Building social relationships with the help of group therapy Essay

Goal 3. Building social relationships. The client has his brother-in-law and his best friend that he associated with outside of his family circles. According to Bandura (1977), positive social interaction enhances a person's self-efficacy. Through social relationship, the client can build a support network that can aid him towards his journey to mental health wellness. In addition, having his family on-board throughout his counseling process could also help him build their relationships with each other.
Intervention 3 Group therapy. By participating in a group therapy, the client would realize that he is not the only one going through the same struggles. By finding a group that share common problems and goals, the client would be able to reflect his problem from other members of the group and will have a chance to analyze how that particular problem had been disabling and what he can do to reconstruct a different life story with support from other members of society. The theme of a group therapy is similar to what White and Epston (1990) described as supportive leagues. The main function of the group is to collaborate and compare their interpretations of their life story and co-create the narratives they made for themselves. Group therapy had been proven effective in addressing traumatic stress, behavior issues, and alcohol abuse (Dembert & Simmer, 2000).
Cultural consideration for this particular intervention is the client's worldview about externalizing his emotions and weaknesses to strangers. The counselor could try putting the client with groups that have similar demographics like unemployed, suffering from traumatic stress, or maybe group who have issues communicating with their family.
Goal 4 Acceptance, transformation and closure. This goal will focus on enhancing self-efficacy by building on the strengths of the client after it was identified from previous interventions. In order to do so, self-awareness is the key, as well as the ability to accept one's self and refraining from passing harsh self-criticism when struggling with feelings of inadequacy (Wong & Mak, 2016). White and Epston (1990) advised on having these self-discoveries put in writing to serve as a reminder of his achievements. According to Nylund and Thomas (as cited in Corey, 2013), it reinforces the client's resolve to continue with what they have learned from counseling sessions.
Intervention 4 Writing towards self-healing. According to White and Epston (1990), being able to see and read one's resolve, as opposed to verbal resolution, carries more weight on some culture. This sentiment was also echoed by Wong and Mak (2016) by recommending on writing one's experience, frustrations, failures, etc. in order to regulate one's emotions. Additionally, Wong and Mak stated that writing is the most affordable way to promote mental health wellness within the Chinese community. Narrative letters, and self-stories are the type of letters that White and Epston recommend to externalize the client's emotions and create unique outcomes. It would also benefit the client to write a letter to his family narrating his journey towards self-healing. There are no cultural considerations for this particular intervention.