Typical learning for participants includes:

• Increased emotional intelligence
  • New perspectives on their own and others behavior
  • Greater ability to express themselves and understand others
  • Enhanced self-control, less reactiveness
  • Changed attitudes
  • Improved self-concept
  • Greater self-expression
  • New behaviors (behavior modification)
• Major growth in personal empowerment
  • Increased willingness to take responsibility for one's choices and actions, act in responsible manner
  • Greater ability to advocate on one's behalf, greater willingness and ability to get one's needs met
  • Increased self-sufficiency, reduced dependency on others
  • Increased ability to engage others meaningfully on one's own terms
• Expanded array of choices
  • Better coping skills to deal with life's challenges and help family and community members deal with theirs
  • Reduced conflict, increased skill at conflict resolution
  • More harmonious home environment, less conflict, more nurturing of children
• Relating to others in a way that enhances their ability to become self-reliant, more effective in their functioning
  • Becoming a positive influence on family and community members who suffer from emotional problems and trauma

This process is a preventive approach to greater personal, family and social problems

• It can reduce the incidence of mental illness by providing people
  • The opportunity to express themselves more effectively
  • A space in which they can be listened to and heard
  • Increased coping skills.
• It can contribute to reducing the family dynamics that cause estrangement and alienation, leading people into violence and abuse, gang membership, anti-social behaviors, truancy, substance abuse, and the juvenile and adult justice system.