There are few things I like less than talking about myself. I don't know why. That's just the way I've always been. I suppose it's very selfish of me, because I generally enjoy asking people about their own lives; there just doesn't seem to be much about me that I find interesting enough to share I guess.
Imagine then, if you can, a person such as myself spending 10 hours a week in one group therapy session or another. This is what I face for the next 9 weeks, not counting tomorrow. In addition to the brain-injury group I've been in for over a dozen years (1 hour a week), I am now committed to three more substance/alcohol rehab groups, at 3 hours a pop.
I have already been to two sessions of the new group. The people seem very nice, welcoming, supportive. The woman running the group, a matronly woman named Patricia, is likewise quite nice, but her method (and I was told of this ahead of time) is quite a change from what I'm used to. The brain-injury group is a pretty informal deal. Group members assemble in a neuropsychiatrist's office, which has a large sofa, a couple of soft leather chairs, and a few other fairly large chairs. One person strikes up a conversation -- it could be about brain injury or baseball or cars -- and after a while the neuropsych, Alec, picks up on a relevant point raised in the conversation.
In this new group, Patricia decides on the topic. For the two sessions I've attended, the topic has been "boundaries." Whenever the discussion has taken a detour (i.e. something we actually want to talk about) Patricia eventually brings it back to the main topic. I find it all a bit stilted. Maybe it's the fairly vague nature of this particular topic. Hopefully next week's topic will be more interesting.
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