As stated in the membership agreement – the three main group goals are to maintain sobriety, understand how substances influence brain chemistry and behavior, and finally to learn and practice skills in scenarios where there is a desire to use a substance. Group members will utilize their peers to stay sober through accountability and offering support. Understanding how substances affect brain chemistry and behavior is a major part of CBT principles including logical consequences of what occurs in the brain, as well as utilizing psychoeducation. Finally, the last group goal is learning and practicing skills when a group member is tempted to use a substance. Group members should not expect to be immune from situations where a substance is …show more content…
Activity: Highest Hopes Deepest Fears Objectives of Activity: To identify hopes and fears of group members, encourage openness and cohesion in the group, and practice empathy. Each group member will be randomly assigned a partner by the group leaders. Partners will explain their biggest hopes and deepest fears to each other. Explain that they will have to share with the group what their partner tells them and will be asked questions about their partner’s responses – but as if it were their own. After a few minutes each of discussion, everyone should return to the group circle. As each person presents their partners deepest fears and highest hopes as if they were their own (using I statements)– group leaders should question more about what each means, and encourage group members to ask as well. The partner will have to guess at what the other person’s motivation or thought process might be, even though it isn’t their own. The person may not actually speak about it at that …show more content…
In accordance with The Best Practice Guidelines, coleaders will process the group with another colleague in order to have an outside evaluation of the group and its’ effectiveness. Topics to be discussed should include if there were any topics or concerns that weren’t able to be covered by the group, and why they weren’t introduced to the group. What was a strength or weakness of each leader – what was a strength and weakness of the coleaders together? Were there any disagreements during the process? Did one leader tend to take charge or take more responsibility of the group? If so, why might that have