Quote:
Originally Posted by CantExplain
Hi gang!
Today I talked to T about the end of the Good Group.
I talked about the Horrible Event that took place and how I had felt (correctly as it happens) that the group would never be the same again. In my heart I felt that T had betrayed the group by not acting soon enough to ensure its safety. The group straggled on for another nine months, but people left and eventually T decided to wind the group up. (The first to leave was a woman I was particularly attached to. I viewed her as a daughter.)
So I was angry with T but I couldn't express that anger. This damaged our connection and led to a rupture. The rupture happened before the group came to an end and was not repaired until after the group was properly buried.
That's the story I told T.
Then she told me the story from her perspective. We've been together nine years now, and she revealed a lot more than a therapist would normally say. I take this as a compliment. We're adults and equals.
She reminded me that the group had rarely run at a profit due to the high overheads. The room had to be paid for and whatever was left over had to be split between two facilitators. It was almost volunteer work. She said, "You were the only one to work this out and to raise it in the group. I thank you for that."
Her main motivation for running the group is that she wanted the experience of running a group. It was an experiment, a recreational project.
New members - suitable new members - were very hard to find.
Here's the thorn.
She pointed out that this was the year when my hate mail campaign reached a climax. The hate mail had a draining effect on her and was a contributing factor to her decision to stop the group. How guilty I feel about this remains to be seen.
So when the Horrible Event took place and people started leaving, she felt that enough was enough.
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Trigger - Caution : Challenging Post Ahead
First of all, my remarks here do not necessarily apply to support groups, but to therapy groups which which have as their goal to facilitate self-change and help people internalize growth processes which can make them independent and self-actualizing.
Similarly, they don't necessarily apply to those groups which may deal with those having psychotic breaks and/or be attending involuntarily and the like.
If you think what I write doesn't fit you, then that may be, just consider it written to distribute general information. My purpose here is to distribute some ideas about effective therapy.
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Life hurt can hurt and it hurts big time over and over. We win some and then lose and lose again and again but we hope to heal from when it breaks us and become more resilient.
My own first therapist and mentor died many years ago and the groups run in his organization long ago dissolved. All those times, conflicts, arguments, excitements, pain, fear, sharing with others are gone and over. I often feel sad and nostalgic when I remember them but my life goes on and goes elsewhere. And I owe my life to them so I am grateful for those experiences.
So maybe if an involvement is about to end a person might engage in negative behaviors or negative expressions to try to stop it. But it can't be stopped, life goes on, things end, it ends it ends. One loses.
So maybe it is better to use this experience to learn to accept loss and to lose gracefully. Being involved in negative expression may temporally mask many other things and when the dust of the mind mind settles and your angers have been given up you many find there are other things you wish you have said in your good byes, but maybe it will be too late.
To end gracefully means it is easier to pick up again either with the same people the same processes or with other people.
So just let it go.
Take a deep breath and let go.
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I used to make friends with some of the participants of the groups outside of therapy. It was my prerogative, it was outside of therapy, not therapy and I think everyone in our culture has this freedom.
However, therapy is not a social club, entertainment a support group or a family gathering - it might be have those things , but only temporally in support of the the goals of therapy. It can replicate those things sometimes but it's purpose is not to replace those things.
A person might feel sad or unhappy that another member of the group has gone, but this need not at all all interfere with one' progress or working in the group. If it does it then it is an item to work on and overcome to accept loss and move on with the work. In other words the responsibility of work lies with the person and not with other person s who may or may not be there.
Everything is the work, the only product of therapy that means anything is the is the effects of work produced. Everything is for this.
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If you got something out of the group experience and the therapist also is rewarded in some way then that is a fair exchange. I had subsidiary sessions , one on one with junior therapists in training, it was all grist to the mill, and actually helped my breakthrough.
If you have gotten something good and valuable te it is good and valuable always and will stay with you. To poison what you have gained because of the sorrows of a breakup is not constructive. Therapy or growth process teach us to complete ourselves and be constructive for ourselves.
Or as Bruce Lee said: Absorb what is useful!
Good Groups:
I have been in hundreds of groups, most 1 hr,,45 min each, all weekend intensives with all kinds of people and in all of them the people worked. There was no group in which people didn't work, every session was a success.
This was because the therapists ran the groups , not the patients/clients.
Sometimes you had to line up to take a ticket ,other times the therapist would have to do something to facilitate involvement when everybody's energies were low but every session was a success, everyone always worked to some extent taking some share of the time, the time was always used well. That is the therapists job, not the job of the patients, to help people work, to know how to confront, involve, give exercises and facilitate and teach personal growth. If they can't do this then they are failing at their job.
Group therapy uses the other people in the group to help facilitate work for individuals in many unique ways. But that is all a bonus, the onus of work is always on the individual and the therapist can always find their work point and show them the work to be done regardless of who else in in the room.
This is their job and that is the nature of doing therapeutic work for patients. A circle of chairs and a therapist, one patient or many - it doesn't matter. No one else is to blame for a person not doing work and making progress except the person themselves - unless the therapist fails,which is always likely and in that case one can change therapists. that is something else to think about.
Suitable people: The only limitations in the groups I was ever in, was that everyone was not suffering psychotic breaks in the here and now. This type of therapy did not handle that type. For all else , everyone was suitable.
Whether people work of not, does not depend on who is in the group, it depends on the therapist and the therapy (if it is effective therapy).
A good therapist will investigate confront, provoke and find someone's
work points very quickly. For those that don't want to work and didn't realize that is the purpose of therapy - to
work on yourself, they are left with that - here is your unresolved problem, no matter how feel, if they want to argue about it, ignore, it it is the point at which they leave off with the therapist either become hooked and decide to come back or decide not to deal with it.
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And so,
excelsior!
Therapy is pain. Growth is pain
I empathize. You have lost something.
Take some time to grieve, learn/review your lessons, do some nice things to comfort yourself, and then move on.