The Power of the Group

by Henk Nagel

Group Therapy at Hope Rehab

At our rehab we offer different therapeutic groups where our clients learn how to deal with their addiction and related problems. All of our groups have one thing in common and that is the positive stimulation of our clients to encourage their necessary progress. The focus at Hope Rehab is to give our clients a well balanced mix of a variety of therapeutic groups that are informative, challenging, explorative, and developmental. In these groups, our clients:

Learn how to work together on a subject.
Learn to be honest about what difficulties they are facing.
Learn to deal with problems.
Learn how to give and receive feedback.
Develop coping skills.
Learn about setting healthy boundaries etc.

To give you a bit more insight in how it works I am going to describe briefly a few groups out of our program below.

ABC Group

This is an important part of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, and the focus is on how to develop a thinking pattern that is more flexible, performance enhancing and rational. A lot of addicts benefit of the development of a healthy thinking pattern that will stimulate the client in a positive way. In our ABC group, the client learns a very effective tool and how to implement this in their lives. This is a life changing concept for a lot of our clients and is, like all our groups, worldwide acknowledged for the therapeutic value.

Process group

In a process group, we work with a small number of clients to create an even more supportive and understanding environment. During this group clients share where they are at, what difficulties they are facing, and what kind of support they need from the group. The client can also ask the group questions about what the best way would be to deal with current struggles. In here we see a lot of bonding between clients due to the similarities of the problems and exploration of a solution when a client is ready to work on it.

Personas

A very interesting group where we use a list of the most common ‘personas’ we see in treatment. Clients help each other to develop insight in what ‘masks’ they see their peers wearing that protect their addiction and hide their true self. This group is based on the ‘johari window’ that helps to get more clearance about what the client thinks what the group sees and what the group really sees.

Triggers

After treatment clients will experience a lot of triggers and this group teaches what triggers are, what is going to be a risk, and what actions to take to keep themselves safe.

Relapse Prevention

A very obvious part of addiction treatment is how to prevent a relapse. In these groups clients learn about the three stages of a relapse (emotional, mental, and physical) to get a good understanding of the risks, and how to deal with those risks.

Self esteem

Most of our clients have a low self-esteem due to years of substance abuse and other related problems. In the self-esteem group, the client learns what they are doing that reduces their self-esteem and what they can do to rebuild a healthy level of self-esteem.

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