Group Sessions

Group Sessions:

Relapse Prevention                                        Adolescent Life Skills

Grief and Loss                                                Parenting

Trauma Recovery                                           Parenting Children with Cognitive Delays

Anger Management                                                         Many more...

Phoenix Rising believes group sessions or group therapy should be a place to learn about yourself through the experiences of others under the guidance of a facillitator. There are many types of group modalities, such as task, therapeutic, and dramaturgy. Each type is steeped in it's own theories, which create the norms and pathways to inspire your personal journey.

Task groups are the most common type of modality. Task groups typically utilize a step or level that the group members work towards through discussion and predetermined assignments. Task groups are commonly referred to as "self help" groups and are not intended to be steeped in psychotherapy. According to Phillis Solomon there are 5 theories utilized in self help groups, they are as follows:

1. Social support: Having a community of people to give physical and emotional comfort, people who love and care, is a moderating factor in the development of psychological and physical disease.
2. Experiential knowledge: Members obtain specialized information and perspectives that other members have obtained through living with the issues that have brought them to group. Validation of their approaches to problems increase their confidence.
3. Social Learning theory: Members with experience become creditable role models.
4. Social Comparison theory: Individuals with similar mental illness are attracted to each other in order to establish a sense of normalcy for themselves. Comparing one another to each other is considered to provide other peers with an incentive to change for the better either through upward comparison (looking up to someone as a role model) or downward comparison (seeing an example of how debilitating mental illness can be).
5. Helper theory: Those helping each other feel greater interpersonal competence from changing other's lives for the better. The helpers feel they have gained as much as they have given to others. The helpers receive "personalized learning" from working with helpees. The helpers' self-esteem improves with the social approval received from those they have helped, putting them an a more advantageous position to help others.

Therapeutic Groups are less restrictive and far more psychotherapeutic than a task group. Many of the usual advantages of the group process named above will happen in a therapeutic group. However theoretically following Irvin Yalom's group Principles below, our facilitators will guide the members toward understanding our fit within our social and personal realms, responsibility of actions, catharsis, and finally self understanding.

• Corrective recapitulation of the primary family experience

Members often unconsciously identify the group therapist and other group members with their own parents and siblings in a process that is a form of transference specific to group psychotherapy. The therapist's interpretations can help group members gain understanding of the impact of childhood experiences on their personality, and they may learn to avoid unconsciously repeating unhelpful past interactive patterns in present-day relationships.

• Development of socializing techniques

The group setting provides a safe and supportive environment for members to take risks by extending their repertoire of interpersonal behaviour and improving their social skills

• Imitative behaviour

One way in which group members can develop social skills is through a modeling process, observing and imitating the therapist and other group members. 

• Existential factors

Learning that one has to take responsibility for one's own life and the consequences of one's decisions.

• Catharsis

Catharsis is the experience of relief from emotional distress through the free and uninhibited expression of emotion. 

• Interpersonal learning

Group members achieve a greater level ofself-awareness through the process of honest interaction with others in the group, who give honest constructive feedback on the member's behaviour and impact on others.

• Self-understanding

This factor overlaps with interpersonal learning but refers to the achievement of greater levels of insight into the genesis of one's problems and the unconscious motivations that underlie one's behavior.

Dramaturgy or Drama Therapy is the intentional use of drama or theatre processes to achieve therapeutic goals. Irving Goffman coined Dramaturgy as a way for humans (actors) to understand the roles we play in life (stage).This type of group is an active, experiential approach to facilitating change. Through the use of storytelling, projective play, improvisation, and performance, participants are invited to rehearse desired behaviors, practice being in relationships, expand and find flexiblity between life roles and perform the change they wish to be.

The use of drama, theatre, and the arts lead to another group process called Psychodrama. JL Moreno founded Psychodrama as a way for an individual to have psychotherapy within the group context. The other group members play various parts or roles in the story being dramatized on the stage they share.