Shifting the therapeutic focus from ‘classes’ to a shared narrative has greatly resonated with attendees at my ‘Delivering Group CBT’ workshops this year. My message has been if you are running a group make sure participants have the same story.
Social groups are formed by people having the same story e.g Labour Party supporters or Church groups. Therapeutic groups with diverging narratives are likely to run into difficulties. Consider an anxiety group which includes a person with OCD, another group member with say generalised anxiety disorder , might well consider the OCD person as ‘weird’, become fearful that they will ‘catch’ the same disorder and drop out of treatment. The therapists leading the group might well find that they are stretched too far in having to cater sufficiently for the person with OCD, yet simultanously keep other group members involved throughout.
Diagnosis is simply a way of ensuring people share the same story i.e the cognitive model of the particular disorder. There are free ‘storybooks’ for depression, the anxiety disorders and PTSD in the ‘Resources’ section of this site, which can form the content of group sessions.
Thus all members of a panic disorder group would be taught not to be ‘bullied’ by the panic attacks, but to gradually ‘dare’ go to places that they have historically avoided both within and outside the group session. The story-telling rationale ‘chunky CBT’ lends itself more to the use of metaphor e.g ‘being bullied’, rather than talking class room style about say ‘the fight and flight response’.
Dr Mike Scott