Monday night. Andy’s Man Club. A dozen blokes, maybe more, in a circle. Serious stuff gets said. Real stuff. And then it’s 9 o’clock, and everyone heads home.
Except it doesn’t always work like that.
Not for me, anyway. And from what I’ve heard, from other facilitators and even some members, not for others.
Sometimes whatever was said in that room follows me out to the car park. Sits in the passenger seat on the way home. Churns around for a day or two before my head moves on. I don’t think that’s a failure. It’s just what happens when you actually listen. When you actually care.
AMC training does flag it, to be fair.
Don’t take on other people’s baggage.
You’re a member first, facilitator second.
All true, all reasonable.
But there’s a gap between the theory and the reality of sitting in a room where men are offloading things they’ve probably never said out loud before. You can’t be present, genuinely present, and then flick a switch at nine o’clock like it’s a TV going on standby.
You take a handful of it home with you. That’s not a problem to solve, it’s just honest.
The bit I find harder to square is the contact stuff. AMC guidance is pretty clear:
- don’t do one-to-one chats with members,
- don’t use your personal Facebook profile where members can find you,
- keep yourself off the radar outside of sessions.
And I understand why, genuinely. It’s a safeguarding thing. It protects members, and it protects facilitators too. Nobody wants the support structure collapsing because one person tried to be everybody’s lifeline.
But. Small town. Louth. People know people. Off the radar is easier said than done.
“Oh, you’re the bloke who runs the community Facebook group.” “I know your face, you work at (fill in the blank).” “you’re the bloke who runs (fill in the blank)”.
Word gets around.
You don’t need to advertise your number, people find a way.
I wrote about this before, a fella’s partner contacted me because she’d seen something I’d shared about AMC. I ended up meeting him in the car park on a Monday night. That moment mattered. And it happened because I was reachable. Visible through my online work.
So then there’s the AMC Facebook profile thing. We’re encouraged to set up a separate Facebook profile specifically for AMC activity (contributing to Facebook’s duplicate and fake profile problem), so we’re not mixing our personal accounts with the closed groups.
Fine, makes sense.
But that profile is still contactable.
Someone can still drop you a message at 11pm on a Wednesday. The closed groups mean you’re carrying a bit of the week’s weight in your pocket wherever you go.
Boundaries matter. I know that and accept that.
At what point does the boundary actually hold?
I’m not having a go at AMC for this. Absolutely not.
The policies exist for good reasons, and on balance they’re probably right. But the edges are blurry, and I’m not sure every facilitator thinks hard enough about where their line is. Maybe I need to have a proper conversation with the area lead rather than sitting here picking it apart.
Or maybe I’m just overthinking it. (As if I’d do such a thing.)
Either way, this is just me, over a year as a regular sweeper, standing outside the door on a Monday night, making sure nobody has to walk in on their own if they can help it. It’s not a glamorous job. But I know my place, and I’m alright with that.