Excellent write up I found this really interesting, especially the budget deficit section.

I loved this, thank you for writing it!

Thanks for following along! <3

😂❤️🌲🚀

Thank you, I appreciate the kind words.

I had a "🔅" emoji in the title, which is my own personal symbol for this line of thought. Turns out an emoji in the title is a good way to immediately get downvoted through the floor and ruin your day 😅.

And I was in Iveland!  I'm back in Australia now writing up my thoughts, but I'd like very much to return. It was a beautiful country.

The site looks and feels amazing, great work!

Thank you for the kind words 😊

re developing the case clinic format we use, I was lucky enough to receive a case clinic at a microsolidarity workshop, so I've basically just been trying to re-create the experience I had for others. Beyond that it's just been following the PDF / trial and error 😅

You're right to home in on step 2, I think it's the most powerful / important part of the process.

A typical response might be something like "when you opened saying X, I felt strong empathy for you, because I've gone through something similar. And I really liked the word you used to describe it, because I've never had a term for that feeling before. And when you mentioned your family did X I felt really angry and defensive for you, that sounded really horrible. And now I feel a lot of gratitude that you shared what you did, because I know how vulnerable that can be." and then they might move into sharing images or metaphors that came to them to help contextualise / understand the experience. I've found the words aren't as important as embodying and displaying the emotions I was feeling, and opening up so the case bringer can see how it's affected me.

What motivates this reflection step is what I think what motivates the case clinic format generally, which is in essence to give people the experience of communicating something going on with them that they can't communicate elsewhere. 

Everyone experiences a big multi-faceted emotional issue at some stage in life, and many of us are  working through at least one at any point in time. Most people find conversation useful to bring all the relevant emotions and thoughts into conciousness at once, but struggle to find spaces where they can do this because:

a. They feel they don't have the licence to talk to peers for 20 minutes straight about themselves

b. The listeners pay inadequete attention (not holding the entire context in their head, just the past couple sentances)

c. The listeners feel uncomfortable holding the problem and try to give advice to resolve that tension

d. The listener did understand, but fails to appreciate the speaker requires active confirmation that they were understood, and to know how they've affected the listener.