What is a H.O.P.E. Group? -- The In-depth Description

 

WHAT IS A H.O.P.E. GROUP?
the in-depth description

© 2001, H.O.P.E. and Ken Hamilton, MD

H.O.P.E. stands for Healing Of Persons Exceptional. Healing is becoming whole. All human beings are Persons; no two of whom are alike; so we are all Exceptional.

Consider the lives of those with serious illness; fear, pain, uncertainty and despair often fill their days. Consider the lives of those facing the loss of loved ones; what fills their days? Consider the lives of alcoholics; what fills their days? Consider the behavior of today’s children; what fills their days? They all need the relief and salutary experience of hope. A H.O.P.E. Group provides this experience.

Hope is an essential ingredient of the human condition. It provides us with a vitally important way of looking into our future. How we see that future determines the quality of the present moment. Hope is not simply a “promise of good things”; rather it is the belief that things can make sense, regardless of how they turn out (Vaclav Havel). When things do not make sense, we become afraid. To Dante, in The Divine Comedy, hell is the place where nothing makes sense. It is the source of all fear, pain, and suffering. The purpose of a H.O.P.E. Group is to support individuals facing hell while they make sense out of their lives.

People come to H.O.P.E. groups because of the hellfire of an acute illness like cancer or AIDS or the black hole of a chronic condition like depression, CFIDS, or chronic pain. The H.O.P.E. Group helps them identify their fear and replace it with hope through the discovery of the meaning, value and purpose in their life. Inner peace returns, and the experience of joy and happiness becomes possible, regardless of the ultimate course of the illness .

Every human being is unique. The Universe comes together in only one time and place for each one of us. A H.O.P.E. Group celebrates that uniqueness because it gives us the right to be individuals. We all share a quality of “human-ness” helps us to overcome feelings of “specialness” that only serve to separate us. The law of returns reassures us that as we nurture the wonder of each other, we nurture the wonder of our individual selves.

H.O.P.E. Groups are highly effective means for people to face challenges of all kinds because they create synergy, the ability of minds to work together and create far more than they can when working apart. Research shows us that the challenge of disease responds favorably to group work. It shows us that children grow and develop wonderfully in diversified groups. It shows us that industry grows best out of group process.

Health is more than just a state of being-free-of-disease. Though being-free-of-disease can imply the existence of health, health is being-wholly-alive! Indeed, the root meaning of the word, health, implies both wholeness and holiness! To us, health is a natural condition of all of living things. H.O.P.E. Groups help people focus on health by critically examining the process and meaning of their lives. We know that it is possible to be healthy even when disease is present. Conversely, it is possible to be unhealthy even when there is no recognizable disease! Everyone has likely met someone who is an example of one or the other condition.

Each one of us is capable of finding health because it is our natural state. Furthermore, we believe that no one else can heal us but ourselves, though others can help in many ways. We believe that “fixing” is not helping. We heal through the power of our own inner resources, and the work of helpers is to assist in the recovery of those resources.

We have learned in H.O.P.E. to take the problems of our past as they present themselves and create possibilities from them. We have seen that some people perceive that their disease represents an unresolved problem in their life. We accept such a belief, but we do not try to force people into such thinking, for it will create guilt in already unhappy people. Guilt is a harmful and restrictive state of mind that always fosters fear. Creating guilt is contrary to our beliefs and purposes. We work to release the guilty past, and to change a fearful future into hope. We have the belief that all of our life experiences have value. With this attitude, H.O.P.E. groups foster the development of lives of balance and harmony. We foster our ability to love, which brings us into relationship with others and ourselves.

The person who helps group participants in the H.O.P.E. process is a guide. Each H.O.P.E. guide has had the experience of Circling the Soul, Coming Home to Your Self® and a full day of special instruction in the methods of guiding H.O.P.E. Groups. Circling the Soul, Coming Home to Your Self® is a process of discovering and implementing one’s soul’s intention through story-telling, taking a loving personal inventory, sharing these with a “small group” and creating and affirming the intention that rises out of this process. The story contains the important elements that shape one’s life. The inventory comprises one’s talent, temperament, intelligence(s), responsibilities, attachments, and core passion. The intention is the soul’s reason for coming into one’s form.

A H.O.P.E. guide works with proven methods of communication, listening, rapport building, image making, and the development of personal metaphors. S/he knows how to accept a person and his or her story without judgment. S/he is a student and practitioner of compassion, humbly accepting people for what they are and not what someone else thinks they might be. S/he may not be a facilitator in the true sense of the word because she may challenge the other to reach into the core of her or his being. S/he is a fierce, empowering protector of the individual’s right to be her or himself. S/he supports and defends the sharing, caring nature of the group, aware that these two qualities opens the door to a healing transformation of self. The typical guide assumes an active, helping role in a group; coaching and encouraging each participant toward the discovery of his or her own truth. H.O.P.E. guides are a part of the group themselves, modeling the work of being on the path of discovery and recovery. They find that this contributes to their health!

H.O.P.E. groups meet weekly for two hours. The meeting opens with a shared reading of The Golden Book. It contains the H.O.P.E. Group Opening, the context for the meeting; the Principles of Attitudinal Healing, twelve powerful, spiritual affirmations; and the H.O.P.E. Group Guidelines, a verbal agreement on the group’s conduct for the next two hours. The group then spends this time sharing their experiences and the thoughts and feelings they have about them. The guide helps the participants maintain their focus on The Golden Book. The last twenty to thirty minutes are sometimes spent in guided relaxation, according to the group’s inclination.

H.O.P.E. Groups are ongoing and remain open to new members. A group of from ten to fifteen participants creates meetings of six to twelve on a regular basis. Groups have decided to split when they have exceeded these numbers.

The groups discuss whatever develops as a matter of group consensus. As open attendance brings about fluctuations in group size and mix, so the agenda changes from meeting to meeting. The founder’s experience in a Quaker college and later as a member of the Religious Society of Friends leads us to believe in the spontaneous development of a “sense of the meeting” for each session. We are continuously pleased and surprised to see how often it appears that a particularly important topic comes up when just those who need to talk about it are present in the meeting.

Another Quaker practice gives profound support to the H.O.P.E. Group relationships…the “clearness committee.” Quakers have used the clearness committee to conduct pastoral affairs since their founding in the middle of the 17th-century. A clearness committee comes together at an individual’s request in order to address a concern. (It is fair to say that everyone in a H.O.P.E. Group has a concern.) The committee consists of a small group of supporting acquaintances whose role is to listen, to ask questions for clarification, to reflect on what is heard without judgment, criticism, or advice; and to affirm the convener, knowing that s/he has, inside her or him, the answers s/he seeks.

The prime directive for H.O.P.E. Group function has two parts: the first is, Primam, non nocere; “First of all, do no harm.” We conduct our groups in complete confidentiality and mutual care, consideration, and support. (If a breach of confidence takes place, the guide knows to allow the mistake once, but to point out that a repeat will result in the individual being asked to leave the group.) The second part is, “Do good; benefit someone.” So, clearness committee practices are perfect for H.O.P.E. Groups.

H.O.P.E. groups create an attitude of care and love that nurtures valuable, close relationships. Many participants find that their H.O.P.E. experience creates an enthusiastic anticipation of each meeting. There is so much much humor, including the gallows kind, in a H.O.P.E. group that when new people ask a receptionist where the H.O.P.E. group is meeting, they are told, “Just follow the sound of the laughter!”

We encourage participants to develop comprehensive personal health programs. There is evidence that “alternative” methods of healing such as nutrition, massage, acupuncture, therapeutic touch, energy work in its many forms, yoga, and astrology actually complement conventional medical therapies. We keep track of individual experiences with these methods, and share these experiences on an anecdotal basis. Our groups have invited many special therapists and authors to speak to them. H.O.P.E. encourages these activities.

We do not look at a H.O.P.E. group as a conventional form of counseling or psychotherapy. We believe that every guide is an active participant in his or her own group. With this attitude, we invite gifted individuals from various backgrounds to become guides. We do not consider it necessary for a potential guide to have taken specialized counseling training. We require intelligence, compassion, caring, concern, and, above all, love to guide our groups. All those who run H.O.P.E. groups are motivated to help people develop the ultimate personal realization that life has meaning, purpose, and value.

You can see that a H.O.P.E. group can be started anywhere. People who want to do something about their futures can be found in schools, hospitals, businesses, prisons, churches, and government. In virtually every group there are potential guides. We seek the intuitive, caring, concerned and thoughtful listener to whom others turn because s-he believes in them. This person must trust that the present and the future can make sense, and be willing to openly and confidently share that belief with others.

H.O.P.E.'s work grew out of Ken Hamilton’s study of the experience of the entrepreneur and radio personality, Earl Nightingale. When he was twelve years old, Earl began a lifetime study of the essence of success. He and Lloyd Victor Conant founded the Nightingale-Conant Corporation in 1960 to disseminate this knowledge. Hamilton began his study of Earl’s work in 1975. He saw that these principles of success could benefit his surgical patients. From the outset, they were accepted and applied with wonderful effects. He knows that they contributed greatly to his successful surgical practice.

By the mid 1980’s, the psychological effects of this work led Hamilton to study counseling. He worked with a gifted psychiatrist, Barry Wood, MD. Through his tutor’s experience with alcoholism and cancer, he was introduced to Twelve-Step group work and the work of Bernie Siegel, MD. Siegel had developed very successful support groups in New Haven, CT, and had written an excellent book about them called, Love, Medicine and Miracles. Ken read this book and met Bernie at one of his Psychology of Illness and Art of Healing workshops.

Siegel spoke at length about his support groups, which called themselves Exceptional Cancer Patients groups. He disliked having to call people patients or label them as cancer. He stated that he had wished to call the groups “HOPE” groups, but no one could figure out a good acronym for the letters. He believed that he was not to use the word unless he could develop the acronym. His belief was a gift, as we shall see.

One month after meeting Siegel, Hamilton encountered the “Attitudinal Healing” work of Jerry Jampolsky MD at another workshop and through reading Jerry’s Love is Letting Go of Fear. All of these experiences led Ken to see the potential for a support group in his own surgical practice, and a small, enthusiastic group of people joined him on February 12, 1987. They chose to call the group a H.O.P.E. Group, and, in response to Siegel’s challenge, created the acronym at its second meeting! H.O.P.E.’s ideas have caught on, and now the people have come who will help develop and disseminate them.

We in H.O.P.E. have come to know that this unique work can be taught and it must be taught. Certain people who work in the field of education, counseling and health have joined H.O.P.E. to develop the methods of teaching these skills to others. Those we teach will then become guides for H.O.P.E. groups of their own. We have developed and implemented an effective training program. We plan to have the program accredited by one of our Maine colleges.

We believe that the majority of humans can come to the realization that all things can make sense. This is our simple message. It is complete with extremely effective methods for reaching its understanding. The methods have withstood the test of centuries of human experience, and they are summarized by Earl Nightingale in a gift that he gave to all those who knew him. He said: “I have three things for your success; a Formula, a Gold Mine, and a Word. The Formula is, ‘You become what you think about.’ The Gold Mine is ‘ The Mind’, and the Word is ‘Attitude’.”

H.O.P.E. says that to replace fear with hope is the fundamental attitudinal shift that leads to health, which is basic to all of us…a universal birthright. This basic shift in our consciousness transforms us. H.O.P.E. groups facilitate the shift and the transformation. The experience is profound, healthy, happy, and joyful for all those who participate in H.O.P.E.’s group meetings.

From the Ken Hamilton Archives -- Posted by Stephen D. Thompson