Rediscover the colors of the rainbow lives in Amami. Queer

Dialogue byKatya Parentewith gi

How many times have we happened to hear the need for a friendly voice, a comparison, a place where not to hear a fish out of water! If it happened there, if it happens to you, then the Amami Group. Queer It could be the one for you (in which AMA is forCar mutual help,It is for meMilan, city where they were born and are found, e QueerIt is for ... queer!).

To talk about it today there is already that, after the Lockdown, he created a group loves to split from any cultural reference and/or political activism, who had the only purpose of helping people who felt the need to understand each other and confront similar experiences.
Thus was born the group Love me. Queer In September 2022.

You tell us briefly about Amami. Queer?

The group was born to promote the development of healthy relationships with itself* and with other people. It aims to make members aware of the inner mechanisms that guide them in relating to other people but also to themselves.

In fact, each of us moves in life according to schemes learned and consolidated over time, from childhood to adulthood.
But the mechanisms that have protected us as children, often as adults prove to be dysfunctional and this emerges above all in the most "intimate" relationships, such as those with relatives, friends, partners and we stess* in fact.

The Amami.queer group, through free meetings, where each member share (if desired) experiences, emotions and sensations with the other participants, and meetings where "games" and "search" are made, helps individual people to understand their mechanisms and its own bias.

The WHO has already recognized the usefulness of the groups for years to face and overcome their problems in specific areas (there are AMA groups to overcome mourning, addictions, to support families of people with psychic inconveniences or LGBTQ people ...) .

The Amami group.Thier fully embraces WHO considerations and promotes self -esteem, motivated to change and stimulates the deepening and knowledge of relational problems, but above all encourages and promotes healthy sociality. In fact, I meet after meeting, friendships (and loves!) Are born and consolidated.

Why a group of mutual help?

In the landscape, there are several associations that deal with spreading queer culture and making activism, which is beautiful and useful, but there are no places where people can talk about themselves and can meet other people with their own experiences to deal with .

Many people who have no psychic inconveniences but who would have an utility in following a psychotherapy path, do not have the economic resources to be able to do it.

Other people, on the other hand, are doubtful about the usefulness of psychotherapy, therefore they need an intermediate step that shows them what they can wait for and if they are ready to look inside themselves.

The Amami group. Queer, although not a path of psychotherapy, is something similar that generally already leads a first benefit to those who participate, all at zero cost, since participation is free.

But in these years we have discovered that the Amami.queer group is also useful for those who have already done a psychotherapy path or is doing it, since the comparison with other people who live the same relational problems is very useful in addition to the path individual following with your own therapist.

And in fact many psychotherapists suggest their patients to follow car groups mutual thematic help in support of the therapeutic path. In fact, the group of car mutual aid, "imposing" to help others, stimulates the responsibility for its healing and develops self-help tools that will serve when psychotherapy is finished.

What is your user target?

The members of the group have a very varied age and a nucleus of constant participants are joined by participants who attend the group for a few meetings or for a few months.

The very nature of the AMA groups provides that there is a frequent exchange of members since, once the participant has "resolved" its "problem" or has understood how to manage it, leave the group definitively or for the period it considers necessary.
At this moment the age of the participants ranges from 35 to 60 years, but we have had (and we hope to still have) members between 23 and 28 years old.

They are people of any sexual orientation (homosexual, heterosexual, asexual, pansexual, demisexual ...) and of any gender identity (cisger, transgenda, genderfluid, non binary, agender ...), monogami or polymorosis.
They are people who have never done psychotherapy or who have been or are still in psychotherapy.
They are unemployed people, employed, freelancers, artists, believers, agnostic, atheism.

The only certain thing is that it is an a-political group, in the sense that within the group there is no mention of politics or political issues.

As far as we can agree that the staff are also political, in this space we limit ourselves to staff-intimate: introspection and discovery of the emotions and patterns with which we act in the world.

To talk about political themes there are many spaces in every city, especially in Milan, and we leave these topics to those spaces.
Being a group open to all people who want to understand each other and who want to do it through and thanks to other people, it is and will remain a very heterogeneous group.

Despite being a queer group, do not exclude hetero's participation. Are they relatives/friends of people LGBTQ+?

Queer theory refuses the existence of an orientation and an identity over time: a person has the right to self -determine in every phase of his life without an obligation to "pigeonhole" forever in a definition.
Today biology confirms that there is no 100% heterosexuality nor 100% homosexuality (bisexual/pansexual people are proof of it), in the same way there is no 100% male and 100% female (the Intersex people are proof of this) but each human being is a nuance between these two ends.

In this sense, our group is "queer": in the sense that it does not matter how today you define you, straight, omer, cis, trans ... what matters is that you want to improve your relationships with other people (relatives, friends, partner, colleagues ...), starting from the relationship with you.

We also wanted a safe place for LGBTQ+ people who want to take a path of awareness.
99% of the people who meet in Ama groups (but also in group therapies not thematic) are heterosexual people Cisgender.

This means that if a queer person decides to participate in one of these groups by talking about his own problem, the attention of most participants will be paid to his orientation or identity and not to the problem that the person is exposing.
Furthermore, for ignorance or prejudice, the most common answer you feel is to give is that it is homosexual/transgender because as a child* has had a trauma.

Nobody would dream of ever saying to someone who confides their trauma of the past "you are straight because you have undergone a trauma!".
This is because there is still the belief that homosexuality and transengent are pathological conditions and not simple variants of internosexuality and cisgendy.

We therefore inserted the word "queer" to "open" a safe space for LGBTQ+ people where you can confide without being judged, but not to "close" to cisgender heterosexual people.

We had to specify that heterosexual people are also allowed for the mere fact that most people think that the term "queer" is synonymous with LGBT person, while in truth it is precisely a current of thought that we know in Italy (in Unfortunately few) under the name of "transfeminism".
Obviously this does not exclude that if you are a relative person/friend/partner of LGBT+ people you cannot participate in our group meetings that are and will always be open to anyone who wants to even "try".

Talking about your problems is the first step to overcome them. What are the others?

In reality, talking "about one's problems is the second step.
The first step is to realize that you have a problem.
Most people, in relation to relational theme, "speak" of their problems without considering them "their own problems".
How many times do we hear "I found yet another human case!" Or "people are always bad/indifference towards me", and similar things? Practically always!

How many times do we hear "why do I continue to take an interest in problematic people?" Or "What leads me to stay in relationships where I don't receive anything in return?". Very rarely!
In the first statements there is a de -responsibility: I don't have a problem, they are the others who have a problem/who are the problem.
In this vision I do not have the control of what happens to me and therefore I am destined to always live the same situations because I canor from other people.

In the latest statements there is an awareness of awareness: I am responsible for what happens and therefore I can change it.
In the first case "I speak" of my problem but I don't know I have a "problem", in the second case I know I have a problem and that I have to do something to solve it.
So surely the promo is realizing that you have a problem.
The second is to talk about it with someone who can help me focus on it.

Here hardly friends and relatives can give us a real hand: the people who love us are the least capable of "seeing" and "recognizing" our dysfunctional mechanisms that lead us to live problematic, anxious and abusive situations.
In this case it is really true that "love makes blind".

Therefore talking about it with friends and relatives could be of relief but to receive concrete help, it is necessary to contact either to a professional (psychotherapist) or start attending a group of car mutual help, like our Amami.queer.

A* psychotherapist is certainly the most functional but also more demanding choice.

Participating in an AMA group is easier, at no cost and can be the first step to understand if we are ready* to face a healing path.
In fact, it must be said that our brain opposes a strong resistance to change, even if it is in a dysfunctional situation.

So it could be that with a thousand "excuses" sabotes us from the intention of turning to a professional (I don't have time, I have no money, I can do it as, it is not necessary, I don't know what to say ...). Since contacting a Psychotherapist means taking time and money, it may be useful to try first in a group loves what it means to "travel" inside your emotions and desires, before finding out that you are not ready and throw everything away (with the risk of not going back to us even in the future ).

Are you in contact with the most structured realities of the territory (I think of associations, ASL ...)?

As we said, the Amami.queer group was born disconnected from each associative structure precisely not to be associated (and not to be subjected) to logic of activism and politics.
Those who come to the group must know that they come to a place that has no type of political commitment, exactly like those who do psychotherapy do not know what orientation of polito/religious is L own* therapist.

We do not even have links with health facilities since the AMA groups have no health role and are not managed by healthcare professionals (psychologists/Psychotherapist) but they are self -managed groups by people who have a problem in common and want to help each other.

Being groups that people with psychiatric inconveniences/difficulties cannot access, territorial health facilities could not make use of Ama groups
Therefore the only way to be able to participate in our Amami.queer group is either on the advice of the* psychotherapist in cases where it deems it useful, or on a voluntary basis.
Our meetings are attended by invitation that it is forwarded via email to anyone who has recorded their e -mail address on our site www.amamiqueer.it.

Upon receipt of the email, you can decide to communicate your participation. The number of participants is always limited to a maximum of 15 people for reasons of space, but also to allow you to take a word (without prejudice to that it can also be participated by simply listening).

In any case, through our social networks it is possible to find out when we meet and see that many times we also meet for recreational-recreational activities because, as we said, one of the purposes of the Amami group. This is to promote sociality: to have healthy relationships you need to practice with relationships between people who have the same goal!

We thank you for the punctual answers he gave us. And, if you are from Milan or the hinterland and you need a safe place to open up and talk about you without fear of being judged, Amami.queer is the right place. On the site you can view the calendar of meetings.