What would a group do for me?
The truth is, people need groups. They need places where they can work on solving painful problems without feeling shunned, humiliated, and embarrassed. They need others to encourage and support them. They also need a place where they can find solid, credible psycho-educational content with proper guidance on how to apply it. Being in group can help you:
- Get different perspectives by seeing how other people might see you or aspects of your situation
- Put words on experience, get your mind around a situation, or express yourself more accurately and clearly
- Receive, tolerate, and integrate feedback about how you come across.
- Take risks on being vulnerable, in pain, and human
- Assess what you might be doing to keep people away when you are in pain.
- Identify barriers to intimacy and connection.
- Clarify assumptions that others may form that may not be accurate
- Identify and talk about what might be threatening or hard to talk about
- Avoid avoiding
- Take emotional risks in group (which may include sharing, speaking up, saying things that are difficult to say, and talking about what’s not being talked about)
- Identifying what you want out of group, and what you can’t seem to get in your life outside of group
- Moderate, balance, and reciprocate time in the group
- Contribute meaningfully
- Stop trying to do this all by yourself
- Be challenged in ways that you will never be challenged individually