Group Therapy for people with PD's

Anyone have any experience with group therapy for people with Personality disorders?

I've been going for some months now and it makes me feel like $#%^. Just wanted to know if anyone here actually got some positive results from it, except from feeling bad afterwards. Thanks

svenne wrote:Anyone have any experience with group therapy for people with Personality disorders?

I've been going for some months now and it makes me feel like $#%^. Just wanted to know if anyone here actually got some positive results from it, except from feeling bad afterwards. Thanks

I might have said this already, but my PA is planing to throw me into a mental hospital somewhere along the lines, also because of the heavy social disturbances that I have and, which will necessarily be group-therapy related. According to him though this would be for something very specific that he "expects to happen" and that hospitals only worked if you have a "specific goal". I'm - uh -- not exactly looking forward to it, but I can see that there might be some relevance at some point, eventho I havent asked about the specifics.
Anyways, maybe you also need to find this specific something.

Sorry, didn't realize you answered this Akuma. I moved the thread to 'living with mental illness' because noone answered.

When are you starting the group therapy? Then you are probably going every day, since it's in the hospital. That'll be intense.

I definitely am extremely challenged in this therapy setting. For the last 4-5 weeks I've felt like $#%^ afterwards.
I'm not sure what my specifik goal is, but since I have a real issue with letting people know if I disagree with something or if I feel insulted/hurt, I'm trying to do just that; telling them. That's pretty anxiety provoking.
I hope to get to hear about your experience with it.

svenne wrote:Sorry, didn't realize you answered this Akuma. I moved the thread to 'living with mental illness' because noone answered.

When are you starting the group therapy? Then you are probably going every day, since it's in the hospital. That'll be intense.

I definitely am extremely challenged in this therapy setting. For the last 4-5 weeks I've felt like $#%^ afterwards.
I'm not sure what my specifik goal is, but since I have a real issue with letting people know if I disagree with something or if I feel insulted/hurt, I'm trying to do just that; telling them. That's pretty anxiety provoking.
I hope to get to hear about your experience with it.

So far I dont even know when my analytic therapy itself will start, I thought in June but it might be July. The hospital would then be a bit in, maybe a half a year later or a year who knows.
Do you have supporting therapy "around" the group setting or you doing solely group atm?

I don't have supportive therapy around the group therapy. But I did call the therapist a couple of times when it was too much, when I just wanted to give up I'm not really sure if the others experience so much pain afterwards. I had a lot of pain in ordinary psychotherapy as well. Not sure why.

I'm kind of looking forward to you starting with the therapy. I hope you'll share your experience. It'll be interesting to see if you find it challenging as well.

svenne wrote:I don't have supportive therapy around the group therapy. But I did call the therapist a couple of times when it was too much, when I just wanted to give up I'm not really sure if the others experience so much pain afterwards. I had a lot of pain in ordinary psychotherapy as well. Not sure why.

I'm kind of looking forward to you starting with the therapy. I hope you'll share your experience. It'll be interesting to see if you find it challenging as well.

overall, i feel like support groups / group therapy made me worse, more angrier, etc. i didn't have a problem showing up ever, my depression isn't really the kind where i can't get up and do anything ( assuming i know where to go and have proper directions of what to do ), its more of irritability, anger and emptiness, so when i hear other people saying its hard for them to get up and go to these groups, i find it very trivial and stupid..., its like saying, if you are hungry, you are not gonna eat anything, and then they complain why nobody understands them... , tbh, i dont even know if i have "depression", although they do say its anger turned inwards which is EXACTLY how i felt since day one of it.

i felt like the last two years i went to groups, it was kind of like a job or work, it was in a way structured and a routine where i made myself to go, mostly because i didnt want to isolate and be at home on my computer for so long, however, every single time, the more and more i went and met people i didn't relate to and envied, the more and more angrier i became, eventually i stopped going to one of the groups i had consistently went to for a year, two to three times a week.

they had lowered it two times because not too many people had showed, and often times, i was the only that showed up... , making it into a individual therapy lol, although in a way, it was sort of necessary at times ., i left that place with an episode of anger outburst where i blow up and broke stuff in the room and throw a chair and people had marched out, later on the police had shown, didnt get charged for anything because i didnt hurt anyone physically that is.

i didnt show up to that therapy place and held off the other place(s) i went to temporarily so i can "re-calibrate" a little or take a break, currently, i dropped out of college because i also had an episode there and noticed that the safest thing i could do ( and department ) was to drop the classes i took, even though i showed up every time and did all the assignments up to this point with more or less full credit or almost full credit, i had an option to make up the rest of the classes but i didnt want that extra baggage so i just dropped them. although the classes were pretty uncomfortable and stressful, they were counseling classes, i felt different from others in general, and i felt that i took the class for completely different reasons from everyone else, so why did i take them in the first place, well, mainly because i didnt want to isolate and be left with nothing to do, but also because i felt like it would be relevant and helpful to my lifestyle and condition, and that i would be around others at my age more.

without getting too off topic, was there any groups you guys went to, specifically the names of them? one of the types of groups i went to was called DBSA, it is depression AND bipolar support groups, despite the description of the group, 90 percent of the people in the groups were manic depressive, and rarely did i come across someone who just had regular depression or unipolar depression or a personality disorder.

whats even worse is that all the other groups i attended that weren't specific to bipolar disorder were still highly prevalent with people with bipolar disorder, i had told my "main" therapist ( who i dont like but like the only person i can see really ) why its so hard to find "normal" people that simply have severe depression like i do, she just laughed in her own way , saying its because i attended DBSA groups when i dont have bipolar disorder, but i told her that i attended many different groups besides that one, and not like i really have a choice anyways, DBSA is like the only "Depression" groups that are offered free locally, the other one is NAMI groups, but that is only offered twice a week from opposite places that are far from me, and they also had a high prevalence of people with bipolar disorder too, followed by schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia.

i thought schizoaffective was extremely rare too? isn't it like .3 of a percent and schizophrenia like 1 percent, where as schizotypal personality disorder which is what i have been diagnosed with is about 4.6 percent , yet i havent met one person with schizotypal personality disorder, although i did meet like 3-4 people with borderline personality disorder, but all of them were women and im a male so its not exactly the "best" comparison, nevertheless, i did relate to them slightly..

where as DBSA is offered like everyday, ( not that i go to them all or everyday ). i try hard to NOT go to them and usually only attended them like once a week out of trying to be OPEN, sometimes il just sit in the lobby in the center i go to instead of having to go into groups or be around people i dont like, hoping someone else different or i have a better relationship or connection with could show up.

i've met two people ( main diagnosis of mood disorder or bipolar disorder ) who self proclaimed of having schizoid personality disorder, even though the dsm criteria specifically says that the two basically cannot or shouldn't occur together , not that this mattered too much either, they fit the stereotypes of people on this forum too, their MBTI types were INTJ and INFJ... , they in my honest humble opinion did NOT have the condition at all, especially the INTJ guy. ironically, there was one African american guy who was pretty reserved at the center with all these people who was rather distant and kept to himself for the most part, i felt like i related to him more, i would have probably described him more of having the REAL schizoid personality disorder or possibly schizotypal pd.

Group Therapy proved to be very helpful for one of my close friend in identifying what others have experienced and helped him understand that he is not alone. This helped him to open up and assists in breaking down walls and barriers that he has gone up over the years.
This group therapy helped him to better understand the peers and challenges he needs to face. I personally feel that group therapy really works well after seeing my friends condition who is perfectly fine today.

Group therapy is a waste of my time. Groups are for adult crybabies. No thanks. I would rather go to the beach and enjoy the sun. I can't stand sitting in a room full of adults complaining about their stupid lives.

Group therapy helped me. It was like working in a 'Think Tank' where we offered up our solutions to our issues. It was peer-on-peer.
It sure beat one-on-one therapy which was very expensive and only offered one opinion, the therapist's.
Group therapy was intimidating at first with a roomful of strangers whom I had to bare my soul to, but that quickly was changed when I realized that we were all there for the same common interest, our recovery.
Strangers became friends I could laugh and weep with. Some of us had 'chemistry' some of us didn't. I continue my recovery today with 12-step meetings. EA covers many afflictions that many of us face.
It is reassuring to meet with the 'regulars' for a cup of coffee and reach out to any newcomers who are asking for help and don't know how to fix it.
Best of luck to you.