Group Therapy Experiences

You sound like ya need theraphy for just being where ya were getting help. feel for ya brother.

i experienced similiar circumstances when i spent 4+ months in Homewood Health Centre (former Sanatorium),

and found that as they lumped three of us former cf in a trauma group for discussion with a group of civilians,

we were setting each other off and the civilians couldnt comprehend the issues and horrors we were dealing with,

the health centre thought they were doing us a favour by grouping us together, and yet it was worse..

I have avoided group sessions from those experiences of any kind since..

I had exactly same issue and left group after only a few sessions. I was in Halifax at time. My doc asked me what was issue I tried to explain the scope of the problem pissing contest on who's worse is one good way to discribe it. I suggested to her that she should group the groups. For example some if not all find it frustrating and hard to relate to a person with issues from a specific incident when others were at same incident and have no issues but that person has issues from another incident which is much worse. So my suggestion was to group people with similar issues and incidents so they can understand and accept each other better.
I also found when people in a group spoke of an issue if it was a horrible issue others that had vastly less incidents would go silent and not get there issues out for fear of appearing less. This last issue was a huge factor for me leaving cause I was impeeding others from speaking and getting help they needed by just letting it out..

I figure a few of us have or continue to attend group therapy sessions for their respective diagnosis'. I'm not a fan of group sessions simply because when i attended them in Ontario, I always found them to be pissing contests as to who had it worse than the other in the group. I've attended 2 to 3 different group sessions specifically because of this reason and no matter what, it always seemed to turn into a pissing contest so i just stopped going to them and now see a psych on a one on one basis.

Has anyone else noticed these pissing contests in a group setting? Or am I just unlucky and happened to find groups where it's just a bitch-session?

I don't doubt group settings work incredibly well for others and there's certainly a need for a group setting, but for me I found that they made me feel more anxious and wound up AFTER the session than I was BEFORE the session.

Thoughts?