Often in life you struggle with challenges and issues that make you feel like you are the alone and isolated from the rest of society. To help you through these times, Pattison Professional Counseling and Mediation Center offers group therapy to help break those bonds of isolation and loneliness by providing treatment to small gatherings of individuals challenged with similar issues.
How Group Therapy Works
Group therapy involves one or more Pattison counselors who lead a group of five to 10 patients. A group therapy session takes place once or twice weekly and generally lasts from one to two hours. Some patients attend individual therapy in addition to group therapy, while others take part in groups only.
As a member of a group, you are encouraged to share your personal issues. You control how much and when you tell the group about yourself. The more involved you are with the group discussion, the more likely you are to benefit from group therapy.
Group members can be a valuable source of support, but group therapy at Pattison is more than an informal self-help support group. Group therapy sessions are led by counselors with specialized training, who will provide you with proven methods for managing specific problems, helping you to make the most of your group therapy experience.
The Benefits of Group Therapy
While it may, at first, sound intimidating to join a group of strangers, group therapy can provide benefits that individual therapy may not. Here is a short list of some benefits you can expect to receive from participating in group therapy:
- Helps you to realize you are not alone: feeling isolated from others is a common issue that people with substance abuse problems and other disorders deal with. Group therapy shows you that others are suffering with the same problems, which can be a huge relief.
- Provides positive support and peer pressure to abstain from bad behavior: group members often experience emotional support, understanding and encouragement from one another. Most group members show a high level of commitment to the group, which includes attending meetings, being on time, and abstaining from bad behavior counter to the groups goals. Group members provide good peer pressure to encourage members to treat group time as special and not disappoint the group by developing a sense of responsibility to the group.
- Helps you learn to cope with your problems by seeing how other deal with similar problems: by experiencing how others handle similar problems, you can quickly add new coping methods to your behavior. Group therapy can help you identify new solutions to handling your relationships with spouses, children, siblings, parents, bosses and other people.
- Provides a lower cost alternative to traditional individual therapy: group therapy is significantly less expensive than individual therapy, saving you money. Therapists reduce the usual fee of therapy since they are treating several individuals at once in a group setting.
Therapy Groups Available at Pattison
Pattison Professional Counseling and Mediation Center offers several group therapy sessions weekly. Some of the groups available to you are:
- Substance Abuse
- Retail Theft
- Domestic Violence
- Anger Management