Group Therapy at Center for Hope of the Sierras
Interactive and Supportive Self-Reflection Group:
This program focuses on addressing the issues, which underlie the eating disorder through highly individualized, comprehensive goals. These goals are drawn from the patient's progress over each week, created by the multidisciplinary treatment team. Each person is involved in his or her own treatment plan and reviews treatment goals in a weekly treatment team meeting in preparation for the upcoming week of psychotherapy. This group offers a time where each patient discusses individual treatment goals, successes and struggles, accomplishments and disappointments, while receiving constructive feedback from peers and staff. The individual receives the group's support for increasing self-awareness and self-responsibility, helping maintain hope and courage to continue her path of recovery.
Body Image Group:
Awareness of cultural pressures to pursue a body size and shape which makes little biological sense is critical to resolving an eating disorder. This group, which is both supportive and insight oriented, addresses the issue of normative discontent in our society. The group helps patients understand the implications of living in a society that is toxic to the self, and how to overcome the false belief that the body should be "infinitely malleable."
Mindful Eating:
This group focuses on undoing the damage caused be the false belief that dieting and food labeling are effective tools for a healthy lifestyle. The group teaches eating as an art form —just as living can be viewed as an art form —which requires the person to be connected to the self and to bodily and emotional needs. This focus on the self and its needs ultimately validates the human desire to experience the satisfaction of eating without anxiety, shame, and guilt. Experiences of the Sunday night dinner outings (to local area restaurants) are processed in this group. Before a person leaves our program, we aim to help them be able to experience eating any and all foods in peace, with the body and mind working in harmony.
Mind and Body Harmony:
This cognitive processing group helps bring into awareness the thoughts and ideas which fuel eating disorder driven emotions and behaviors. The group empowers the patient to become able to distinguish between a healthy, rational, or actual thought versus a destructive, or negative thought, which is a derivative of her eating disorder. This group challenges cognitive distortions while replacing them with healthy, self-loving thoughts, which are based on an integrated, validated self. Mind and Body Harmony encourages mindfulness, and teaches patients the importance of developing a new perspective on life, and the power and effectiveness of processing unwanted and/or negative thoughts in a mindful and gentle context.
Poetry Group:
Poetry is a form of self-expression that allows an individual to utilize her own creative talents to express feelings and thoughts that may be too difficult to talk about. Oftentimes, the eating disorder is a manifestation of a person's disconnection, due to avoidance of important feelings and thoughts, which leads to further suffering. In this group, each individual can share poetry in a group process that facilitates a fuller connection within.
Love-In-Action Self-Love/Self-Care Group:
The critical and judgmental thoughts associated with an eating disorder may drive a person's actions to become harsh, causing the person to punish and ignore her mind, body, physical, and emotional needs. This group helps the person redefine love as an active relationship with oneself, rather than just a feeling. This love-in-action can be directed toward nurturance and comfort. While it may be difficult to cope with the negative beliefs and feelings one may have about self and body, this group emphasizes that one can make the choice to take the action of behaving in a loving manner toward oneself, rather than just waiting for the loving feelings to emerge. This group emphasizes the importance of beginning to live in the present moment, even when it feels uncomfortable or unnatural.
Interpersonal Process Group:
People with eating disorders often repress or hold in private thoughts and feelings instead of openly discussing them. Process groups encourage individuals to share with others openly and honestly. The group emphasizes the importance of a nonjudgmental attitude towards self and others, assertiveness, mutual support, interpersonal communication, and reflective listening. Topics regarding relationships, including boundaries, competition, and jealousy, will also be addressed.
Food and Feelings Pre and Post Meal Group:
Learning to deal with the anxiety, shame, guilt, and fear associated with eating is essential for recovery. This group is held before and after meals to help understand and explore the emotions, struggles, and even milestones that the person is experiencing surrounding and including the act of eating. This allows the person to express, rather than repress and internalize, difficult emotions. In doing so, the client also learns to exist without engaging in destructive activities directed toward undoing the act of eating and puts them in a state of calm and gentle balance between mind and body.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Group:
During the recovery process, it is important to discover a sense of purpose and engage in behaviors that give meaning to one's life. In this group, each client identifies her core values in domains such as friends, family, health, spirituality, recreation, education, careers, etc. Each patient is encouraged to increase engagement in behaviors consistent with her core values. To enhance commitment to core values, patients learn to accept and adapt to the struggles and difficulties that arise during the course of valued living.
Relapse Prevention:
The focus of this group is to prepare patients to sustain the gains made in treatment after they leave the Center for Hope of the Sierras. Patients learn how to make effective use of treatment gains in ongoing preparation for discharge. This group helps patients clarify the foundations of their recovery and develop proactive shifts, leading patients to cope adaptively and constructively with sources of stress that are potential triggers for relapse. A variety of modalities are utilized to achieve the objective of this group, including ongoing, nonjudgmental discussion of struggles, role play, experiential activities, identification of potential roadblocks to recovery, and exploration of treatment outcome factors that have been reported in research literature.
Imagery Group:
One of the many functions of an eating disorder is to keep a person separated from and unaware of feelings, thoughts, and dreams. A critical part of recovery is connecting to emotional needs and learning how to meet those needs. The foundation of the imagery group is to provide an environment free from judgment over the "artistic quality" of the work and an emphasis on the process of exploring unconscious thoughts, feelings, and dreams. Participants use a variety of media and activities in a caring group setting with the ultimate goal of helping them to integrate their discoveries into their ongoing recovery.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills Group:
One component of DBT is skills training. DBT has four specific skills training modules: emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and mindfulness. Here at the Center for Hope of the Sierras we teach these four specific skills training modules aimed at helping patients be more effective in their interpersonal relationships, as well as their relationships with themselves and their emotions.
