This is called a process group, a place where men and women can process their issues related to the changes recently brought into their lives by the Coronavirus. All participants set goals for themselves, and share them with the group, so they can get help from me and often each other, to work through their current situations and make progress toward their goals. There will be no set curriculum, but I will share resources during group, if I believe they can help more than one group member. Each group will begin by members sharing how their week has gone and how it has affected them in about a five-minute summary. This ends with what they might want to work on in group today, and roughly how much time they may need, if it is available.
This is called a process group, a place where men can process their issues with their habits, emotions, and relationships. All participants set goals for themselves, and share them with the group, so they can get help from me and often each other to work through their current situations and make progress toward their goals. There will be no set curriculum, but I will share resources during group, if I have reason to believe they can help more than one group member. Each group will begin by men sharing how their week has gone, and what issues it leaves them with, in about a five-minute summary. This ends with what they might want to work on in group today, and roughly how much time they may need, if it is available.
This is called a process group, a place where women can process their issues with their habits, emotions, and relationships. All participants set goals for themselves, and share them with the group, so they can get help from me and often each other to work through their current situations and make progress toward their goals. There will be no set curriculum, but I will share resources during group, if I have reason to believe they can help more than one group member. Each group will begin by women sharing how their week has gone in about a five-minute summary, ending with what they might want to work on in group today, how urgent it feels, and roughly how much time they ask the group to take on their issues, if it is available.
These are somewhat 12-step recovery groups, an accountability group, and a class teaching insights and techniques about recovery from sex addiction. But they are also therapy groups, designed to guide and empower each man's program of recovery from sex addiction. They must have been diagnosed previously with the Sexual Dependency Inventory, and discussed their history and test results with me individually to establish their relationship with me, and to prove they are ready for the group. Their goals must include doing devotional and recovery reading each week, going to meetings, checking in with other guys in recovery, and working through the 12 steps with a home group and a sponsor. Men will also work a 4-circle sobriety plan, and progress through the standard stages of recovery. Regarding their partners and families, they will learn to make a weekly recovery report to their partners, and encourage them to get professional and girlfriend support and guidance. Men will make amends by scheduling three events in a timely manner: full disclosure, impact statement, and emotional restitution. Doing all these may result in some men digging deeply into buried memories and emotions they likely would never been able to face up to and learn from, without the guidance and support of this group.
This group is very similar to one above for male sex addicts. The main difference is in how they are screened. I will use other diagnostic methods, but I will still go over what tests and previous treatment may have identified as work they still need to do.
This group is for anyone in a loving relationship with an active or recently substance-abusing man, including male alcoholics. Participants will qualify and prepare for group by taking one or two personality tests of their choice, and discussing their results with me. This will help them set realistic goals for themselves in this group. Each group will begin with women sharing how their week has impacted them in about a five-minute summary, ending with what they might want to work on in group today, and roughly how much time they ask the group to take on their issues, if it is available. The group will study the pros and cons of various models and communities for their healing and recovery: trauma recovery, 12-step wisdom, grief recovery, Christian faith, and breaking the betrayal bond. Participants may believe in more than one of these healing traditions, and they will do whatever they believe is best for their recovery. A key skill to develop is setting healthy boundaries and learning how to honor them, so they participants learn to hold themselves and other family members responsible for their own emotions and behaviors, and for nobody else's. Women will learn to keep themselves feeling safe, significant, and beautiful, disengaging with mutual love and respect when necessary from anyone including their partners who jeopardize any of that, such as through betrayal, traumatizing, lies, and gaslighting. They will learn to focus less on their partner's past problems and more on their own future solutions.
This group works very much like the previous one above for partners of sex addicts. But these women have partners who aren't sex addicts. These women have partners who are addicted not to sex, but partners addicted to other behaviors (such as gambling, work, video games), substances (alcohol and drugs), and to people (they idolize or are attached to in unhealthy ways, like their mamas, old girlfriends, male role models, or even their partners who are in this group).
The groups will meet once a week for an hour and fifteen minutes, at the same time each week. Each person will be able to see and hear each other person in the group, in little boxes on your computer screen or phone, whichever you use. You will connect through your email to my computer through my Zoom Meetings app. Other participants will only have your email address, and a first name or nickname you give for us to call you by. Each person can have their video turned on, off, blurred, or enhanced (to make you look better!). I will make sure no one talks less than half as much or more than twice as much as anyone else, except sometimes when the group wants me to teach something. I will protect members from unwanted feedback or advice, by chairing each group to keep us on task. The group members will have been screened by me, so that each must earn my trust that they will observe strict confidentiality, so that "What you hear here, and who you see here, stays here." To preserve anonymity, I will ask participants not to share during groups their last names, spouse's name, phone numbers, or where anyone lives, works, or worships. You can exchange contact information by mutual agreement through me, once you and someone else in group want to get to know each other outside of group. To keep people from feeling excluded or rejected, conversations and meetings between group members outside of group will not be mentioned in group. If they are, they will hold another meeting/conversation that's open to any group member who wishes to be included. Contacts between meetings are encouraged, so participants can help and get to know each other between sessions as they wish.
I am charging each group as a whole $160 per group for 75 minutes of time. This way I receive about 20% of what I would be paid per hour of contact if I was seeing people in the office. As all participants get up to 15 minutes of free phone time, and I pay for the software, encryption security, and bandwidth for these video calls, I am working at a discount here, as we all should be during this crisis. Fewer participants will get more attention and help than members of a larger group. So I'll charge a small group of three $50 per group for the first month, and if more join, the price will go down accordingly, so that a group of 4 people would pay $40 per session, 5 people would pay $32 per group, and a full group of six would pay $28. As with any therapy group, I ask that each person pay by the month, ahead of time. That increases participants' investment, commitment, and loyalty to the group, because as Jesus taught us, our hearts follow our treasure. If anyone drops out within the first month for any reason, they will be refunded what they haven't used, up to half of their first payment. So that all participants are fully prepared for their group experience, they will be screened personally by me, and they will have signed a fully informed consent statement, which you can download and print out here.
The Chinese written language is marvelously colorful. Their words are illustrated by little sketches or diagrams. The Chinese character for danger is a sketch of a scary scene, and their word for opportunity is naturally a more hopeful drawing. When these two characters are put on top of one another, it is the Chinese word for crisis, or turning point. It means a situation that could go either way.
Which way a situation goes for us depends on whether we focus on the danger (seeing it in the foreground), or on the opportunity which the situation presents (seeing the danger in the background). All problem-solving starts by focusing on the danger, and then sees more and more the opportunity. This theme of focusing attention is key to all twelve of the problem-solving techniques below. Each tool in this kit contrasts two ways to focus your attention. The first one isn’t wrong. In fact we need to do that one at the start to understand the danger, the problem. The trick is to shift this picture of the problem more and more to the background as we bring into focus its solution.
Dr. Paul Schmidt is a psychologist life coach you can reach at [email protected], (502) 633-2860.