Yalom’s Essential Elements

Yalom’s Essential Elements

Yalom was an expert when it came to handling issues concerning existential psychotherapy. He came up with eleven therapeutic factors that can lead to a change and healing in group therapy (Corey, 2008). These 11 processes aim to create awareness in a group of individuals who are going through tough times in their lives. He also wanted members of group therapy to realize that together they can motivate each other. The essential group processes of Yalom therapeutic process that tends to turn the lives of individual dealing with different issues is paramount. Additionally, a summary of Teyber provides insight and response to conflicted emotions.

Instillation of hope

Many clients who attend therapy sessions for treatment feel defeated by life.  The majority of the cases are overwhelmed by failures to manage the use of drugs and other substances. They have a feeling of lack of a better place to be and no chances or opportunities for a better life.  If a person with a similar experience joins a group of individuals fighting the same problem, they have a better chance to see others changing and fighting addiction. The changes in others motivate others to become hopeful. The group members tend to be supportive and celebrating small victories achieved by team members to keep the spirit going (Corey, 2008). Through this kind of inspiration, hope begins to show to members who and given up.

In this process, various exercises can be used to further light hope to substance abusing clients. Such activities may include visualization exercises where the group members are asked to view their life without drug abuse and seeing the potential opportunities life is ready to give them. However, many substances do not have any imaginary life with better opportunities, and in some cases, it can be humiliating; hence the team leader needs to make this move cautiously.

Universality

Substance abuse push people to avoid relationship and force individuals to self-isolation. In a group, individuals trying to fight this problem find people with similar issues. The groups help them to share their experiences, and they feel a sense of belonging that helps in creating connections within the group (Corey, 2008). The feeling of unity in this kind of groups aid individuals to have at least people to talk to and those who are willing to help them to fight addiction without judging.

Imparting Information

The inevitable sharing of personal information in a group helps members to move from one day to the other. The Modified Interpersonal Group Psychotherapy (MIGP) gives group members a chance to look back and reflect on what they have gained in terms of fighting substance addiction (Corey, 2008). The information shared in a group is confidential, and its primary purpose is to motivate others. The individual struggling with substance addiction can hear personal stories from others who have been there and fought the issues and how they have achieved success.

Altruism

Fundamentals of the human race are the desire to aid others when faced with troubles. Individuals battling substance abuse focus on their problems and experience a hard time to reach out to help people they care about (Corey, 2008). Group therapy offers individuals to assist and vies to other members. As members provide insights to each other, and they realize they have something of value to add to others, their self-esteem is elevated, and this completely turns their life around.

Corrective recapitulation of the Primary family group

An individual relates to his/her family of origin and group therapy offers an opportunity for the members to relate to other members as a family. An individual struggling in the past can easily connect to a member whom they are struggling to fight substance abuse.

Development of socializing techniques

According to Corey (2008), many substance addicts are field dependent which means they are very selective to people the interact with. Group therapy utilizes this and channels the individuals’ energy to trigger a change in the way they socialize. This will help in gaining skills to communicate with others quickly and to break through self-isolation. This also helps them learn how to disconnect, which is also essential when dealing with anxieties.

Imitative behaviours

The group members view the therapist as their role model as they tend to learn one or two things from him/her. They also learn through other members and an individual can adapt behaviour from other members (Corey, 2008). Life is a learning process and imitating is also a learning skill. A group is a living demonstration of new behaviours demonstrated by other members, and they can learn from one another.

Interpersonal learning

The therapy group offers an opportunity for members to acquire interpersonal skills to develop relationships and intimacy. The group is like a laboratory where members can freely express their feelings and expect not to be judged.

Group cohesiveness

Group cohesion is the way an individual relates to other members of groups and how they feel while expressing themselves. In other words, its a sense of belonging to a group that an individual can express themselves freely and is considered as compelling feeling to have such a relationship in a group.

Catharsis

In some cases, individuals in a group acquire sudden insights on how they view life by interacting with other members of the group. Some ideas trigger bursts of emotions that may release pain related to past experiences (Corey, 2008). This can only be achieved in a group where group cohesion exists.

Existential factors

Existential factors such as death and loss are often issues that may lead to substance abuse. Sharing these experiences with other members helps in the healing process as so many other people have gone through the same problems.

Yalom’s methods of handling the here and now and transference

The most effective and straightforward way in psychotherapy is understanding here and now situations: sharing the information within the group, honest thoughts and feelings concerning what is happening currently in one’s life. This concept has been in existence for quite sometimes, but no one has been championing for it like Irvin Yalom. Yalom advocates for its clinical use since whatever happened in the past cannot be changed; it mainly focuses on what are we doing at the moment to accept and move on.

Here and now it’s a concept based on the idea that the individual seeking therapy services will talk about personal issues, and this is what will create the essential start of any therapy session. For example, a lady who feels betrayed by her friends or family at one point she will experience betrayal from her therapist. This shows that the woman is experiencing what she always experiences at some point. In another instance, a man experiencing anger management issues; at some point, he will get angry at the therapist. Hence it is crucial for therapy to focus on items as they are happening here and now (Corey, 2008). Yalom insists that therapists and patients should discuss what is happening currently, and this could bear fruit.

Summary of Teyber of responding to conflicted emotions

Painful feelings lie deep at the heart that is enduring problems. The therapist helps the client transform their life. When a therapist focuses intensely on how the client feels he/she can begin to feel the same anguish and pain going through that particular individual. Therapists can understand the feelings of the client and facilitate them in mitigating the problem. Pain can be triggered by many other issues facing an individual who is deeply hidden in their heart. Letting the client spill everything when talking helps the therapist to understand the conflicted emotions. The therapist is not responsible for their client’s feelings but helps them re-live their past experiences so that they can deal with their feelings head-on. (Teyber & Teyber, 2010).

In some cases, clients tend to hide feelings that have been unacceptable, shameful, too painful or unacceptable in other relationships. Clients often avoid complicated feelings for fear of interpersonal consequences. This is because they are longing for empathetic understanding as well. The therapist should understand why clients are behaving or responding in a particular way so that they can help their clients deal with their emotions. Therefore, it is vital for the therapist’s response towards these challenging feelings will be very significant toward the end of a therapy session. The success of the therapy process depends on the willingness of the therapist to dig deep into the emotions of his/her client. The therapist should understand the rationale that leads to the client’s vulnerabilities in his or her past experiences. Once the therapist recognizes this, it is easy for them to understand the fear and shame now, and they can make a hypothesis.

Therapists facilitate transformation by offering more sensible and meaningful responses to the client than he/she has received from others. This means a therapist should give deep insight, taking the client’s feelings seriously, and does not provide superficial reassurance emotions (Teyber, & Teyber, 2010). Besides, when a therapist does not respond to the client feeling the therapy loses its core purpose and reduces it to intellectual pursuit. New therapists shy away from intense feelings and instead focus on the surface to keep things simple. This, however, does not help the client since for a solution to be found, the therapist needs to dig deep into the feelings of the patient to understand what may be triggering such emotions. Taking about emotions directly may make patients feel vulnerable; therefore, the therapist should create a safe environment in which the patient feels safe to share their feelings.

Allowing the client to elaborate on their experience is helpful. To gain a deep understanding of the client’s emotions, the therapist can use open-ended questions. Open-ended questions give the patient the freedom to accurately describe their experience. It also brings immediacy. As the patient narrates his experience, feelings from the clients’ experience are brought to life, allowing the therapist to respond to the situation first hand. The therapist should be careful to avoid identifying with the patient condition. This results in inaccurate hypothesis as they interpret the case based on their personal experiences. The therapist should also avoid passing judgment into the patient and instead understand and familiarize themselves with the patient feelings to make an appropriate hypothesis on their condition. Therapists bring their expertise and their understanding of rules of emotions to the therapy process to help patients deal with painful emotional experiences.

References

Corey, G. (2008). Theory and practice of counselling and psychotherapy. Nelson Education.

Teyber, E., & Teyber, F. (2010). Interpersonal process in therapy: An Integrative Model. Cengage Learning.