My Group Therapy Experience
13:06
Today I thought I would do a post about my experience with group therapy. When reading this post do keep in mind that this is my opinion and how I personally found it, not everybody will find the group therapy sessions similar to how I did.
I first got offered the therapy sessions after I had an evaluation with a therapist. At the evaluation we discussed my thoughts around food, my thoughts about myself, my eating disorder habits and from there I was offered group therapy as a starting point. Now I'm not going to lie, I really didn't want to have group therapy. I was scared of being the biggest one there and thought that the other patients may judge me because of it. As I was waiting for the group therapy date to be given out (Group therapy at my hospital doesn't run as often as I think it should.) I was tormenting myself about how the others wouldn't believe I had a disorder because I might not have been as skinny as them, so around this time I did start to lose weight again but honestly I was wrong to worry and wrong to rely on old habits as it was not how I was expecting it at all.
Turning up to the hospital I was shaking with anxiety expecting to walk into a room with lots of girls around my age, all quiet and staring at me. However I walked into a room of girls and women from all ages, all sizes and all walks of life. Although we all had something in common. An Eating disorder and a story.
Im not going to go into details about the other members of my group therapy as that wouldn't be fair and I have to respect their anonymity but their was different types of eating disorders that we were their to talk about not just anorexia and bulimia.
The sessions lasted an hour, once every week for 6 weeks. However I did miss one of those sessions as I was moving back to university for my last year.
The first few sessions I didn't speak at all. I just sat and listened to other peoples stories who felt more comfortable vocalising what they had been through and it was strange to hear other people describe the same kind of feelings that I was having as I had felt alone for all the years I had kept quiet about it. We had two women who held our sessions one a therapist and one a dietician as we were taught about dietics to help in our recovery and told about balancing our diets and details about what food groups we needed to survive and how we were damaging our bodies by using learnt behaviours and then for the therapy side of it we discussed our stories, discussed the media and its perceptions of the female body (it was only women in my particular class), we did a lot about eating disorder cycles, what we felt were the benefits and cons of having an eating disorder and how the negatives out weighed the benefits.
The first few sessions took a lot of getting used to and I didn't really feel like I was learning anything because I felt like they were stating the obvious and stuff I already knew about. I remember coming out of them frustrated for the first couple of sessions because I felt like they just didn't understand that just by showing us the negatives of our eating disorders it was going to make us just switch it off and I actually walked out of the room crying during one of the first sessions but after I allowed myself to start opening up to the idea of recovery and committing to the activities they were asking us to do I started to see that I had actually learnt a lot. We were set home work tasks to complete and bring in the following week. One piece was to write a letter to a friend 5 years into recovery and how your life would be different to how it is now and also to write to the same friend as if you was still living with your disorder in 5 years time, this was to show us that we could understand that the life with recovery would be much better than the one still living with our disorder. The second piece of homework was to write a letter to your disorder, this was probably to worst one for me because it does make you quite emotional when you start to think of things you've lost because of it. This particular work was so that we could see the disorder as an object rather than who we are because if we could unlink the connection it might be easier for us to process our recoveries and living as ourselves without the disorder. The homework I hated the most was the food diary and I refused to do it because I have done it before and personally for me they don't help me as they make me paranoid seeing things wrote down, but I do see how they could help other people as they can show you the habits of your eating and how it affects you enough to fall into the eating disorder.
I did find group therapy helpful but I don't feel like the biggest lessons I learnt was from the therapists and what they were teaching us. The most helpful thing came from actually listening to the older women's stories as it made me scared that one day I could be in my forties sat still trying to recover with my eating disorder taking over every aspect of my life and I really don't want that to happen.
I would recommend group therapy to anyone who is offered it because most of the time with an eating disorder you feel like you have nothing to lose so it is worth giving it a try and if it doesn't work for you then you can look at other therapies that you may find more helpful but at least you will know you tried it out. Also I was thinking of posting some of the homework I did whilst in group therapy so keep an eye out for that.
I first got offered the therapy sessions after I had an evaluation with a therapist. At the evaluation we discussed my thoughts around food, my thoughts about myself, my eating disorder habits and from there I was offered group therapy as a starting point. Now I'm not going to lie, I really didn't want to have group therapy. I was scared of being the biggest one there and thought that the other patients may judge me because of it. As I was waiting for the group therapy date to be given out (Group therapy at my hospital doesn't run as often as I think it should.) I was tormenting myself about how the others wouldn't believe I had a disorder because I might not have been as skinny as them, so around this time I did start to lose weight again but honestly I was wrong to worry and wrong to rely on old habits as it was not how I was expecting it at all.
Turning up to the hospital I was shaking with anxiety expecting to walk into a room with lots of girls around my age, all quiet and staring at me. However I walked into a room of girls and women from all ages, all sizes and all walks of life. Although we all had something in common. An Eating disorder and a story.
Im not going to go into details about the other members of my group therapy as that wouldn't be fair and I have to respect their anonymity but their was different types of eating disorders that we were their to talk about not just anorexia and bulimia.
The sessions lasted an hour, once every week for 6 weeks. However I did miss one of those sessions as I was moving back to university for my last year.
The first few sessions I didn't speak at all. I just sat and listened to other peoples stories who felt more comfortable vocalising what they had been through and it was strange to hear other people describe the same kind of feelings that I was having as I had felt alone for all the years I had kept quiet about it. We had two women who held our sessions one a therapist and one a dietician as we were taught about dietics to help in our recovery and told about balancing our diets and details about what food groups we needed to survive and how we were damaging our bodies by using learnt behaviours and then for the therapy side of it we discussed our stories, discussed the media and its perceptions of the female body (it was only women in my particular class), we did a lot about eating disorder cycles, what we felt were the benefits and cons of having an eating disorder and how the negatives out weighed the benefits.
The first few sessions took a lot of getting used to and I didn't really feel like I was learning anything because I felt like they were stating the obvious and stuff I already knew about. I remember coming out of them frustrated for the first couple of sessions because I felt like they just didn't understand that just by showing us the negatives of our eating disorders it was going to make us just switch it off and I actually walked out of the room crying during one of the first sessions but after I allowed myself to start opening up to the idea of recovery and committing to the activities they were asking us to do I started to see that I had actually learnt a lot. We were set home work tasks to complete and bring in the following week. One piece was to write a letter to a friend 5 years into recovery and how your life would be different to how it is now and also to write to the same friend as if you was still living with your disorder in 5 years time, this was to show us that we could understand that the life with recovery would be much better than the one still living with our disorder. The second piece of homework was to write a letter to your disorder, this was probably to worst one for me because it does make you quite emotional when you start to think of things you've lost because of it. This particular work was so that we could see the disorder as an object rather than who we are because if we could unlink the connection it might be easier for us to process our recoveries and living as ourselves without the disorder. The homework I hated the most was the food diary and I refused to do it because I have done it before and personally for me they don't help me as they make me paranoid seeing things wrote down, but I do see how they could help other people as they can show you the habits of your eating and how it affects you enough to fall into the eating disorder.
I did find group therapy helpful but I don't feel like the biggest lessons I learnt was from the therapists and what they were teaching us. The most helpful thing came from actually listening to the older women's stories as it made me scared that one day I could be in my forties sat still trying to recover with my eating disorder taking over every aspect of my life and I really don't want that to happen.
I would recommend group therapy to anyone who is offered it because most of the time with an eating disorder you feel like you have nothing to lose so it is worth giving it a try and if it doesn't work for you then you can look at other therapies that you may find more helpful but at least you will know you tried it out. Also I was thinking of posting some of the homework I did whilst in group therapy so keep an eye out for that.
0 comments