I feel sorry for Mick Jagger. In that one song he lamented over and over about not getting no satisfaction. If he would just have asked me, I could have helped. I would have told him exactly how to get satisfaction. I’d have said, “Hey Mick. All you have to do to get satisfaction is to teach a course on group counseling to about 34 fantastic counseling students from the University of Montana, along with having a couple of teaching assistants.”

That’s it, Mick. Even you can achieve satisfaction. Getting satisfaction from teaching group counseling might even inspire you to write a new song titled “So Much Satisfaction.” Here are some lyrics for you to consider (no need to thank me Mick):

I can’t stop getting, satisfaction,

cause I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and I tried

I keep getting so, much satisfaction. . . satisfaction. . . satisfaction.

No doubt all you readers are now on the edges of your seats and experiencing bated breath while waiting to hear how group class #1 went. Well, here’s the answer. Great. Awesome. Exciting. Fun. And satisfying. . . so satisfying.

During our introduction activities, everyone was engaged, funny, profound, humble, and always interesting. During my lecture time, I talked about group types and made my “we need to stretch ourselves to listen with acceptance to everyone” speech. One response to my little speech was genuine concern about being able to be accepting with clients who, in their presentation, are harsh, judgmental, and politically and socially extreme in their values. This was a challenging comment/question, because of how incredibly hard it is to listen with compassion and empathy when someone is expressing extremely unkind and judgmental thoughts and beliefs.

Had I been a better group counselor in the moment, what I might have done was to push the question/comment out to the group. On the other hand, I knew that I was probably the one in the room with the most experiences of this type. I was immediately (in Class #1) thrown into an Irv Yalom-esque group leader dilemma. Should I respond with my thoughts. . . or should I deflect the question/scenario to the group.

Yalom also emphasizes that group leaders are, by default, the group role-models and norm-setters. That being the case (and given that this is a graduate course with 36 “group participants”), I chose to throw myself and a couple stories into my response.

The stories—working with parents who insisted on not accepting their child’s sexuality/gender and working with fathers who, not infrequently, would call me variations on the theme of “pansy-ass”—emphasized the strategy of listening first, of thanking parents, clients, students, for their openness, and then highlighting the truth that we cannot lead with education (no matter how much we think it’s needed). Instead, we listen with acceptance and empathy until there’s an opportunity to “broaden” the parent/client/student’s perspective.

I’ve put the word “broaden” in quotations because it’s related to what I want to share next: The Weekly Class Takeaway Email Assignment.

The Takeaway Assignment

This past year, I’ve been using the weekly takeaways assignment to give me a clearer sense of what the students are experiencing in our classes together. For this assignment, students send me, within 5 days of the lecture/class time, an email describing their top two class takeaways. The takeaways assignment also allows me to evade the possibility of an AI generated response.

Typically, and this was the case with week one of the group class, student responses are consistent with what I thought they would takeaway. However, the most exciting part of reading the takeaways is when students weave their own personalized perceptions into their responses; this gives me a glimpse not only of what they’re thinking, but how the content I’m presenting on is being received and interpreted by students. I especially like it when students have reflections that surprise me, or include content that I had not expected, because . . . that’s when the learning goes both directions. 

In their takeaways, a couple students used the word “broaden” to discuss their perceptions of my response to the “How can we handle very judgmental clients?” question. I hadn’t remembered using the word, but it felt perfect—especially in the context of group counseling. One of the big goals of group counseling—again, I’m channeling Yalom—is to hear, see, feel, and experience the reflected appraisals of ourselves that come from other group members. Because we cannot always (or maybe ever) see ourselves as others see us, experiencing how other group members experience us is gold. When it’s working, the group offers us other perspectives that can broaden or expand our own narrow views of ourselves and the world.

Among many of my takeaways is that I loved the use of the word “broaden” to describe what good group counseling can give us. With broadened perspectives we can grow the depth, breadth, and accuracy of our perceptions of ourselves and others.

Here’s the ppt deck for last Tuesday’s class:

Until next week,

JSF