Group Therapy Activities

Therapies are meant for disturbed minds. Most therapy modules aim towards making the patients talk about their problems and adjust socially. Group therapy activities help patients to associate with similar patients and gives them a platform to understand and be understood. Popular 'Alcoholics Anonymous' (AA), is a group for both men and women, which help the members cure alcohol abuse. The group, through its activities, promotes the advice 'stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety'. It gives members a chance to open up and share their experiences. Group therapy activities are a unique way of dealing with psychological problems, rather than going about the run of the mill process.

Activities for Group Therapy

Ice Breakers
Ice breakers are also called as warm up activities and energizers. Irrespective of the name, ice breakers focus on creating a positive atmosphere, helping people to relax, breaking down of any barriers, motivation and making people think outside the box. Animal Sounds is a great ice breaking group therapy activity. Blind fold everyone and give each person an animal name. Make them recognize each other by the sound of their respective animal sounds. This will help them in sound association and will involve a lot of energy usage. '2 Lies and 1 truth' is another fun way of having group therapy exercises.

Trust and Relationship Activities
Disturbed people, often have struggling relationships, both, on the personal front as well as professional front. 'Mine Field' is one of the easy to-do group therapy activities. Divide the members in pairs of two and blind fold one of them. Scatter many object around the place and make one person give out the instruction to the other to collect the items. At the end of the game assess the level of trust developed. Allow the people to swap partners and find out which pair worked out the best and why. Make them go through the analysis, this is the only way they will learn to trust and build a relationship with each other. The other activities for group therapy of trust and relationship building are, Wind in the Willow, Trust Lean and Running Free.

Group Therapy Activities for Self-Awareness
These group therapy activities help in understanding one's inner self, through the method of self discovery. Games 'Fear in a Hat', which involves anonymously writing fears on a piece of paper and collecting them in a hat. Then one by one, each person gets up and reads out the fear and explains how the person may feel. This helps in empathizing and comprehending the fear in a new aspect. Talking about the fear also helps the person deal with it. Another interesting group therapy game is 'Solo Hour in Nature'. Go for a nature trail and observe the nature in silence. When you get back write about it and then make interpretations.

Group Therapy Activities for Recreation
Recreation group therapy activities are meant for stress management. Activities like dancing, painting and composing, and listening to music are all ways of expression of the mind. Indulging in such activities lets the mind wander for more knowledge, giving it an undiscovered space to recreate the loss.

Group therapy activities are essentially meant for helping one cope with their behavioral issues. All the mentioned activities are been used for years to improve the lifestyle of many. Many psychologists too use them to improve speeches and tendencies. The above mentioned activities can also be used as adolescent group therapy activities. A well-planned and formulated group therapy activities will definitely bring about drastic positive results amongst your loved ones. Game on!