Group Counseling

Daisy, Ivan and Roberto did a super presentation on group counseling. The opening activity was a lot of fun; Our instructions were to make an outline of your hand on a piece of paper, cut it out and answer the following questions per finger. Favorite food, birthplace, favorite hobby, what you are in this program, something unique about yourself. Then we each got up and spoke about our choices and stuck the cutout on the blackboard. Roberto drew lines showing connections.
Group counseling was defined as "the creation, maintenance and termination of a therapeutic interaction between members for the purpose of psychological growth and integration"
The presentation covered the distinction between group counseling and family counseling and group counseling and individual counseling. Advantages and disadvantages of group counseling were discussed and the types of groups, group counseling process and stages were also covered, as well as common mistakes and effective group leader qualities.
Somewhere from the back of my memory came the "storming, norming, forming and ending" phases from a workshop or lecture I'd attended. I also thought about the dynamics of some of my book discussion groups -- A book discussion group is not exactly a therapeutic group. My work as leader of the book discussion group is mainly to keep the group on track, make sure that members have a chance to talk (or not to talk if they choose), and to keep one or two vocal members from monopolizing the conversation. The best discussion is when the leader lets the conversation flow, with little interference. I have a lot to learn.

Our closing group exercise was to practice -- I had the role of leader in a drug abuse group -- members couldn't stop laughing. It wasn't easy to keep a straight face!