Proactive Institute provides Group therapy treatment in variety of topics; the format is typically one therapist and six to twelve participants with related problems. People in group therapy improve not only from the interventions of the therapist, but also from observing others in the group and receiving feedback from group members. The group format, while not providing the one-on-one attention of individual formats, has several advantages.

 

Similar to family therapy, group therapy is a style that can incorporate any of the psychotherapy schools. The advantages of group therapy include:

 

Increased Feedback

Group therapy can provide the patient with feedback from other people. Getting different perspectives is often helpful in promoting growth and change.

 

Modeling

By seeing how others handle similar problems, the patient can rapidly add new coping methods to his or her behaviors. This is beneficial in that it can give the patient a variety of perspectives on what seem to work and when.

 

Example: Mary listens to Joan talk about how telling her husband that he hurt her feelings was more productive than simply getting angry at him and not speaking. As she listens, Mary thinks of how she might try this same strategy with her husband. She can then try out this new behavior by practicing with the men in the group.

 

Improve Social Skills

Since so much of our daily interaction is with other people, many people learn to improve their social skills in group therapy (even though such an issue may not be the focus of the group). The group leader, a therapist, often helps people to learn to communicate more clearly and effectively with one another in the group context. This is inevitably leads to people learning new social skills which they can generalize and use in all of their relationships with others.