Individual Group Therapy
Counseling has a built-in problem: if you focus on individuals, you have trouble seeing everyone as often as you should. But if you opt for group therapy, you can't always individualize the attention.
St. Andrew's Catholic Church in Fort Worth, Texas, has found a middle way.
"We have three groups that run concurrently for six weeks," says Diane Purcell, one of the group leaders. "Each group, however, is aimed at a specific kind of need."
Reach In helps participants deal with change, trauma, and struggles that come from within.
Reach Out concentrates on communication and dealing with the actions and feelings of other people.
Reach Up examines attitudes people have toward God.
"When a person comes to St. Andrew's for counseling," says Purcell, "we do an initial interview to determine the basic problem. Then we assign the person to one of the three groups. A mother who can't relate to her teenage son, for instance, we assign to Reach Out. A man who's angry at God for something in his past, we assign to Reach Up."
The groups meet for two hours twice a week. Each has six to eight participants and a trained group leader. Exercises and directed meditations based on gospel passages help the groups focus their discussions. Common topics include risk taking, feelings about fear, changing undesirable habits, and building self-esteem.
"Our people come because of divorces, alcohol in the family, career shifts, and change-of-life kinds of things," says Purcell.
"We've found that putting people of similar need together is an effective counseling method. It's exciting to watch people's attitudes change over six weeks as they realize they are not alone in the problem."
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