How to Design Group Therapy Activities

Group therapy activities should accomplish a few different objectives like building trust and making everyone in the group feel comfortable. Group therapy activities can also serve as icebreakers or exercises that help to acquaint people with one another. Regardless of the specific focus of your group therapy activities, the information within this article will help you to design the most productive and calming activities possible.

Instructions

• 1

  Group therapy activities should be within the context of the therapy, even if they are general so keep that in mind when designing them. An example of what this means is that if you had a support group for people with memory loss it would not be appropriate to open with an activity where people talk about their favorite past times.

• 2

  Icebreakers are some of the best general group therapy activities that really fit with the context of every type of therapy. They also help people to gain a measure of comfort around one another which is essential to any type of group therapy.

• 3

  Another category of successful group therapy activities trust building. Trust building is absolutely essential to having a positive atmosphere which is conducive to healing. Popular trust building activities include falling and catching exercises, and any other type of physical reinforcement and contact activities so long as they are within the context and overall scope of the therapy.

• 4

  Whichever type of group therapy activities you choose, make sure to have the instructions written down and at least have gone through them once with your peers before testing them on the group unless you are extremely familiar with them. You don't want to stumble through the activity forgetting important parts and accidentally mislead or misinform your group.