Growth Games

We were made to do some growthgames in class for the purpose of improving cohesion within my class as there is quite a noticable segregation within my class. And for the obvious that we would in fact use these growth games within practice especilly when running groups.

During these games it became quite clear who the dominent characters were within the class and who are quite comfortable with being manipulated by these characters. I come from a background that has made me a very independant person and for this reason I often
express my feelings when I feel manipulation is taking place, however some people do not take well to this as they are hard headed.

Our first growth game was a survival game.We were told we were all on a cruise liner and the ship is about to sink, only 5 people can go into the lifeboat so from our group we should choose 5 people who will go aboard the lifeboat.

I found people came up with poor excuses and it came down to a popularity competition. People within my group would not consider logical thinking, and disregarded a lot of things that were being said. It came down to two people deciding who would be chosen and totally taking over. I decided at that point to choose my battles and decided to let them. In the end people were chosen because they couldnt swim and the rest of us could (like in realisty the rest of us could swim back to shore and fight off sharks and death  by drowning - yip thats realistic....NOT) but since people wont think logically in such a situation anyways who cares.

The second session of growth games included games such as talisman, Have you ever, whoosh whoosh woah, and zip zap zop, as well as others. Although I did not have the opportunity to do the growth game I was assigned to do I did find that with the second session more logical thinkng was used and people were more realistic with their answers.

The game have you ever involves a person asking questions of have you ever done this or that, and everyone who has done that specific thing will go to the centre of the circle and find a partner, and if there is one person left over without a partner. This person will then ask the next question....

I found this game united my class a little (not much, but any improval is good improval). People saw that we  all have similar experiences in life, so why should you judge and stereotype by your own superficial assumptions of the person. We are meant to be training to be therapists and we are always told that we should not take our client one dimentionally but take them with a holistic approach. So then why do we treat our colleagues with this narrow minded concepts? Do we not all use the saying theres more than meets the eye? So why do we so easily fall into this trap?

It definitely gives you something to think about.... So lets see what lessons the next set of growth games can show us.