Trust Games

I remember, once upon a time, probably about 1995 I was sitting with a group of friends in GCSE English class. We were the bright kids/the ones who actually made an effort to get on with work and so of course we'd finished our assignment (a piece of discussion about Macbeth I think) about 1/2 way through the class. We were a pretty tight group and so we decided on a bit of an experiment. We all took a piece of scrap paper for each other person in the group and then for each person you wrote something you admired about that person and one thing that annoyed you about them. Then we passed the papers back to the person they were about. We then went round the table reading the papers one by one and discussing them. The only things that I can remember of mine now were that my best friend was annoyed by the fact that I never covered my mouth when I cough and that another person in the group said that they really admired the fact that I was good at teaching other people, especially in maths. There was no obligation for the person who'd written each comment to identify themselves although we all knew each others handwriting well enough to guess most of them and it usually became obvious in the discussions. In general the annoyances were the ones which raised most discussion with both sides putting their point of view such as it was (in my case, it had just never occurred to me how unhygienic it was to just go for it) and how it could be made better, often with movement from both sides. The strongest impression I had from that afternoon though was that no-one felt threatened by the annoyances or got hurt and upset even though some of them could have been quite serious (one friend was told that it was really annoying that he always borrowed money and then forgot about it - he'd pay you back if you asked but never off his own bat) and we actually came out of the exercise feeling like a tighter group and all said it had been positive. Part of it was that it was lovely to see the things that others admired in you (which you might not have realised before) and part of it was the very positive way that the annoyances were dealt with even though we hadn't really done a lot of planning about it beforehand - it was all just spur of the moment. It was only looking back on it that we realised how risky it had been as an exercise. It could easily have ended with us never speaking to each other again but instead we all felt closer. Although I have been tempted sometimes to suggest it to other groups of friends, having thought about it, I'm not sure I would do it again - it is very risky really - but it was a fantastic bonding experience for us as a group and I do sometimes wish I had the courage to risk it again.