A facilitator describes watching for emotional shifts in group members as a signal to pause. When an usually upbeat participant suddenly said they felt "devastated," the facilitator stopped the discussion immediately, noticing both the stark language change and how other members reacted with concern.
So you have to be in tune with the reaction that it has on the entire group to know that you need to stop right then and there. So example, some of you may have heard this before, but an extreme example that was accurate is one time I had a member start out with saying that they were devastated and This was extremely unusual for that member. They rarely were dramatic, lack of a better word. The majority of the time they were positive and uplifting and optimistic, etc. So I knew right then and there I had to stop because when they said devastating, I could tell with all the rest of the members in the group that they were like, ah, and they wanted to know why.
