Support Groups: How groups can help you
Let’s suppose, there is a haunting question in your mind — “Why Me?” for the difficult situation that you are in and there seems to be no one to understand what you are going through. The people around you don’t seem to be empathetic, and instead they are seen advising you on dos and don’ts. You just don’t correlate with them and feel lonelier every time you think about your painful situation.
You must be wondering what the painful situation that is being referred here is. It can be a variety of situations depending on each individuals — depression, anxiety and phobia, suffering from cancer or chronic illness, post-partum depression, parenting issues, teenage troubles, anger so on and so forth.
When your individual painful situation makes you isolated, a support group can make a huge difference to your life.
Tell me more about a support group
A support group is a concept where different individuals (around 6-8) with similar situations come together in a group to share their respective experiences. It will be a platform where one can express freely about what they are going through in front of those who are on the same boat. In this kind of a group, you will have only have those who can completely understand your pain and resonate with your feelings.
This helps you to form connections with people who have suffered the same kind of pain as you have. Here, you can derive strengths from each other and offer support to encourage better lifestyle for everyone around you. This bridges the gap between your emotional needs and helpful inputs you receive from the group members.
Who facilitates a Support Group?
Support Groups are facilitated by Aware’s lead therapist, Sindhu. These support groups are hence addressed as Therapist-led support groups.
Your therapist understands the common pain of the group. She will facilitate the group’s discussions being a listening ear while all the group members share their different experiences connected by a common string. She will help you bring out the difficult feelings from each one of you, so that it helps the other members to learn.
How exactly does a Therapist help in a support group?
A therapist will be an expert in the matters of your pain that brought you to a support group. While facilitating the group, the therapist provides a structure that gives equal chance to every group member to open up. The therapist carefully assesses the situation of every member while the group is in discussion sharing every individual experiences.
Based on the discussions of the group, the therapist provides exceptionally useful tools and techniques for the group. These tools and techniques will be practised in front of the therapist by all group members to exercise them when left to their own situations.
Every week the tools and techniques are refreshed and again every group member’s experience will be discussed in the subsequent support group sessions. Every week, a new tool will be introduced and the progress will be tracked.
This way your therapist helps in your overall progress with your difficult situation and to build relationships with other group members which in turn will lead to slowly developing more confidence about your life.
What changes will happen after coming to a Therapist-led Support Group?
• Reduction in feelings of isolation
• Beginning to feel more confident about your tough situation
• Sense of belonging with the community
• Understanding your own self better
• Better motivation for leading life
• Opening up your feelings
• Learning tools and techniques to handle your difficult thoughts and feelings more effectively
• Gaining control and hope on life
What if I can’t open-up with the group?
We understand that each individual has a different personality who comes to be a part of the support group. One may take a lot more time to open up about their feelings whereas another member can share more about their individual experiences. You can take your time to adjust to the group. You can just be a listening member and slowly start putting your words to the group.
Once you start interacting with the group, you will notice that your experiences would be a great learning opportunity for other group members. Also, to make you feel better each member of the group will take an oath to maintain confidentiality of every group member’s identity and experience.
I need to understand more on this
If you need more information on this, you can have a call with the therapist. She will brief you about how well the support groups function in improving the lives of an individual for whom life seems like a lonely journey. You can learn how each members are selected for a particular group and how it is a complete safe place for you to open up and discuss your troubles with the therapist and other group members.
Currently, a support group for teenagers is up and running.
I am not alone, you are not alone. We are together in this. We can face this, we can win this and we can all survive the roller coaster ride as co-passengers sitting on an adventure ride. Let’s do it for ourselves and all of us.
Get in touch
Call +91 86603 88394 to book your spot on the support group.
If you would like to book a spot online instead, please click here:
Get in touch
Call +91 86603 88394 to book your spot on the support group.
If you would like to book a spot online instead, please click here: