Some Advantages of Group Counseling Over Individual Counseling People often have a general sense of the benefits of individual

counseling but lack an understanding of the benefits of group counseling. Research has shown group counseling to be as effective as individual counseling, especially for problems that involve our relationships with others. This list was created to help you better understand how group counseling can be helpful to you.
1. Groups enable the members to see how others respond to them. People can respond to each other freely and without reservation, often in ways that their individual therapist cannot.

2. Groups afford members diverse views of their behavior. There is not just one person responding to the client or observing him or her in a particular way, but many. One member may respond with positive feelings and another with negative. Again, it is group as a microcosm of the larger world. 4. Group affords the opportunity for on-the-spot self-awareness. Members discover not only how they opportunities to practice in-the-moment emotional awareness by putting thoughts, feelings and impulses into words instead of acting them out. look or come across to others, but also what they are feeling when dealing with people. Group offers

5. Groups afford the chance to practice new behavior. Members can rehearse dealing with various life situations in the outside world and learn how they come across to others when they do behave in new ways.

6. Groups permit reciprocal exchange. Self-esteem can be diminished when one is exclusively on the when one perceives oneself to be able to help others.

receiving end of help, as is appropriately the case in individual counseling. Self-esteem is enhanced

The successful group member finishes not simply with a superior capacity to relate to others, but also with more inner comfort and a far better ability to srealize his or her own potential. -- Louis Ormont, PhD The Group Therapy Experience

This handout was adpted from Sabrina Neu at the University of Colorado counseling center, who, in turn, drew from Ormont, L. (1992) and Yalom, I.D. (1985). The theory and practice of group psychotherpy. New York: Basic Books.