Group Therapy Activities Used For Substance Abuse

Attending group therapy at first can be very intimidating and challenging – especially for somebody who is undergoing mental health problems and is anyway embarrassed of their condition and doesn't want to be the centre of attention. Here are some group therapy activities that a therapist uses during group therapy which are simple and very effective. Reading about these might ease your experience as you may anticipate what is coming and it may relax you in, or it may help you ease somebody’s else's anxiety who you know is attending group therapy. 

1.    The therapist might ask you what causes you to abuse substances. They may try to do this to understand your triggers. They may also ask you what kind of coping strategies you use to beat these triggers and what you are hoping to achieve through group therapy. 

2.   The therapist may try to understand if certain words, phrases or parts of language influence your thoughts and are associated with your abusive behaviors. Through group therapy, your therapist will teach you what kind of words are considered as “good words” and “bad words” and how your word choices can affect somebody, both positively and negatively. 

3.   Your therapist will encourage you to make a list of activities that you enjoy indulging in that are not related to your drug abusing behaviors. Group therapy will then teach you how you can use these enjoyable activities to stay away from abusing drugs and how you can prevent cravings by keeping yourself busy with these. 

4.    Your therapist might ask you to write down your thoughts as they occur. Keep in mind, it doesn’t matter what these thoughts are, even if it means writing “I don’t know what to write”. This helps the therapist understand how well you can keep a conscious control of your thoughts; how well aware you are of what you think and how well you can streamline your thoughts. 

5.   In group therapy, you may be asked to make a list of the good and bad moments of your life and what made those moments good and bad. You may also be asked to identify any kind of similarities between these events. 

6.  You may be asked to describe yourself, how you feel about yourself and your current situation and how far you will go to help yourself. This is done primarily to understand your self-esteem, self-appreciation and how well you truly know yourself. In group therapy after all, self-realization is best realization.