Session 4

The Green Far Away Hug Circle (Close Friends)

The Green Far Away Hug Circle includes your learner’s relatives and closest friends. In this session, we will focus on close friends.

The three “Ts” for the Green Far Away Hug Circle are:

• TALK. Your learner can talk to close friends about personal news, family news or current events.
• TRUST. Your learner can trust close friends not to hurt them on purpose and to help them if necessary.
• TOUCH. Your learner can give close friends a far away hug that is affectionate and friendly, but not body to body and shorter than a hug with people in the Blue Big Hug Circle.

Concepts:

• The Circles concept uses different colored circles to represent physical and emotional closeness to your learner. It gets a little more complicated as you move away from the inner circles relating to “self,” “family” and “relatives.” We find that learners often treat all “friends” in the same way, even though some friendships are close and some are not. To help your learner decide whether a friend is close enough to be placed in the Green Far Away Hug Circle, you can use the Six Deciding Factors discussed in Session 3.

The Six Deciding Factors are:

1. 1. HOW LONG have I known the person?
   2. HOW OFTEN do I see the person?
   3. HOW MANY common bonds do I have with the person?
   4. HOW WELL do I know the person?
   5. HOW DEEP are my feelings for the person?
   6. HOW SAFE am I with the person?

• Figuring out which “friends” belong in the Green Far Away Hug circle may be a little confusing to learners because:
  • As a society, we use the term “friend” very liberally. We don’t often make a distinction between close friends, friends and acquaintances. For the Green Far Away Hug Circle, we want to emphasize that this circle is only for relatives and “close,” “closest” or “best” friends.
  • In the world of social media, almost every platform refers to online connections as “friends” when in fact, many of these “friends” are actually complete strangers. For the Green Far Away Hug Circle, we want to stress that this circle is not for anyone we have not met in person.

Learning Objectives

Participants will learn/understand:

• Which close friends are in the Green Far Away Hug Circle
• The three “T” rules for the Green Far Away Hug Circle
• The sign for the Green Far Away Hug Circle