Hello, I was referred recently to Frazled Café, a charity patroned by Ruby Wax. This used to be a face-to-face de-stressing café-based forum, but since Covid, they have been operating online Zoom sessions. It basically consists of a Zoom meeting chaired by a facilitator, and group sizes range from 2 to 100 or so... This is a platform for de-stressing, where each participant can speak openly about whatever's bothering them for as long as they like. They have a few guidelines, such as not interrupting other speakers, not recommending solutions to them, not asking direct questions, not mentioning politics or current events, not referring to previous sessions, and apparently, not ever disagreeing with the facilitator... Also, many people seem to like long periods of silence, simply being present, but with no-one speaking. This can be for most of the hour-long meeting.
Anyway, I have attended around 50 sessions over the last few months, and I ran into trouble with the management! This resulted in 3 'warning' e-mails, followed by a 3-month suspension of my account! My crimes were:
- Booking more than one session in one day- which I stopped doing as soon as I realised I wasn't supposed to do this
- Interrupting other speakers- I try not to do this, but in the Zoom platform, sometimes two speakers start speaking at once, but this is ok, as long as one of them gives way to the other.
- Disagreeing with the facilitator- this is the most heinous one! I mentioned something which had happened to me the previous day, and this was misconstrued as mentioning a previous session...
- Monopolising the conversation & not respecting the silences! I'm not sure how one is supposed to know when a silence period should not be broken by speaking? And anyway, if people want to sit in silence, why can't they turn down the volume on their computer, or just sit by themselves at home?
So I was just wondering if anyone else on here had any experience with this service, and when their impressions were? Has anyone else been warned or suspended?