Circles
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Join Date: Mar 2008
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Circles
Defining Relationships, Trust, Talk, Touch
Those of you, who know me, other than through ______, know I work with adults who have disabilities. One of my challenges was how to define the shades of “gray” to people who function best with black and white. I stumbled upon a curriculum while at a conference, and fell in love with it. In fact, I use the concept myself to help me place people when they are difficult to define.
With the social networking now coming into our society, we must be ever diligent to realized how much we share, with whom we share it, and should we meet? This is good food for thought.
The Circles Curriculum is about defining people in ones life by layers (like an onion). The Circles teaches social distance and levels of intimacy through the use of six color coded concentric circles. For those of you who did not like geometry: Two or more circles which have the same center point and are nested within each other Here is the link: Sex Ed & Relationships Programs - Circles Curriculum - James Stanfield Company Each colored circle circle represents behaviors, feelings, and actions appropriate to the distance from the center, or self. The level of intimacy between people as well as the way to touch, talk to, and trust one another. Students learn relationship boundaries and relationship specific behaviors; for example, it's okay to hug your mother, but it's not okay to hug the mail carrier.
We start at the center of the onion or circle with the Purple Private circle, We are the only person in our purple Circle. Maybe if we have a trusted soul mate we may let them into our purple circle from time to time, but our purple circle is what we must take care of.
The purple circle is surrounded by a blue circle. If it is a healthy family, they are in the blue circle, best friends can be in the blue circle. It is the blue circle where we give close hugs and full trust. If we have an unhealthy family, we may move those family members to another color category.
The Green Circle surrounds the blue and purple. The Green Circle is where we place Good Acquaintances, Or, people we would give a far away hug to.
The Yellow Circle is next. These are people we would give a handshake to. They are new acquaintances, business associates, or people who are not really in our personal life. They may be in our business life, employment life, or are friends of friends.
The orange circle is for people we are familiar with but don’t really talk to. They may be people we wave at.
The Red Circle is for strangers. We do not acknowledge them.
The Circles Curriculum is something that we can adapt to our lifestyle to define our boundaries in relation to how much information we give, who we give it to, and who we trust.
When we teach the Circles Curriculum at work, we actually place peoples pictures in the circles. In order to make the Circles really work, if we lose a relationship, we move the picture to another level. For example, if a good friend hurts us, they may become an acquaintance. Or we may gain a good friend from an acquaintance status.
Those of you, who know me, other than through ______, know I work with adults who have disabilities. One of my challenges was how to define the shades of “gray” to people who function best with black and white. I stumbled upon a curriculum while at a conference, and fell in love with it. In fact, I use the concept myself to help me place people when they are difficult to define.
With the social networking now coming into our society, we must be ever diligent to realized how much we share, with whom we share it, and should we meet? This is good food for thought.
The Circles Curriculum is about defining people in ones life by layers (like an onion). The Circles teaches social distance and levels of intimacy through the use of six color coded concentric circles. For those of you who did not like geometry: Two or more circles which have the same center point and are nested within each other Here is the link: Sex Ed & Relationships Programs - Circles Curriculum - James Stanfield Company Each colored circle circle represents behaviors, feelings, and actions appropriate to the distance from the center, or self. The level of intimacy between people as well as the way to touch, talk to, and trust one another. Students learn relationship boundaries and relationship specific behaviors; for example, it's okay to hug your mother, but it's not okay to hug the mail carrier.
We start at the center of the onion or circle with the Purple Private circle, We are the only person in our purple Circle. Maybe if we have a trusted soul mate we may let them into our purple circle from time to time, but our purple circle is what we must take care of.
The purple circle is surrounded by a blue circle. If it is a healthy family, they are in the blue circle, best friends can be in the blue circle. It is the blue circle where we give close hugs and full trust. If we have an unhealthy family, we may move those family members to another color category.
The Green Circle surrounds the blue and purple. The Green Circle is where we place Good Acquaintances, Or, people we would give a far away hug to.
The Yellow Circle is next. These are people we would give a handshake to. They are new acquaintances, business associates, or people who are not really in our personal life. They may be in our business life, employment life, or are friends of friends.
The orange circle is for people we are familiar with but don’t really talk to. They may be people we wave at.
The Red Circle is for strangers. We do not acknowledge them.
The Circles Curriculum is something that we can adapt to our lifestyle to define our boundaries in relation to how much information we give, who we give it to, and who we trust.
When we teach the Circles Curriculum at work, we actually place peoples pictures in the circles. In order to make the Circles really work, if we lose a relationship, we move the picture to another level. For example, if a good friend hurts us, they may become an acquaintance. Or we may gain a good friend from an acquaintance status.
Thought I'd share it here because it has helped me to look more closely at how/when/why I let people into my "inner circles" & maybe someone else can learn from it too. It helped me see that I keep people away most of the time which is something I've been trying to change this past year or two AND that I tend to let men get closer faster than women. Now, I need to look at the reasons why I do that. In the future, I hope this can help me decide when to trust - and let people in - and when it's good for me to keep people in those "outer circles". It's all about healthy boundaries for me.
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