Throughout the process of group as a class, each class member experienced and learned about the life of groups in a counseling environment. The class provided many opportunities to better understand the development of groups whether it be from the leader perspective or as a member. In this paper, I will analyze the group process of the class as a group, the co-leader experience, and the T-group. This class was interesting in learning about groups through doing group work. Here's the reflection and I had and I really have grown as a therapist in group therapy.
Group
Group work plays an important role in counseling and provides more opportunity for social learning and offers a diversity of perspectives. Before this class I was unaware of the how groups really work, and this class taught me about the pros and cons of group work. Groups might create more challenges by having less control than individual therapy and more difficulties in maintaining confidentiality, but also have valuable benefits of providing commonality, increasing awareness, being cost-effective, and helping members practice interpersonal skills with one another. Group development is how the group interacts, structure relationships, and learn their roles. The stages of group was a reoccurring theme to this class explaining the time frame of how a group might develop, the themes they might experiences as well as issues the groups might face. There are 5 stages of the group including forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. The forming stage is all about looking to the leader for guidance and direction, to move from this stage to storming the members must relinquish comfort and move toward risk on conflict. The storming stage is defined by conflict and finding their place in the group, to move from this stage to norming members need to enter a problem-solving mentality. Norming is all about cohesion and the members of the group are interacting and sharing, to move from this stage to performing members need to reach interdependence. The performing stage does not always take place, but when it does it is the most productive time in the group. The last stage is adjourning and ends the group relationship.
Class as a group
The overall class as a group had a different atmosphere than either co-leader experience or the class T-group. The education about the group helped members understand the importance of each stage and flow more easily through the stages. The group members already had time together, and while each student did not know everything about one another, there was already a level of comfort between members. I believe the forming and storming stage only took one class just to become oriented to new assignments and processes of all members. The members of the group were all student and the leaders were both professors, which is a normal process and I believe little discomfort took place overall with this group structure.
One of the first interventions we did as a group was to create a symbol for self and for each member to place it on a piece of paper with a circle on it. This was a very symbolic representation of each member finding their place in the group and also members engaging in active acknowledgment of other members, which was the start of the norming stage. I personally came into the semester with low motivation, so my conflict in this class had to do with the low motivation of wanting to come. I could relate this to testing the group and within the next class, I believe the members and myself, moved into a problem-solving mentality overall with the activities provided. The stages for the group as a class seemed to move at an accelerated rate. I would say after 5 classes all members wherein the performing stage, this is also when we started the co-leader experiences where every member had a level of unity with working as a team to help and learn about specific interventions and populations. As the group progressed each member became more confident in sharing the art created as well as discussing further into the art directives.
Co-leader Experience
The performing stage was reached by the co-leader experience part of the class, where members worked independently with one another and also lead and participated in subgroups. The needs of the group were constantly changing due to different leaders in each group as well as different subjects and populations for those groups. Members where most productive at this time and we all had an understanding that these groups were about learning and having a bit of fun as well.
It is interesting to note the communication in some groups compared to others. The groups where members were more verbal and conversed in the session created a more welcoming environment to share at the end. The groups that had little interactions with one another created an environment with little sharing about artwork or personal experience. It was interesting to see the differences between groups and how the characters within the group could help or hinder the cohesion, participation, and comfort of the group. Some co-leader groups experience members that took on specific roles. The groups that included monopolist or silent clients caused discomfort in the sessions and while it was fun to play the part as a member, as a leader it was definitely a learning experience of how one might deal with those specific roles’ members might take on the group. The best groups ended up being the ones where everyone played themselves, creating a more cohesive environment. It was also interesting to see how specific interventions also impacted the group. In one of the groups I lead, we prompted an art intervention to represent anxiety, which all members participated in, but when we processed the artwork, we struggled to bring the clients back to a learning or comforting ending of the session. This leadership intervention was a success, but while practicing we also found out we need to add some steps to make the intervention a more successful one. As a leader, the pressure was on to make an interesting intervention and do a good job as the leader. This pressure was mostly from myself wanting to do something that was a success. The overall experience helped me learn what my style might be in a group and also that I will make mistakes and it's best to do this with a group who are also learning. The role as a member was an interesting one, I might offer advice for future class members to make members play themselves to reduce some extra goofiness and chaos.
Class T-group
This experience consisted of class members participating in a group outside of class with the focus on the ‘here and now.’ The group process allowed members to practice art therapy intervention that help participants focus on thoughts, perceptions, and observations in the present. At the beginning of the group, all member introduced self and checked in with a question asking each member ‘if they were a weather forecast what you would be’. This intervention helped the beginning process of group development. Overall members have reached the performing stage in the class but for this group, it seemed to go through the stages again. In this T- group experience, it was a little different due to having someone outside of our professors leading us. We had to learn the leaders’ style and get comfortable with sharing with a different leader than normal.
I would say we moved through the stages quickly, the forming, storming, and norming stages were completed with the first intervention of creating a college and representing oneself as an animal in a certain environment. When we were processing the artwork, the performing stage was present with other members interacting with each other and focusing on problem-solving from other members relating and sharing to the leader explaining what she would work with the client on next. The second intervention had two parts, one creating with pastels life with challenges and the second part is life without those challenges. The last intervention was to create a gratitude box, each member also randomly selected another and wrote someone encouraging on it. This was the first time experiences the adjourning stage where we truly had closure in the group process and had an ending that felt finished. The use of art interventions used in this group deepened the experience for me and it was the first time in a while I created and had emotional connection to what I created. For each intervention, members each had a specific time to process and examine themselves and relate to others. One moment was when my college wolf was used to explain another artwork but for completely different reasons. It was interesting to see where people were through simple art tasks. The final gratitude box also brought everyone together by adding encouragement to the member's relationships.
This whole group included a different experience of self-disclosing, risk-taking, and trust. It was interesting to go through the group and hear what the leader might do with a client based on the work we created. It gave me an insight into how her mind worked and how might I learn from her. She showed many great examples of self-disclosure without going too deep. Self-disclosure is something I am now sure any groups in the co-leader group successfully completed and if we did, it was not discussed. In the co-leader groups we all experienced risk-taking because we where stepping out of what we know and trying to be successful in a group setting. In the T-group environment, I would say we experience a different type of risk-taking, being more vulnerable than we might be in class. I found myself opening up more in the art I created and had more trust in the members around me. We all had to come into this experience on a Sunday, which was inconvenient, but we made it worth it by increasing cohesion and trust overall.
If I were to facilitate a group similar to the T-group, I would have the leader back again. I believe her insight helped us as a future art therapist and gave us insightful responses in relation to the artwork created. I might change the experience date to be on one of the scheduled classes but in a way, having the T-group be a whole day helped connect with other members and also created a more meaningful environment. The leader style was also relaxed and educational which I believe worked for me personally, having it be a real group with those who we already know and will continue to know made it hard to think of it as an actual group experience other than educational. The leader mixed the education with the personal and it made the experience more useful and created a deeper experience for me. I took risks in what I shared even though she mentioned not being a requirement. I found myself opening up more with this relaxed style and the here and now allowed me to connect deeper with myself and to others in the group that I had not before.
Conclusion
The group class overall created many different and valuable experiences that helped me really understand group development and dynamics. Getting to see the many different leader styles provided a variety of ways to that I might approach group while also learning from mistakes that I and other made. The experience from the group as a class, the co-leader experience, and the T-group experience really solidified knowledge about the life of groups and while I have learned so much, I still have so much to learn about implementing group and what interventions to use and why.
References
Gladding, S. T. (2020). Groups: a counseling specialty. Hoboken, NJ: Pearson.
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