Group Therapy 1 & 2

For this paper I will share my experience in a group counseling class.. These activities were fun due to having class members role playing and pretending to be the population we picked. We worked with another member in the class and created a group art therapy group for a specific population. Here are the reflections from the groups, hope you enjoy them.

Group #1

November 5, 2019

Candace Ressler and Kathleen Smith

The members present in this session were adolescents age 13-17 years old who suffer from anxiety. They met weekly at school in an after-school group that focuses on art-making and verbal communication. The chosen group approach was an art psychotherapy group with counseling components. Our art intervention prompted clients to draw their anxiety as if it was standing in front of them, in real life. The goal of this intervention was to help clients be able to express how their anxiety makes them feel and how it affects them. Another goal was for the client to get a release from their anxiety through the art-making. We chose those goals and directives because the adolescent age group often deal with anxieties and are capable of working on a cognitive/symbolic level. This level allows clients to symbolize things and like anxiety and also think critically about inner thoughts.

The therapists started the session by checking in with clients about how clients were and how the week went. Then clients were then asked to think about what their anxiety might look like. At the end of the session, we processed each client’s artwork but did not have a check-out task at the end. Overall the session went well. The clients were all able to follow the directive and most shared anxieties with the group. While the clients were a bit silly and enjoyed playing interesting roles, making the session entertaining and a bit distracting from what I believe actual roles may be. The processing of artwork at the end of the session required a more leading role of implementing coping tools to help clients rather than leaving them with vulnerabilities about anxiety at the end of the session.

The intervention was made by both leaders, with both agreeing on the population and direction of the session. I suggested using color pencils and Kathleen added using color pastels as well, giving clients two options or both. Using both color pencils and pastels did allow options for clients and gave the therapist an insight on those who might be more controlled based on what clients decided to use. While I brought up the population and presenting issues, Kathleen agreed and create the write up before the step of the group. I felt as though I did very little in preparing for the group compared to Kathleen, who took the lead while I took on a helper role. I learned that there will be times when working with a co-leader, that the leaders will move back and forth from the main leader to helper and vice versa. I believe Kathleen and I worked well with each other and while we struggle with the flow of the session we flowed well with ideas, intervention, and leadership roles.

All group members contributed to the group by sharing the final artwork they created, and the visual representation of the anxiety was helpful for members to discuss anxiety verbally. It was interesting to see the interaction between group members and how some were helpful while others may be hindering the group process. One pattern that developed was group talk on things that might have been inappropriate. In a real session it would be important to keep talking, in the group relevant to the topic and theme of the session, having the therapist ask members about anxieties or symptoms of anxiety to help them better represent their own creations. Some issues might have been the use of curse words and some members being offended by the use of this type of language in the group. This is another thing that I believe would be discussed in the beginning phases of the group when the members are learning the norms of the group and what is allowed and not appropriate.

During the session, it was hard to think of the class members as actual members of a counseling group. Everyone was very comfortable with each other and it was easy to be silly in each practice group. I am no actor, so when my friends or classmates are obviously acting out of character it is hard for me to not laugh and stay in a therapist role. In real life the pressures are different, and I know members are real people and I am capable of getting into a therapist role. I think the best practice group would be to play oneself and while I want to work with adolescents, it was not as I wanted it to be due to not being able to stay in character. If I could do the group again, I would work on my acting and be able to ignore my knowledge of my classmate's acting and continue on in a therapist role. I would also want to feel more confident and really establish the beginning, middle, and end of the session. At the end of the session, when members are sharing, I would also want to better help clients by working with the group to create coping skills that might help.

Group #2

November 19, 2019

Candace Ressler and Anna Kryvoruchenko

The members present in this session were widowed women who have lost their spouses in the last 5 years. The age of the women was 60 years old or older. The chosen group approach was an art as therapy group that focuses on art-making and the creative process which supports growth. A goal of the group is to begin a healthy grieving process surrounding the loss and to complete the process of letting go of the lost significant other. By implementing sand tray art intervention, the clients will be able to identify and show positive memories about the deceased loved one including previous positive experiences, positive characteristics, positive aspects of the relationship, and how these things may be remembered. Our rationale was to use the sand tray intervention to have clients tell a story about a positive memory and that this might be enjoyed by clients due to the easy task of working in the sand.

At the start of our session, we had every member introduce themselves and have a check-in. The main group task was introduced and before clients began, we decided to add an impromptu guided imagery to help clients think of a positive memory about the loved one they were grieving. We got the guided imagery idea from the group that went ahead of us and decided it would work with our session. We ended the session with each member telling their story and finished the session by letting the clients know they are strong and each journey through the grieving process will be different. Overall the session was creative in-process and intervention but did not go the way it was planned. The use of the sand tray ended up being an issue creating too much connection to the death of the loved one and created too much unintentional symbolism. Members also tended to focus on negative memories rather than positive memories changing the directive from the intended goal.

The intervention ended up having an impact on each client and the group as a whole due to the group being created to work through the grief of a lost loved one and the symbolic connection to death and being buried. The sand tray was an idea we wanted to use because of it being mentioned in an earlier class and wanting to step outside of normal art interventions. Anna also mentioned taking a sand tray class and we both were interested in practicing this intervention. Anna and I discussed many ideas for this group, and we ended up landing on using a sand tray with this population. The results did not end up being as I was expecting. I worked hard on the goal and objectives and cannot believe I missed how this intervention is not a good match for this population. I wanted to do more work on the preparation side for this group, due to not doing as much in the first group I co-lead. After Anna and I figured out what we were going to do, I worked on the background of our members. I looked up some potential issues and symptoms clients might face and specific objectives that go with the intervention. I learned I obviously need to think about more than goals and objectives, but to think about things that might affect the client in ways I might not even be aware of.

The storytelling process of the sand tray did help clients represent memory and some did open up more about their situation and also uncovered connections to the members in odd ways. The members were pretty intense in their backstories and again I believe this affected the outcomes of the overdramatized acting. I would say the connection between members was close helping them be verbal throughout the session. The use of sand tray helped depict a story and then help verbally connect stories to one another. Some themes in the group were the intertwining of lost loved ones. In this group, it seemed everyone was connected which could make a group more complicated. It would be important to keep confidentiality and remind the client of the importance of this aspect of the group. One specific issue was the use of sand when death was connected directly to the sand. Obviously, this was for comedic effect, but it is important to note the interventions connect and effects it could have on clients in unintentional ways.

This group was frustrating for me. I was planning to go into this practice group and staying in character in the session. When the group was started off by a member whose backstory and lost loved one death connected to sand directly, I could not handle it and lost the flow from the start. The sand tray becomes obviously an incorrect intervention for this population, but the extra stories of intertwined relationships and odd connections took it to another level. For this group I wanted it to go well and put more work into it to fail pretty quickly. It was hard to take the criticism at the end because it was obviously not a great intervention that I helped pick out but also my language was incorrect, and it seemed like stepping up for this group did not work out for me. I understand that these practice groups are about making mistakes and I learned from it but the first group I co-facilitated went better and I was hoping for an improvement. If I were to do this session again I would either change the population or the intervention with the specific population. If we continued with the grief group, we might want to use something like letter writing to better help process the grief. If we wanted to use the sand tray intervention, I would want to have a population with adults dealing with anxiety and continue with the storytelling directive. I am glad I took a chance with the sand tray intintervention. ;lit was fun to get outside the box of art therapy directives.