The Group Podcast Ep. 28 "Women, Intersectionality, and Power In Group Leadership"

Podcast Preview: In this episode, Angelo talks with Yoon Kane and Annie Weiss who, along with Saralyn Masselink, edited and contributed chapters to “Women, Intersectionality, and Power in Group Psychotherapy Leadership” (2022, Routledge).

 Their conversation explores how this project sought to address the conspicuous void in professional literature on the complex challenges women group leaders face and how such dilemmas can be understood & skillfully addressed. Intersectionality is also discussed as an organizing principle in the book’s illuminating investigation. Finally, both Yoon’s chapter “Courage to Lead: The Shadow of Racism on Women of Color Leading Psychotherapy Groups” and Annie’s chapter “Training Elastigirl: Developing Strength and Flexibility in Female Group Psychotherapists” are talked about in depth. Check out this incredibly thought-provoking conversation today!
 

Contributors to
“Women, Intersectionality, and Power in Group Psychotherapy Leadership”
Alexandra (Sasha) Watkins
Alexis D. Abernethy
Ali Kimmell
Annie C. Weiss
Britt Raphling
Elizabeth (Libby) Shapiro and Rachel Ginzberg
Ellen L. Wright
Janice M. Morris
Jeanne Bunker
Julie Anderson
Kavita Avula
Madeline Victore Stein
Nina W. Brown
Saralyn M. Masselink
Shemika M. Brooks
Susan P. Gantt
Yesel Yoon
Yoon Im Kane

Guiding Your Child Through the Coronavirus

Children always see, hear, and pick up on more than parents think. It’s likely that they have noticed people out in public with protective masks, heard pieces of adult conversations, or have talked about it with friends. 

Children are not immune to feelings of fear, worry, or anxiety. Here are 6 ways to guide your child through the outbreak: 

1. Take care of yourself 

In order to help your child regulate their emotions and anxieties, as parents, you have to manage your own first. Your child is likely very aware of your emotional state and will be able to pick up on your feelings of fear and worry. 

Before talking to them, take some time to notice your own feelings and do what you need to do to take care of yourself.  You can check out my last blog post [link to above article] to learn more about how to manage feelings of anxiety.

2. Provide age-appropriate information

There is a wealth of misinformation on the coronavirus. It’s important to be a reliable source for your child(ren), while also filtering out unnecessary details and delivering only what’s pertinent for their age. 

Generally speaking, it’s helpful to frame the coronavirus within a context that is already known to them, such as having a cold or the flu. 

3. Validate your child’s fears 

If your child expresses feelings of fear or anxiety, take a moment to notice your own reactions. Many parent’s attempts to reassure their children often end up invalidating how they are feeling. Instead of telling your child “everything will be ok” try saying something like, “I can see why you are feeling this way.”

4. Let your child know who’s protecting them

Letting your child know that they are loved and that as a parent you won’t let anything happen to them adds a layer of protection. Another can be added by letting them know that doctors and scientists are working to keep them safe as well. 

For older children, letting them know that as a parent you are a shield of protection against the coronavirus may not be enough. Empower them by collaborating on a “family game plan”, which is yet another way of opening up a dialogue. By listening to their ideas, you can learn more about their fears and attend to them as needed.

5. Stay on schedule

Maintaining routines is an important part of helping children to feel safe. They feel safe within structure, and notice when schedules are changed or not followed. As time goes on, some of this may be outside of your control as a parent, with closures of schools and other public spaces being a real possibility. 

Should this happen, keep as many structures in place as possible, and help children to highlight what does remain the same: “We didn’t go to school today, but we still brushed our teeth when we woke up and will brush our teeth before we go to bed.” 

These changes in routine can also be framed as exciting rather than scary, with potentially more time to be spent with family, playing, watching tv, doing crafts, or reading. 

6. Talking to them about hygiene 

Even if your child is too young to know about germs, it’s never too soon to talk to them about hand-washing.  Framing hand-washing and other hygienic behaviors in the context of “virus-stopping powers” can help children to feel more empowered and secure. 

For younger children, this can be made into a game, by measuring how long they wash their hands through singing songs such as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Happy Birthday”, or seeing who can wash their hands the longest. With children who know about germs, learning how to cough into their elbows and not touching their faces is just as important.  

In times like these, it can be easy to get caught up in our fears and worries. Remember, the best thing we can do as parents is take care of ourselves. Don’t forget to be gentle with yourself and your children.

Coronavirus: Managing Fears and Anxieties

Over the past weeks, coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread worldwide. With more outbreaks being reported each day and conflicting information getting shared around the clock, it can feel harder than usual to stay calm. 

With so much still unknown about the coronavirus, you may be feeling more fear and anxiety than normal. Feelings of fear and anxiety can feel unmanageable as they feed off of the unseeable and unknowable. 

Here are some ways to manage feelings of fear and anxiety brought on by the coronavirus:

1. Seek out reliable information

Anxiety is an emotion that wants to plan and protect. It feeds off of information, and when it’s fed information that is wrong,  it goes into a five-alarm alert, setting off fight-or-flight responses.

To help manage your anxiety, check for updates by reputable health organizations such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC) or the World Health Organization (WHO). 

2. Pay attention to how your feeling

Feelings of anxiety are normal and to be expected given the circumstances. Ignoring the anxiety will only make it grow louder in order to gain your attention. Paradoxically, only focusing on your anxiety can make things seem worse than they are.

Mindfulness can be a great tool to help you notice what you’re feeling, allow yourself to acknowledge the feeling without judgment, and continue on with what you were doing. 

3. Identify other factors that may be influencing your anxiety

While there are valid reasons to feel anxious, there may be more happening beneath the surface. Get curious about your anxiety, and consider what other aspects you are responding to, especially if you are aware of heightened sensitivities to germs, death from illnesses, or hospitals. 

4. Controlling what is controllable

There are plenty of things we have no control over. There are also a lot of things we do have control over. Consider engaging in habits  that you do have control over, such as: hand washing, disinfecting household or workspace surfaces, and traveling with hand sanitizer. 

5. Take a break from the news and social media

More information is not always what will help us feel safer. It can be easy to get pulled into echo-chambers of anxiety and fear when we’re constantly plugged in to the latest updates. Mindfulness can help us understand why we’re checking the news and how it serves us. 

6. Grounding activities

It can be easy to get caught up in our worries about what might happen. Grounding yourself in the present moment can be done wherever, whenever. You can mindfully take a walk, wash dishes, or cook dinner all by noticing what you see, feel, and hear right here, right now.

You can also try, the 5-4-3-2-1 technique works by noticing and taking in the details of your surroundings using each of your senses: 

What are 5 things you can see? 

What are 4 things you can touch? 

What are 3 things you can hear? 

What are 2 things you can smell? 

What is 1 thing you can taste? 

Part of a disease's impact is psychological in nature. As humans, we tend to respond to information emotionally. This can include feelings of anxiety, hyper-vigilance, catastrophizing, and helplessness. Mindfulness can be a helpful tool to help us notice our fear, acknowledge it without judgment, and respond proportionally.

Next time, we’ll talk about how to support your child during this global health crisis.  

Why Isn't Therapy Working?

We’ve all had the experience of wanting things to be different, taking steps to change (like starting therapy!), and feeling stuck. Even though we’re putting in the time and effort, we’re just not feeling better. Leaving us with the thought ‘Why isn’t therapy working?’ Last time, we talked about how you know when therapy is working. Today, we’ll explore some reasons why therapy may not be helping.

1. Your goals aren’t clear

Sometimes, we start therapy with a clear idea of what we would like to be different in our life. Other times, our therapist works with us to establish clear goals to guide our sessions. If you don’t know what you’re working on, it’s hard to feel like anything is getting accomplished. 

2. Your therapist isn’t the right fit

As we move through the therapeutic process, we begin to identify what we do and don’t like in therapy. Sometimes, the way our therapist does therapy isn’t what we need or want.  One way of thinking about it is that therapy is a medicine and individual therapists are the different types of medicine. Some therapists will be able to offer what you need and want, some won’t. 

3. You may not be ready

Change happens over time. It can be easy to judge where we are based on where we would like to be. It’s important to be patient with where you are at. Carl Rogers once said

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."

4. You might need to see a medical doctor

The body impacts the mind and the mind impacts the body. When no matter what we do, we’re still not feeling better, it might be worth a check-up with our medical doctor to make sure everything is OK physically.  

5. You might be scared

Many people have the experience of becoming more aware once they start therapy. Sometimes, change can be scary. We might be feeling scared but unaware of our fear. This unconscious fear could be leading us to behaviors that are counterproductive to our therapeutic goals.  

Like, we talked about last time: People come to therapy for a lot of different reasons. Therapy may not be working for a variety of reasons that depend on why you started. This is by no means an extensive list, but it might serve as a helpful conversation starter with your therapist. 

How Do You Know if Therapy is Working?

People come to therapy for a lot of different reasons: depression, anxiety, relationship issues--the list goes on and on. With so many different reasons to seek support, how do you know when therapy is working? 

1.You’re trying something different

What’s that saying? 

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” --Albert Einstein

People usually start coming to therapy when something in their life isn’t working. It can be very easy to keep ourselves stuck in a rut, engaging in the same old ways of coping,  just hoping for things to be different. Starting therapy is usually the first step to trying something different. Over time, you might begin to notice that you’re reacting to old situations in new ways. 

2.You might start feeling a little bit worse

As weird as it may sound, you might begin to feel a little bit worse after starting therapy. Now, you’re probably asking yourself: why would I sign myself up for feeling worse? You’d be surprised how much of our time we spend on autopilot--completely unaware of how we’re feeling. A  part of working with a mindfulness-based therapist is learning how to become more aware of what you’re feeling. Chances are, you’re not necessarily feeling worse, you’re just more aware of how you’re feeling.

3. You’re talking more about your feelings

Some people come to therapy because they have difficulty talking about their feelings. Therapy is not only a great place to become more aware of how you’re feeling, but it is also a great place to practice putting your feelings into words. You may begin to notice that the more you vocalize how you’re feeling in therapy, the easier it becomes in other areas of your life. 

4. You’re more accepting of where you’re at

People come to therapy for a lot of different reasons. It can be very easy to put a lot of expectations on ourselves. Remember: change takes time. One way you might notice therapy is working is when you begin to accept where you are at instead of comparing yourself to an idea of where you should be.

5. You’re asking: how do I know therapy is working?

People often have the experience of becoming more self-reflective after starting therapy. It makes sense that you’d eventually want to re-evaluate how things are going with your therapist, what progress you’ve made, and clarify your goals for therapy. If you’re asking this question, chances are therapy is working.  

It’s important to highlight again: people come to therapy for a lot of different reasons. How to tell if therapy is working depends on why you started therapy. This is by no means an extensive list but might serve as a conversation starter in your next therapy session. 

Next time, we’ll talk about how to tell when therapy isn’t working.