Mates Support Group Starts After RISE

Power of RISE progamme shines from start

“One guy opened up and I found he had separated. I never knew, and they’d been together since they were kids. I was like ‘bro!’”

Jared* came to RISE because he wanted to save his relationship and keep his family together.

“I was hungry for what RISE had to offer, because I really wanted to fix our relationship, I wanted to keep my family together.”

Jared and his partner had grown apart after the birth of their son.

“We disconnected a lot and it just started getting a bit nasty,” he says. “We started drifting apart and putting all our love into our boy and at times we would unleash on each other.”

It was a difficult transition to parenthood for various reasons and after two years of trying to keep things together, they weren’t communicating well and were living separate lives.

Things came to a head one day when Jared lost control.

“It was the first time I couldn’t handle it and I just got enraged and I smacked the couch and it broke. I scared my boy, and then her, and it was horrible. It was probably the worst feeling I’ve had in my life. It was huge,” Jared says.

“I come from quite an abusive upbringing – and unfortunately, I snapped once, I didn’t hurt her or anything like that. When I get angry, I go quiet.”

Jared says he and his partner got counselling which worked well, but then when a friend told them about her experience at RISE and how it had really helped, they decided it was something they also wanted to try.

After reaching out a RISE Clinician suggested he join the men’s group as “that is where the magic happens”.

He was initially wary about the group – and his family were too. They thought he would be working with scary guys who had to do the course, but that wasn’t the case at all.

“You soon realise it’s just people of all ages going through shit and some of the stuff they are experiencing is similar to what you are dealing with.

“There were a few people in the group who had had similar upbringings to me and we related to each other in certain areas. So that was cool.”

There was an older man who was honest and supportive who set the tone for the group.

Jared says the “power of the group” shone from the start, and he surprised himself by opening up the first time he attended.

On top of the friction with his partner, at the time he was struggling with his business and finances so being able to talk about what he was going through was a big release.

“I couldn’t talk about it without crying and everything came out …. everyone kind of got around me and helped me out … I was like this is cool.”

It was the first time he had shared how he had felt over the past three years. Being vulnerable and talking through his struggles with strangers was super powerful. Jared says he started wondering why it was easier to talk to people he didn’t know, especially as he has always had a strong close friend group, who looked out for each other. It didn’t make sense.

“I don’t know why I thought I couldn’t talk to my family and friends.”

After attending the RISE programme he decided to start sharing that he was “going through a bit of shit” with his close mates, and all of a sudden his friends started opening up and sharing personal things.

“It was quite awesome because we could talk about situations that had happened with our partners and we shared how we handled it, or would ask questions like, ‘What do you reckon could be done here? … It basically turned into a RISE group situation.

“One guy opened up and I found he had separated. I never knew, and they’d been together since they were kids. I was like ‘bro!’”

Jared* says RISE has given tools to start articulating more about how he’s feeling and how to react, and that was huge.

Jared says the “power of the group” programme at RISE shone from the start, and he surprised himself by opening up the first time he attended. Photo: Pexels

Jared says it has opened up a safe place to talk about certain things, and they also have a support group over Messenger.

He has also learned a lot of communication tools at RISE, which have been hugely beneficial.

RISE Clinician Jamie told me that working with RISE would help give me “the tools to start articulating more about how I’m feeling and how to react, and that was huge.

“It’s been pretty awesome and that’s what I needed from RISE.”

One of the tools that helped was what he calls the good and bad triangle communication method. For example, if he was communicating using the bad triangle it would mean – someone gets angry, the other person gets defensive and things go round and round.

Communicating through the good triangle, they would have the argument, listen to each other and apologise and the situation would de-escalate, he says.

 “That was super helpful. I took it and tried it and it worked.”

Using the 1-10 anger scale to help recognise when things escalating and taking time out also helped, he says.

The course helped him reconnect with his partner which was huge, by getting them back to basic communication such as saying goodbye in the morning and kissing each other on the cheek and saying, ‘See you later.’

“We had kind of stopped doing those kinds of things because we were pissed off with each other and angry at the world.”

Jared says he also learned a lot about his own communication style – which typically was passive. He has learned to communicate in a more assertive way and get his point across without having to make himself smaller.

He was taught from a young age to be careful and apologise early by his mother.

“She was just trying to protect us because we are Māori and we are big guys.

“She was like, ‘You will be the first person they come to if there’s trouble’, and she was right.

“As a kid I had to be careful, and it also kept coming through as an adult. Just trying not to be intimidating to people – be a smaller person in the room.”

Jared says learning about his communication style was a real eye-opener.

“I started noticing when someone bumped into me, I would apologise, and they would say, ‘Oh it’s not your fault, I bumped into you’.”

He has now changed his communication style and isn’t afraid to respectfully call things out and stand up for himself, a tool he also uses at work.

“It’s helped me stand up for myself but see that being treated in a certain way is not okay, and I was bottling it up and letting it loose.”

He is also proud to use the skills he used at RISE in parenting and found it has helped make things smoother at home.

“It’s been amazing for the connection between me and my son.

“We are having less moments with him losing the plot and struggling and it’s made things like getting him changed which used to take ages or putting him in the car easier. It’s been a massive positive.”

Jared says being able to come to group and talk about what had happened during the week and how he had dealt with situations was huge. He’s on a self-improvement journey now thanks to what he has learned at RISE.

“For me individually RISE has been amazing. RISE has hugely helped me become a much better and more confident self, and it is stuff that I fall back on now.”

*Not his real name