Originally Posted by
zenchaser 
I've never found meetings to be especially helpful to me.... I find sharing to be awkward, I can never organize my thoughts right and just end feeling stupid and like I wished I hadn't opened my mouth. Maybe if people could share and then get some feedback from others.... but just saying something and then that's it always felt kind of useless to me, like nothing gets resolved so what's the point? But I respect everyone's journey, to each their own.
When I first joined AA, the chair of discussion groups used to give a little feed back to each speaker. Perhaps a word of appreciation or encouragement. It seemed a nice thing to do and it felt like someone had actually been listening to what was said.
Then they put me in the chair, and I found another benefit was I had to listen intently to try and come up with some kind of constructive comment after each share. I am sure I said many daft things, as I did not know much at the time, but it all seemed to work ok. There was a lot of love and understanding in the group.
I miss that feature of the old meetings. I left town for a few years and came back to what you were talking about Zen. Like speaking into a vacuum. And if somoene said something really helpful and I mentioned the sharer by name, boy the dirty looks I got. I think that is why in recent years I have come to prefer litterature study groups where we seem to be able to share experience and knowledge much more freely.