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When you struggle with a traumatic experience or daily roadblocks in your life, it can feel overwhelming to face such challenges alone. Walking the path to a healthier mindset isn’t easy, and walking it alone is even less so. The power of group therapy, can help build community to support your goals. Receiving multiple sources of validation aids in reflection about your own life through multiple different lenses. Group therapy, in time can help you find the peace of mind you deserve.
What Is Group Therapy?
In group therapy, several individuals who struggle with similar problems meet with a licensed counselor and work through those problems together. Group takes a deeper look into supporting a wide range of individuals and their struggles. For example, a young adult group help members work through the anxieties of leaving home for the first time. Other groups focus on more specific individuals, like those who have lost a loved one to cancer and are dealing with the grief. Whatever the core focus is, group therapy uses community-building techniques to help all participants find healthy coping mechanisms and different perspective to aiding in finding solutions to their struggles.
Who Attends Group Therapy?
Anyone seeking a support system as they work through their struggles can find benefits from group therapy. While it may not be the perfect fit for everyone, it’s a useful therapy technique that may be right for you if:
● You feel overly pressured/anxious in one-on-one therapy sessions
● You don’t have a strong support system at home
● You want to heal and improve, but aren’t ready to talk about your own life just yet
● You’re seeking an opportunity to learn and grow while helping others as well
How Community Helps Heal Trauma
As the saying goes, there is strength in numbers. Humans by nature are social creatures, and having a social group is key to maintaining positive mental health. Even introverts need a strong community they can rely on when they have issues to process. When you build a community through group therapy, you will benefit from validation, unique solutions, and new relationships.
Validation
For many, trauma can leave you questioning your own feelings and emotions. And when you can’t trust your own feelings, it can be hard to navigate your way out of your situation. When you attend one-on-one sessions, you will receive validation from your therapist and that’s just one person. In a group session, you’ll receive validation from everyone in the room who has experienced similar challenges.
Unique Solutions
Group therapy offers the opportunity to meet diverse people we may not have otherwise met in our daily lives. People from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds all come together to heal and grow as a community. The daily structures of our lives mean that most people rarely venture outside their known social groups - which may limit new ways of thinking and perspectives. When you attend group sessions, you can learn from the unique perspectives that others have to offer.
New Relationships
Once a group therapy session is over, you don’t have to spend the rest of your time alone. Unlike individual therapy, you can continue to build your relationships with other members outside of therapy. Many have found lifelong relationships by attending group therapy.
How Helping Others Helps You
Outside of all the help you receive firsthand, you can also find new ways of healing by helping the others in your group. Listening and offering advice based on personal experience can be a great way to help yourself without directly being involved.
Learn By Example
When you listen to others in your group sessions, you will learn about how the feedback they received and provided works. You can see the successes of others like you, which gives you the confidence to try out some solutions yourself. At the same time, people can share their blindspots as well. While this may initially make trying anything seem uncomfortable, it can help you figure out which options to avoid when you’re ready to tackle your own problems.
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Offering Advice
When you attend group sessions with those who have similar struggles as you, you may find yourself offering advice that can actually help you as well. When we think about our own lives, it’s hard to judge the situation with a clear head. When we listen to someone talk about a similar situation, we can more clearly see a solution, that solution we offer may just be what we need for ourselves.
Low-Pressure Sessions
Therapy can be a wonderful healing tool. However, many find one-on-one sessions to be intimidating. It’s common to feel anxious to talk about your feelings right away, and if you aren’t doing so, it may feel like a waste of time and money. Listening and supporting others in a group session, can still provide ways to learn to move forward without sharing to much of your personal life right away.
Find Your Group Therapy Community Today
At Connected Roots, we believe in the power of community and how a strong group can support you in working through your struggles. In our group therapy sessions, you’ll find individuals from all walks of life who struggle through the same problems you have. By coming together, you can help those individuals and, in return, find a way to build the healthy future you deserve. For more information about our group therapy options and how to sign up, give us a call at 720-593-1062.