20 Takeaways of a counseling student from her Group Counseling class

A numbered list.

Photo by Kimson Doan on Unsplash

1. It’s important to be energizing as a group leader. This could mean speaking in a non-monotonous tone of voice, ensuring no one gets to talk long-windedly/out of topic, talking with animated facial expressions, or even getting group members to stand up to play a game of ball throw-and-catch every 20 minutes.
2. Since you’re dealing with more than one client, it’s necessary to be on the lookout for everyone’s non-verbal cues so that no one gets excluded.
3. All therapeutic groups typically have one topic as a focusing theme, such as ‘stress’, ‘relationships’, ‘self-esteem’, ‘social anxiety’, or ‘substance use’ but really, everything’s intertwined. For instance, some members’ stress may be tied to their relationships, and some members’ social anxiety may have to do with their poor self-esteem.
4. Group therapy or group counseling as my Master’s program calls it, is qualitatively different from one-to-one counseling because it plays out in the activities conducted (conversations manifest through group activities).
5. ‘Structuring’ and ‘group rules-setting’ should ideally be mentioned at the beginning of EVERY session.
6. Summarizing happens all the time— we summarize previous sessions at the start of all sessions and we summarize every session at the end of it; also, after each member of the group shares, their sharing too—along with other members’ comments and reactions— are summarized.
7. Group members will end up taking different kinds of personalities and some will speak up and share more often, which means that as a group therapist, it’s best that you encourage the quieter ones, usually the ‘observers’, to say something.
8. The way you lead is not set in stone— do what’s necessary to bring out the best in the group— for instance, at certain stages, members may be more timid, which means that it’s okay, at this point, to behave a little bit more instructively as a leader.
9. Confidentiality should be stressed— like, all the time— because people have to be reminded that everything that happened there is top secret.
10. Choosing activities for each session can be tricky, and it ultimately depends on which stage of the group counseling process you’re in and the counseling theories you practice as a counselor.
11. It’s crucial that members of the group learn from each other, which means that leaders must create opportunities for members to ask questions and respond to each other (interaction, not just listening to each other,etc). Indeed, diversity in personality, backgrounds, values, and viewpoints is what makes the learning process in group therapy interesting in a way that one-on-one therapy lacks.
12. Setting goals that are unique to each member is necessary because without individualized goals, it’s impossible to start finding solutions specific to each person, although, say, everyone’s facing the similar thing, i.e. ‘stress’.
13. Another thing that’s qualitatively different about group counseling is that we’re not just talking about having to build trust between 2 people, BUT 5–15 people!
14. If you want to be a good leader, ask members what they thought about the session, at the end of every session.
15. Always explain the activities conducted VERY clearly; it’s great if you provide an example of how to do the activity.
16. Also, always explain the PURPOSE of the activity, ideally before and after the activity.
17. A single activity can span 2–3 sessions! Indeed, never rush through an activity because the aim is not to have members experience many activities but to have members’ use the activity as a space to share, explore, process, work through, learn, and support each other.
18. Leaders should try to give their full presence and model to members how to be fully conscious of their thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, etc because without all that, no one will dare be their truest, conscious self.
19. The easiest theories to implement in group settings are Rogerian theory, choice theory, cognitive-behavioral theory, and solution-focused theory.
20. In terms of goal-setting, it’s crucial that members be helped with outlining more than 1 way of reaching their goal, and that they be helped with identifying challenges and barriers they may face in working towards their goal. In addition, action plans set by each group member should be reassessed even after they’ve started working towards the goal because something may be off— not quite right, about the action plan. It’s therefore the leaders’ task to reorient or redirect group members towards better alternatives.

And more to come…