How Group Therapy Can Help With Negative Beliefs
Since beliefs have to have emotional evidence tied to them via our own experiences, one of the best ways to change our beliefs is to seek out new experiences. Support groups and therapy groups are great places to go, to meet people that surprise us and defy expectations.
These groups create a safe place to be vulnerable.
It’s normal to have anxiety about going to a group for the first time. Meeting new people can be difficult, and groups often involve discussing very vulnerable topics. It can be very liberating though. Often it is difficult to talk to people we know about our problems, because we worry it might change the way they see us in a negative way, and damage a relationship we value. Talking to a stranger about our problems still holds a risk of being seen in a negative light, but there is not an important relationship to lose, and it’s much easier to go your separate ways afterwards in the worst case scenario. In the best case scenario though, we find connection and understanding, and are able to admit things aloud that have been painful to keep inside.
Sometimes it’s easier to like other people than it is to like ourselves
It is easy to hate ourselves and blame ourselves for something terrible that happened to us. It feels safer if we do; if it was my fault that the horrible thing happened to me, that means that there’s a way I could have acted that would have stopped it, and that means that I could stop it from happening again. I can keep myself safe, all I have to do is put myself down and beat myself up until I am a completely different person that that could never happen to. We are not built to think that way about other people, because the fact that circumstances were out of their control, won’t make us feel unsafe. Generally, it’s more difficult to believe something makes you broken or unloveable if it's something you share with someone else that you believe is not broken or unloveable. Being in group therapy lets us see that other people have gone through the same or similar experiences to our own. That can be powerful.
Meeting others with our experiences normalizes those experiences
There are a lot of life experiences and mental health conditions that are stigmatized; frowned upon by society and considered shameful. Because we are discouraged from talking about those experiences, having them makes us feel very alone, and like no one else can know what this is like. Some common examples are addiction, suicidal ideation, identity crises, deppression, eating disorders, and self harm. We think of these as uncommon, when in reality you probably know someone in your own life who has struggled with them, but because of the stigma around it they wouldn’t be likely to share it. Even if we know something is statistically common, that’s just a number. Meeting people with shared experiences and talking about it helps us to realize that we’re all just people, and whatever we are going through, other people have faced the same thing. There are lots and lots of normal people who are just like us.
Takeaway
While attending a therapy group may be difficult at first, it’s a great way to begin learning about ourselves and others. Group therapy can be very healing by itself or in harmony with individual counseling. If you are interested in group therapy we have some cyclical groups with openings every few months at this link: https://houstonheightstherapy.com/groups . Many therapy practices offer therapy groups, and non-profit organizations often have free support groups that meet in community centers or other easily accessible buildings.