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Inside Psychoeducational Support Groups: Healing Through Education · Professor Peterson’s Psychology Classroom

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  Welcome to this edition of Psychology Explained by Dr.
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  Curtis Peterson, who is trying to bring psychology
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  alive for us all. Our first type
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  of group,
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  which is a psychoeducational support group.
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  Okay, so first of all, I want
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  to start with this area right here. Who can facilitate a
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  psychoeducational group? It can be peer-led.
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  So these are peers who have graduated,
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  quote unquote, from the group. They've been through the
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  treatment process, they're in a healthy place, and so it
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  might be a peer. Or it can be professionally
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  facilitated. So my example
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  in the beginning of this lecture series is how I facilitated
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  domestic violence survivor groups.
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  I was doing it as the professional,
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  the person who manages the
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  crisis shelter, the person who
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  does crisis outreach or response.
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  And I am there to facilitate
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  the educational part. Okay, on the peer-led
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  end, it sounds something like, I've been through this,
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  I've become certified to be able
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  to be here, I'm one of you,
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  and this has been my experience. In both cases,
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  the job of the facilitator is to facilitate
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  us being here, and each one of us, even though we've
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  had our unique experiences have shared experiences.
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  So in the anatomy of a psychosocial support
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  group is step 1, emotional check-ins.
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  Often, and these are often meant to anchor by
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  a grounding quote. So for example,
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  the start of a psychoeducational group may
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  start with some type of motivational or questioning
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  quote from an author,
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  actor, someone who has written a
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  book about these issues. And then you're—
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  they're asked to connect with that. What, what meaning does
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  that bring? And the purpose of that is to ground
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  everybody and— but also hear everybody's
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  similar type of story that
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  that reflection brings.
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  Okay, and this brings up the core mechanism
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  of a psychoeducational group. As participants
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  recognize their personal history in a systematic
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  dynamic, taught, validated diminishes and
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  isolation diminishes. Okay,
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  they realize abuse follows recognized
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  patterns of cohesion, cohesion,
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  and personal failure— and not personal failure,
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  meaning the kind of the idea behind this
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  is to take some of the burden of,
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  for example, being in a domestic violence relationship
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  off of the individual. If we're talking about
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  other common types of group with addiction,
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  psychoeducational groups, it's saying that this
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  addiction is happening to them.
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  It's not because of a personal failure.
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  It's about all these dynamics that are pushing on
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  the person. Okay, and this goes into
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  step 2, which is the education module.
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  Examining in the domestic violence field, it's examining power
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  and control wheel, it's delineating
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  those, and then it goes into step
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  3, which is group processing and mirroring.
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  So after you go through the educational component,
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  it's about, okay, our conclusion concluding thoughts,
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  uh, for today. How do you see this
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  process that we went through today playing
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  out in your lived experience with your
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  abuser? Okay,
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  and this is very much a normalizing,
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  processing, mirroring, uh,
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  event for the, the, the, uh,
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  um, participant because they may
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  have not seen that they were financially
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  being taken care of, being taken advantage
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  of. They might have not seen, uh, the isolation
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  that is common within an abusive relationship
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  because they've had years of justification or a
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  time of justification where they felt like
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  what the abuser was telling them was
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  normalizing. That you shouldn't
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  call your parents because they're abusive, they're trying
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  to take advantage of you, they're trying to put false
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  thoughts about me in your head. You shouldn't
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  contact your friends. I will manage
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  your money. Because, you know,
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  we'll be financially better off. I'm really good at this.
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  So I will take the bank account
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  and, and I'll fix it. And if you think about that in a healthy relationship
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  dynamic,
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  those are all things that in
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  healthy relationships we have conversations about.
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  Who's healthy, who's not, who should be managing
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  money, who shouldn't, or, or should. But when the
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  process is completely one-sided
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  and it's only really advantaging one person,
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  that's where the power and control becomes,
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  um, pretty dynamic
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  and abusive. And I'll go back to the financial example.
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  In a healthy relationship, one person
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  might say, I'll manage the money,
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  but they don't deny access to the bank
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  account, to the financials. They, they work with
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  their partner about how much we should spend on groceries. It's not
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  a one-sided dynamic.
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  But this is often forgotten in an abusive
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  relationship, that it shouldn't always be one
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  person controlling everything. Both parties should
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  have full access. They should have the ability and,
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  and whatnot to do that. So my
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  point is, this is the power of the psychosocial
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  support groups is to normalize,
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  to say what is healthy, what is not healthy.
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  In the addiction groups, it's about saying, hey,
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  this is what
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  substances are doing.
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  Look at what it's doing in your own life
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  and look at other group members and mirror
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  that experience that they've been having.
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  So that's the psychosocial education
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  support group. Um,
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  thank you for joining us for this Psychology Explained. I hope
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  you'll join us in later episodes where we can— we'll continue to
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  investigate the human mind and psychology.