The teenage years can be really scary and confusing.
It can make you aware of all sorts of things to feel self-conscious about and it can be difficult to know if you're making the right decision or figuring out what's true or not.
If you struggle with fear and self-doubt, group therapy may be the solution for you.
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Now, before we get into how group therapy helps, I want to be clear on what fear and self-doubt are.
They're not necessarily bad things.
It can be really healthy to recognize and hone into your fear or your self-doubt.
Fear
Fear is the emotional experience of considering that something is a potentially high-risk situation where your safety could be in jeopardy. So if you're feeling fear, it's really important to check-in and stay curious about it.
Is it valid?
Does it make sense?
Do I need more information?
For example, it is really risky to ask your crush out on a date. Because if they say no, that's really painful and hurtful. So, does being afraid that your crush could say no if you ask them out mean that you should never ask them out? Probably not.
Instead, that fear is probably telling you that you need to consider what to do if in fact, they do say no to help yourself feel better. For me, I love engaging in any sort of self-care activity so treating myself to something like a warm cup of hot cocoa at the end of the day can be really helpful if I know going into it, there's a high likelihood that I could have a stressful event. Plus if things go well, I can use that hot cocoa to celebrate.
Self-Doubt
Self-doubt is the idea of being uncertain or unsure if what you feel and experience as true, is actually true or not. So part of alleviating self-doubt is getting really clear on:
Your Values
Your Feelings
Your Boundaries
It's really linking up with your gut or your intuition.
Fear and self-doubt are problems when they keep us from engaging in activities or in relationships- or just from doing things that we find enjoyable or that we want to do to improve our life.
So where does Group Therapy come into this?
Well, there are three ways that group therapy can help you overcome fear and self-doubt:
1. Exposure
Joining any sort of group can be a very unique and fear-inducing event. That's because we're not always sure how to act in that group. We don't know what's normal and not normal for that group. And we also don't know how they're gonna react to us. So by showing up you’re taking a little risk by exposing yourself to some of that fear in the group, which can be really helpful when you have a good experience.
Exposure therapy is actually one of the most effective ways of overcoming any sort of fear or anxiety because the more that we stop avoiding situations that are fear-inducing, the easier it is to manage those emotions in those situations. And if I'm being honest, my own belief is that all therapy is really exposure therapy. Therapy exposes you to yourself, your experience and your own feelings and emotions.
When you're doing that in a group therapy setting, not only are you getting that for yourself, you're also experiencing in vivo everyone else's perspective so you're getting real-time feedback about taking a risk and being vulnerable to build trust and seeing how that's received by others. Which is pretty cool.
2. Connection
A key factor in any mental wellbeing is having a supportive community where you can connect with other people. We are social creatures. We are meant to connect and form relationships with others. And so group therapy is a place where you can practice those skills with other people who are going through similar situations or life experiences as you are.
It is so powerful when you can open yourself up to form a new connection with somebody and find that you're not alone, that there are other people out there like you. It's always really cool when I see members of my Teen Girl Therapy Groups learn that they have more in common with each other than they originally thought. It's hard not to like someone when you let them see the real you and they connect with you.
3. Experience
When you find yourself in new experiences or challenging situations, you get extra practice in honing into your intuition or your gut. And the more that you learn to hone into what you like, what you value, what you desire, and how to communicate that with others in a healthy, effective way, the less likely you are to doubt yourself.
Tell me….
I hope that you found this information valuable and helpful and if you did, let me know in the comments over on my YouTube channel- you can click here to go to this video.
And please be sure to share this video because you never know who you could be helping in the process.
If you still have questions about Teen Girl Therapy Group, you can watch a video where I’m answering your BIGGEST Questions about TGTG by clicking this link.
Want even more positive influences in your teen's life? Teen Girls Therapy Group is a weekly space where your teen girl can connect with others dealing with anxiety, depression, or low self-esteem. By talking and learning together, they learn to feel better about the relationships they have with themselves and others.
If you want to secure your teen's spot- complete your complimentary 15-min parent phone screening at 203-228-8971 or completing the contact form here.
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