Group Therapy

Adoption Group

Allows students who have been adopted and/or not currently being raised by biological parents to come together and share their frustrations and commonly felt issues. In our group we address feelings of abandonment, loss, confusion, anger, and dependency. Some of the members have re-connected with biological family members and are dealing with long-term goals around that new relationship.

Girls Group

Girls Group is a support group for adolescent females dealing with sexual trauma.  Participants in this group have been victims of rape, sexual assault, or sexual abuse.  The purpose of the group is to provide support and education about trauma and its effects.  Participants learn about and discuss their emotional reactions to trauma and strategies to manage these emotions.  Attention is given to behavioral and emotional patterns that may develop in the participants’ current interpersonal relationships.  The members of this group provide a very strong support network for one another.  There is a culture promoted around personal strength and endurance.  Confidentiality is strongly emphasized and the topic of this group is not known by the general population of the school.  Participants are referred by their individual counselor.

Young Men's Group

This group is designed to celebrate and to enhance the strength, creativity, and intelligence of young men. Its purpose is to reinforce alternatives to destructive behavior and to enable young men to support each other's successes. The primary goal is to create and maintain a safe place for young men to talk, to hear each other, and to heed voices of authority, and to do so in the presence of at least one adult who is listening with respect and care.

Senior Group

Senior groups meet weekly from October through January. We hope to provide valuable information that will service students with their post-graduate planning and in the "real" world. Guest speakers, interactive workshops, and field trips are some of the ways we reach these goals. Some examples of senior group meetings include:

• Filling out job applications, interviewing and writing a resume

• Independent Living including the apartment search and budgeting

• How to transfer to a 4 year college from a 2 year college

• Financial Aid

• An alumni panel speaks to students about life after Collier High School

• Visiting several community colleges, vocational/ technical programs and one four-year college

• A senior retreat to reflect on their time at CHS

Girls Group II

Girls Group II is a support group for adolescent females, designed for students who would benefit from the group process, but whose needs are not served in another group. Participants are free to discuss issues related to friendships, dating, body-image, self‑esteem, or other concerns that may be relevant to them. The goal of the group is to foster a positive sense of self and to promote healthy relationships.

Social Skills Group

The goal if the Social Skills group is to help students develop the ability to build and sustain positive relationships. Communication, problem-solving, decision making, self-management, and peer relations are a few of the areas covered in the group.

Grief Group

Students come together and share their loss or losses with each other.  The goal of this group is to learn to accept the loss, understand its impact and learn how to live and move forward with the loss.

Affected People Group

The Affected People Group is designed to educate students about the dynamics of alcohol and other drug use, abuse, and dependency as a family disease. The goal of this group is to help students to deal with ambivalent feelings toward their person-of­-concern, to build confidence, self-esteem, and a more confident and optimistic outlook, to foster less compulsive reactions to the person-of-concern's behavior, to identify alternative ways of responding to events in the alcoholic/addicted family, to encourage students to develop and use a support system outside the group, and to let students know they are not alone.

Personal Change Group

The Personal Change group is designed to provide information on the nature of alcohol/drug use, abuse, and dependency; the dynamics and symptoms of the progression; the dynamics of enabling and denial. The group educates students on the effects of chemical use, abuse, and dependency on others, including friends and family members, familiarizes group members with the resources available in the school and in the community (e.g., AA/ NA/ Alateen), explores the potential impact of alcohol and other drug abuse has on behavior, feelings, goals, growth, and development, discusses process of making decisions about alcohol/drug use, examines peer pressure and other forms of enabling behavior, allows students to begin to define their own alcohol/drug abuse as a problem, and encourage students' chemical abuse in the direction of abstinence.

This group is appropriate for students who are starting to experiment with drugs and alcohol.

Recovery Group

The Recovery Group is designed to assist recovering students in maintaining abstinence-maximal periods of continuous recovery. In this group we strive to provide emotional and interpersonal support for staying straight, to prevent relapse by teaching students to identify and cope with the signs of relapse episodes when and if they occur, to help students alter behaviors that have been immature or self-destructive, and to provide support for improving school performance (grades, attendance, conduct).

 We also reinforce the need for students to make use of simultaneous supports; Recovery supports, AA/NA, outpatient aftercare, provide social or peer group which aids students in making the transition from a drug using peer group to one that is more supportive of their recovery.

Anger Management

This group is designed to allow young men and women to explore:

• When their anger is harmful versus when it is beneficial

• What triggers their anger

• The components of personal anger

• How they typically respond when angry and the resulting consequences

• Strategies for managing their anger, including self-talk, personal time-outs, problem solving, and relaxation techniques.