Group Therapy Activities

Activities For Group Therapy

Ice Breakers
Ice breakers will make people get used to each other and will make everyone comfortable in the group. Ice breakers act like energizers; these are warm up activities that help in creating a positive atmosphere. Ice breakers help participants relax, break out of any barriers, and act as motivational forces. Animal sounds are great ice breaking group therapy activities. You will have to blindfold the participants and assign each of them an animal’s name. Make the team members recognize each other by the animal sound they make.

Trust And Relationship Activities
People suffering from some sort of a psychological disorder or those who are mentally disturbed and depressed often find it difficult to deal with relationships, both personal as well as professional. A group therapy activity like ‘mine field’ will help develop a sense of dependency, trust and togetherness in such people. In order to perform the activity, divide the members in pairs of two and blindfold one of them. Scatter some objects around the room and make one person give instructions to the blindfolded member of the team to collect all the objects. Assess the level of trust developed by each member at the end of the game and provide feedback to each member individually. Make the member go through the analysis. This is the only way for them to learn how to trust others and how to strike a relation.

Self-Awareness
Self awareness activities, as the name implies help people understand their inner self. There are several games that you can organize that will help the members to discover themselves. ‘Fear in hat’ is one such game in which you ask the members to anonymously write down their fears on a piece of paper. You collect the papers in a hat and then one by one each person gets up and reads out a fear and explains how a person might feel. Talking about the fear provides a better understanding of the same and also helps the person deal with it effectively in the future. ‘Solo hour in nature’ is yet another interesting and helpful game to play which provides the members with the opportunity to be one with nature and then reflect upon their experience.

Recreation Activities
Recreation activities are designed for stress management. Recreation activities involve stuff like dancing, painting, composing and listening to music. These activities bring forth the creativity of the members and provide them a path to express themselves. Making the members indulge in such activities trains their minds and the mind starts craving for more knowledge.

Narrating
In this group therapy activity each member narrates his/her experiences from life to other members. This exercise is an essential follow up to the trust building exercise conducted earlier. This might be an opportunity for certain group members who were reluctant to open up earlier to share their life with others and to mingle well with others as well.