards feeling and sensation. “What are you feeling?”, or “Where do you feel that in your body?” Notice how you feel when another man speaks.
Focus on specific feelings such as Anger, Sadness, Fear, Joy, Shame or Guilt when you speak. Avoid justifying, minimizing and maximizing your experience – it takes you out of your experience and your power. Connect to your experience and you will powerfully connect to others.
AGREEMENTS
You have permission. In the group, it is easiest for one man to speak at a time, however, don’t ask for permission to speak, intervene, move around, take care of yourself, or contribute in any fashion.
Speak about your experience, not another man’s, and describe your experience in the first person. For example, “I feel afraid when I sense aggression,” rather than “it’s scary when you sense aggression” Speak directly and openly and focus on the present. Avoid labels and judgment.
Take space to slow down. Any man can ask the group to slow down or ask a specific man to “hold on” in order to take himself or another man deeper.
Be inclusive. Try to use “and” instead of “but”.
Participation: If you don’t want to participate, you can pass. No judgment.
Step into discomfort and explore unknown territory. Practice taking risks. Reveal what is hidden and encourage others to do the same.
I will include all the men in the conversation. I will not dominate.
I will not be violent.
I agree to keep everything revealed in the group completely confidential except for what I share or another man’s reaction to what I share.
I agree to keep the environment we occupy in better shape than I found it.
I will come prepared to both give and receive support for my group members by being well-rested and nourished.
I will refrain from taking mood-altering recreational substances for the well-being of myself and other men in the group.
I agree that our time together is not counseling or therapy. If there is any reason to believe that I may be of harm to myself or others, I am required to share this with a lead facilitator.
If I am in therapy, I agree to share that with the group, and share that I’m in the group with my therapist.
If I can’t make a meeting and your absence is not on the calendar, I will call two men to tell them.
EVRYMAN AGREEMENTS are Confidential – Do Not Reproduce or Distribute Without Written Consent from EVRYMAN Inc.