Psychology- Group Meeting

[Date of Submission]

Psychology- Group Meeting

Summary

I attended the group Overeaters Anonymous (OA), on August 4, 2011on Thursday at the Methodist Church, 4th and Lincoln Sts, Room 309, Bloomington, IN. It was an open meeting for anyone who felt interested and wished to join. However, just to make sure there are no unforeseen problems I called up Kathy, who was in charge of the meetings from their website. It was easy for me to find a meeting where I could go to without missing work because they had put their meeting schedule on the website.

According to the instructions, the room was at the 3rd floor and left at the end of the halfway. I remember feeling very apprehensive, I'm not a very social person and of course there were numerous 'ideas' or thoughts about such meeting already in my head. It didn't help that since it was my first meeting I was confused by the notion of 'Big Book' which I had forgotten to ask Katy about. Still with trepidation I found the mentioned door, knocked first and then opened it.

Inside I saw a room, not a huge expansive one, just a slightly bigger than average room. People were sitting in a circle in the centre of the room just like there were around a campfire. For some odd reason, even though my hesitancy was not alleviated in the slightest but I still felt a measure of confidence. The circle gave the impression that all the people were linked together with one another to form a unit. There were no holes in between them, they were all connected.

Upon hearing the door open almost all of them turned around to look at me. It was a little amusing to see the whole room swivel around in unison. When they saw me most of them raised their hands in welcome other sang out different greetings. Nervously I smiled at them and walked up to them. I was surprised to see there was no 'mediators' or the 'really how does that make you feel' character in the midst. They were just ordinary people sitting and talking. The group expanded a bit and a chair placed in the space which opened up without breaking the circle. As soon as I took a seat there, I instantly felt a sense of familiarity, as if I belonged. I didn't stand out as much as ...