Resistance in Group Counseling Group

¶ … resistance in Group Counseling Group Therapy, harmful or beneficial: The first question that has to be asked is whether the person needs any treatment. If the person is alone and the person has specific screens for suicide, homicide or serious disability, and there are new incidences of starting of abnormal behavior which was not happening earlier, lack of medicine, carrying of weapons for dangerous behavior and nutritional status which is poor to render a health risk, then the person needs treatment.

(Management of persons with psychoses, 2004) The conditions are psychological and group therapy is a technique used in psychological treatment. Benefits or harms vary from patient to patient and there is no way of being certain that any treatment will help a patient, especially psychological treatment. Basis of Groups & Group Dynamics: As human beings are by nature social beings, group therapy is a powerful method in certain treatment like substance abuse. These require treatments with trained leaders and the groups are formed specifically to treat substance abuse.

(Substance abuse treatment: Group therapy, 2004) These groups however do not include organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. Group Resistance: The resistance comes from individuals within the groups and the resistance may be to particular groups or group therapy in general.

The reasons for resistance may be due to the person being an individual who refuses to participate, a person who cannot honor group agreements inclusive of preserving privacy and confidentiality of group members as is the requirement under federal regulations, individuals who make the therapist uncomfortable, individuals who regularly drop out or continue to violate group norms, persons who is not able to control impulses and in general people who feel severe forms of internal discomfort in groups.

(Substance abuse treatment: Group therapy, 2004) Overcoming or using resistance as strength: It is clear that no individual would like to accept individual weaknesses, and that is the main reason resistance to group therapy would be viewed by them as strength. Basis of Groups & Group Dynamics Problem-focused vs. Solution-Focused: The usage of group therapy is to find out solutions and cannot be determined from the problem.

For example, studies have shown that non-ulcer dyspepsia patients have higher scores of anxiety, depression, neurosis, chronic tension, hypochondriac behavior and tendency to be more pessimistic than general people. Yet in spite of many studies, the benefits of interventions in this disease through psychiatric means remain uncertain. (Soo; Moayyedi; Deeks; Delaney; Lewis; Forman, 2005) Strength-based vs. Weakness-Based: We have already discussed the general methods of group therapy where the doctors get groups formed for progress in treatment of the disease.

There is also a method of psychotherapy which developed in 1960s where a small group of individuals involve in intensive reactions between themselves to improve self-awareness and as well to better interpersonal relations. In these sessions, the group members are encouraged to be honest completely and the reactions are honest and open. They react to each other with their immediate feelings and go through the complete range of emotions.

The method is associated with the radical social upheaval prevalent in the 1960s and encounter groups have been criticized in terms of their damaging effects that they have caused, and this is due to the reason that many groups are not led by professionals trained in psychotherapy. (Encounter group) Positive & negative Group Dynamics: This comes from the roles played by individuals in the group. At the same time, individual roles may change as the group progresses.

Most roles have an opportunity to be positive or negative when the roles are taken to extremes. The groups have encouragers who praise agrees with and accepts the contributions from others. The harmonizer of the group mediates differences. The gate-keeper and expediter are the ones who attempt to keep communication channels open by encouraging or facilitating participation of all the others in the group. The standard setter maintains the standards for the group to attempt and achieve. They are most often positive and productive.

On the other side, the blocker would tend to possess negative reactions and is greatly resistant, always disagreeing and opposing beyond one's reason. The blocker would try to maintain or resurrect or re-evolve an issue even after the group has finished with it. The playboy or playgirl makes a display of his or her lack of the level of involvement and this may take the form of cynicism, nonchalance, horseplay, and other negative elements of behavior. They would thus be the negative parts of the group.

(Group Task Roles) Group Resistance: Resistance to change is very important as any form of directed response to reactions can lead to stopping an instituted change in the group. The source of this resistance to change can be an individual employee who is a part of the group. The main question of resistance of such a change is that it stops the development of the group, and thus the group cannot function better as the change is not realized within the group.

(Resistance to organizational change) Characteristics of Resistance Involuntary Clients and Resistant Clients: For all individuals in the group, there is a great importance of ethnicity and culture. One of the major areas of application of group therapy has been for substance abuse treatment, and it has been seen there that when many ethnic origins are mixed in a group, there are chance that more biases will appear and require mediation by the group leader.

Apart from that, special and direct intervention may be required if the clients do not speak English well as that may be a cause for lack of communication. The clients will not be able to follow a discussion that is going on at a high speed. This compels the group leader to ensure that all group members are fluent in the language that is being spoken in that particular area. That language may not be English, but the conversations will be going on in that language.

(Substance abuse treatment: Group therapy, 2004) Another question is that the group leader may be from the same ethnic group as also all the members of the group. This is rarely possible and gives rise to resistant clients. It is however very important for the group leader to understand how the ethnicity affects substance abuse and participation in the group.

The preparation starts when the group leader meets every member separately for the group to be formed, then reaches consensus on what is to be accomplished through therapy, educate all the clients about group therapy, remove fears and anxieties about joining the group, and explain the entire arrangement for the group. In all these interviews to be extremely careful about individuals who have major differences with the rest of the group and that may be through age, ethnicity, gender, disorder and other factors.

Efforts have to be made to assure the clients that a difference is not a deficit and can also become a source for vitality for the group. (Substance abuse treatment: Group therapy, 2004) The attempt is clearly to stop the emergence of resistant clients, but in any group, they will finally emerge after the group starts operations. Another case is of involuntary clients and this has been from one of the major changes that have been suggested now - family therapy.

Here all family members enter into the function as members of a group in order to assist in the treatment of substance abuse. The new method of treatment helps as it makes families become aware of their own requirements and still provide a genuine healing for the family member involved in substance abuse. It is easier to shift power to the parental figures within the family so that the interpersonal, intrapersonal and environmental variations that are affecting the client using alcohol or drugs can be controlled.

It also helps the usage of the item moving down from one generation to the next. This may be called a prevention of substance abuse. (Substance abuse treatment and family therapy, 2004) Perception of resistance as a problem: In many instances resistance stops the main objective from being reached. It was seen that a brief educational intervention can greatly enhance resident's knowledge, attitude, and counseling skills for the purpose of smoking cessation. (Steinemann; Roytman; Chang; Holzman; et, al. 2005) It did not do much for smoking cessation.

The same situation exists for parenting problems. It was seen in a review that parenting programs improve the emotional and behavioral adjustment of children less than 3 years of age, but that there is less evidence from controlled trials to evaluate as to whether the short-term benefit is maintained over a period of time. (Barlow; Parsons; Stewart-Brown, 2005) The definitions of disturbances are also tenuous and terms for mental disorders may have somewhat different definitions for lay individuals and professionals.

Most people might become depressed or anxious for a brief period due to life stress. But this does not mean that they have a 'mental disorder'. (Substance abuse treatment for persons with co-occurring disorders, 2005) Many childhood abuse survivors are ashamed of the fact that they have been victims of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse in their childhood and would tend to believe that the abuse was being self-inflicted.

Counselors should be careful that adult survivors of childhood trauma generally suppress memories of some traumatic incidents or lessen their symptoms, either deliberately or not. (Substance abuse treatment for persons with child abuse and neglect issues) These are a few instances where the problems of resistance originate within the individual, and are not very easy to remove. Shift perception of resistance to a solution: Till now the problem of resistance is being viewed in the manner of a counselor.

The view here is that resistance is a problem for solving the issue that has to be solved. From the viewpoint of a psychotherapist, the finding of resistance is very important as he can use this to find out the reasons for resistance and then he can change the client.

(Differences between Counseling and Psychotherapy) Exploration/Collaboration of Resistance: The awareness of the requirement for the changes or variations comes by means of three steps - first is called awareness, the second is in terms of the acceptance of the need for bringing about changes and the third step in relation to the efforts made for bringing about changes. Thus the first step is the urgency to find out the basic underlying cause with regard to resistance by the individual.

This happens with most of the individuals and most of them like to deny or ignore some of the attitudes, behaviors or weaknesses that they have. These are unacceptable thoughts prevalent in their minds. The tendency is with regard to ignore them or be ashamed about those issues. Further denial is not in terms of progress and shame also this also reduces the scope of action.

The person can have the responsibility to take action only after understanding about the particular behavior or attitude which was the reason behind those difficulties. (Some Thoughts about Resistance) Pre-Group Model, working with Resistance Explore resistance prior to entering group: There are many instances of this type of feelings and let us take the issue of college admissions. This was studied by Abela and D'Alessandro in 2002 and they found that the students developed negative views about their future and this controlled their interactions between dysfunctional attitudes and enhancement in depression.

As such this was clearly lending support to Dr. Beck's claim that those at risk for depression due to dysfunctional attitudes, and were thus unable to get into the college of their choice begin to doubt their future, and it is those thoughts which lead to the feeling of depression. Thus the self-perceptions of the students became negative due to their failure to get into college and this led to the depression due to their own thinking.

(An Overview of Beck's Cognitive Theory of Depression in Contemporary Literature) Thus it can be seen that the development of resistance is often due to our own actions, though that is not true in all cases. There are also cases that this has been caused by actions of others, but in the end, we have started blaming ourselves for the situation. This type of resistance may exist and should first be looked into when any group is being formed.

Identify "Precipitating factors" to resistance: Now there is also a model being suggested by Teasdale and this is in terms of the vulnerability with regard to depression and relapse is not based on dysfunctional attitudes but is based on the negative thinking that has its origin from the negative thinking prevalent in mild depressed conditions. In such instances, cognitive therapy is useful since it focuses its activities on the patterns of negative thinking.

Hence due to cognitive therapy, patients tend to stop believing about their emotions and would tend to identify themselves with regard to their negative thoughts and feelings. These negative experiences are being treated as being similar to transient mental events. This leads it to provide improved better results in comparison to pharmacotherapy since it allows the reduction of relapse and recurrence levels. In short, it could be said that it is probably better in comparison to antidepressant medication.

Even when the patient is dependent on antidepressant medication, cognitive therapy may prove to be helpful in recovery.

(Cognitive Therapy) Support/Encourage client's perspectives: The people under treatment for the purpose of substance misuse, and it is about them that we have been talking from the beginning of this write up, often tend to predict about their own actions in terms of producing statements like "Doing a line will make me feel really good." The prediction could be considered as a statement which will probably lead to a repeated occurrence of the line and action, or may ultimately in the end up in conditions of depression and self-loathing.

Well then how can his self-confidence levels be improved upon so that he stops saying things as he mentioned earlier? He should be asked to take on the challenges which occur in his life and which he can achieve, and he will in the end achieve them and be grateful for his own achievements. Yet, human nature does not believe in terms of thinking small as can be evidenced by the enormous amount of creations being made by us.

(Cognitive Distortion Mechanisms) Implement pre-group outcome studies to determine effectiveness: Many theories exist on this, and the most renowned is Bandura's social cognitive theory. This says that individuals have a self system that enables them to exercise control over their personal thoughts, feelings, motivation and activities. This system provides methods for perceiving, regulating and assessing behavior. This comes from the interplay between our systems and the external sources of influence.

As a result of this system, all individuals have the capacity to control their own cognitive processes and actions and thus change their environments. (Current directions in Self-efficacy research) Most of the statements made in this theory is however already stated in our concept of God, and in most religions, we are trying to reach God in some form or another. Thus what has been stated is not new.

Conclusion: The difficulty in all these statements is that there are no clear cut answers and all are shades of grey, so truth is a very difficult commodity. In any case, for a.