Role Play/Diversity

I am having a really difficult time with this blog/journal format, as I always have in many of my classes. I kept trying to write the diversity ones but have had trouble collecting my thoughts. I will try and get that one up over the weekend. I will also try to add some extra ones throughout November to make up for the ones I've missed.


Researched Group Role Play

Though I am not playing the group leader in my role play, I decided to do a write-up of the role of a group leader in solution focused group therapy for our handout. So I have been doing a lot of research on group leader characteristics and techniques anyway. I was able to find most of what I needed in the Corey chapter, as he gives a lot of information about the proper functions and characteristics of a SF group leader. Though it's not a specific SF technique, the role of the leader appears important to the creation of an environment conducive to the SF process, so I think it's worth exploring a little on the handout. I also used the section to talk about the use of compliments as Corey describes.

I tried to do some more research into the linguistic-construction of reality ideas that permeate SF literature, but I haven't found anything too deep yet in the types of places I research. I probably keep looking and expand my search outside of SW/counseling lit because I was a linguistics major for about 20 minutes, and Sapir-Whorf things are interesting to me. I think the idea of a linguistic construction of reality is interesting, however I am skeptical that brief therapy in the solution focused style can really change that kind of framework in a short period of time. I wonder if changing someone's construction of reality at the linguistic level is a more realistic goal for psychodynamic therapy since language is so tied to early development, but I understand how the theory guides the SF framework.

 I created my character based on some of the kids I worked with during my first field at a high school, and didn't do a lot of research around that initially. I hadn't put too much thought into race or ethnicity at first, I just had a 14-year-old girl in mind, but I decided that since we wanted to show diversity in our role play, I would make her multiracial so that I would have to do more research about SFT with different cultures and populations. My general sense of preparedness around diversity is summed up in the Socratic idea of the truly wise person being the one who admits that s/he knows nothing. I'm not saying I know nothing, but I think in therapy it's good to refrain from making assumptions about something or someone you don't know a lot about. My general approach to working with people different from me is to ask genuine questions to improve my understanding of them and their framework, and to practice cultural humility in my day to day life. Research can help too I suppose but talking to people is most important. I will talk more about this in relation to the diversity blog prompt soon.

Transference and Modeling

In light of the topic of psychodynamic group therapy, I've been thinking about transference, and how it relates to the skill of modeling. Yalom writes about the inevitability of transference in the group, and how this isn't a bad thing, but something to be therapeutically utilized. In this chapter Yalom goes into detail about the kind of resistances that can develop in the group because of negative transference reactions, and how the therapist can use these opportunities to model a particular behavior in order to influence the client. Mr. Price talked about this as well, and how he uses modeling and transference to help clients repair the schemas (or whatever he called it, lol CBT term) they developed about attachment figures and relationships.


This technique can only work if the therapist can hold it together in the face of hostile clients and not let their own bruised emotions get in the way. These are the situations that scare me a little bit, because I worry that I won't be able to keep calm and rational in the face of hostility from clients. I score pretty highly on neuroticism scales and deal with depression on and off, and am just the kind of person who is easily batted around by negative emotions. Because of this, I have to be aware of my struggles with emotional stability and continue to work on them. Only by dealing with my own problems can I authentically model that behavior to clients.

Group Leaderships Cont. + CBT Presentation

The presentation on Cognitive Behavioral Group Therapy got me thinking about "Questioning," one of the skills from the leadership self assessment. Dr. 2343 talked a bit about Socratic questioning in CBT, and how it differs from the types of questioning used in other models like SFBT. He reinforced that in CBT, the questions should be aimed at maladaptive thought patterns and ways of thinking. This differs from the line of questioning in something like SFBT, where the questions are more...pragmatic? And goal oriented. I've been thinking a lot about how carefully questions need to be formed in order to achieve what your therapeutic model is trying to achieve. This is obvious, but easier said than done, especially when you're having to come up with questions off the cuff in a real group. I think if I had the chance to really practice with one therapeutic model like CBT it would come naturally, but at this point in my learning I still have to think a lot about what I'm going to say.