Panel discussion led by Nick Stumbo about why assigned 'homework' in group healing contexts is difficult. Speakers link resistance to: (1) performance anxiety and school-related trauma (feeling 'not good enough'), (2) avoidance of emotional work because people are used to surface-level 'do/don't' fixes, and (3) Christian cultural patterns that discourage processing painful past experiences. The conversation reframes homework as self-assessment and emphasizes the challenge of asking people to change longstanding avoidance patterns.
We tell people in a chapter, you're going to read a few pages and answer some questions. It's like, oh my gosh, this feels like high school English class. The screwtape letters.
We hear a lot because there is work involved in our groups. So we have our group resources and there's a lot of work that's involved. So people, especially when they're struggling with sexual addiction or the effects of sexual addiction, we hear the word homework or work and that immediately puts us into this performance based performance mode. And it makes it really difficult to actually do the work of the homework for a group. So why do you guys think this is such an issue for so many people?
It's hard work. Nobody likes to do homework. I know that we're asking people to, like you said, not perform, but like do something healing. And I think guys are really good at doing things, but we're asking them to do something emotional and that's hard. I mean, a performance mode is just a surface level exercise to complete a task, but actual homework, we're asking you to change something. And honestly, we've been working very hard to not change something. So we're literally asking you to do something you haven't wanted to do for most likely decades. So just kind of put you a little bit behind the eight ball there.
Well, and I find for so many, I mean, I'll speak from my experience, it's guys in group, but this could happen for gals as well, that when they get into group, it's often the first work homework they've done since they were in school. And so it's hard for them not to go back and feel like, how do I measure up? What's the grade gonna be? What if I do my work and it's not very good or it's not.
As good as what other people ugly in high school. I don't like that. Season of life.
Yeah, exactly. And for actually a fair number of people I've done group with, there is some trauma in their story of being in school. Whether feeling like they were ridiculed for not being able to read or having dyslexia issues or feeling like people made fun of them because they were the low score on grades that got posted. There's all kinds of things that happen in that school environment that communicate the message to us of not good enough. And I think when we hear work or homework, that fear of it will not be good enough or I can't perform well comes and I. I've tried to talk people through that to Remind them there's no grade, you don't turn in the homework, that we're not here to compare traumas, that really. And I've even jokingly said, just if it's helpful, think of this as an opportunity for self assessment.
There you go.
These are just self assessment exercises. It's not homework. But there's just that reality of we tell people in a chapter, you're going to read a few pages and answer some questions. It's like, oh my gosh, this feels like high school English class. I have to say it all letters in front of people. Yeah. That's the mindset we're trying to help people break out of so that they see this work is really about improving themselves.
Yeah. I think that growing up, for me, growing up in the church and Christian culture in a lot of ways, and we see this, we've talked about a lot on the podcast, is we're taught the do this, don't do this approach to so many things. And for guys and gals who are walking into this, we, we've done that. We have tried the don't do this, avoid, snap the rubber band, walk away, divert your eyes, whatever. And then we've also tried the let's read more, let's pray more, let's go to church every single day for multiple hours, like, get rid of our tv. We've done all these things and it hasn't worked. And so when we walk into a group where you're given more things to do or more exercises to go through, it's like, well, been there, done that, and this doesn't work. When in reality it's actually the type of work that you've been trying to do is different. And that's what you're talking about. You're pressing into emotions, you're pressing into your trauma. And that's really difficult. But I think that we're this, like, do this, don't do this black and white culture. And we kind of bring that into it in a lot of ways. That trips us up.
Yeah. One. Another thing about that culture is that it's really immersed in don't think about the bad things in your life. That we kind of say if there's bad stuff, you, you surrender it, you leave it in, you know, the past is in the past. And, and I'm. We're looking ahead, we're looking towards heaven, which is all great and true, but I think the reality for so many Christ followers or that grew up in that kind of an environment is we've never dealt or processed the stuff in our past that's still tripping us up. So when we go and say, well, okay, you got to do work every week, it's basically telling someone, you need to look at all that stuff. You need to look at that garbage. And I think any one of us would be lying to ourselves if we didn't say, there's a piece of us that doesn't want to do that. We don't want to look at the crud. We just want to focus on the happy, the positive. But if we don't look at it, we can't deal with the impact it's having on us. So we're. We're trying to help people process why. Maybe you feel that maybe that's just the message you've been hearing since you were young.
