Psychotherapy group help - I am a patient
I am in a psychotherapy group with below 5 members (going to keep this as vague as possible for confidentiality reasons). I have only quite recently joined in the past few months and the sessions have been ‘scattered’ not intentionally but just due to holidays etc. I recently had a session which left me quite unhappy, goes with psychotherapy I guess. The clinician and other members informed me that I am ‘unstable’ and that I shouldn’t be changing my medication while still so new to this group and other life factors going on. I was told I should have brought it to them for discussion before doing anything. I mentioned it to my doctor a few months ago and they told me to taper down and go back to them in a few weeks. I was afraid of tapering down due to my sensitivity to medication so I put it off for a while until I knew I was ready and I decided that I was finally going to do it because I didn’t like the side effects anymore and I want to try a different med. After I was told that I shouldn’t have done that, I should go back up to my original dosage and become ‘stable’ quite frankly, I think I was just having a bad morning that session and I’m more stable than they think I am. I have a lot of life stressors going on recently and given them, I’d say a person not already suffering with mental health difficulties would be in need of help honestly, so while I am already struggling with mine - it’s a given. The thing is, I told them that if I want to taper my meds down I’ll do it without ‘consulting them’ because I do what I want. Now that you can probably psychoanalyse to childhood trauma and I do agree, I have issues with getting my free will/choice being taken away and that will be discussed. However, I still don’t think I should have to ‘bring it to group’ before doing things like that, because again - I have my own free will. Another member got told off recently as well for doing something and not bringing it to group first - I’ll not go into details for confidentiality. I actually got so angry at my last session I wanted to walk out, and thinking of it now I probably would’ve done it out of spite to prove ‘my own free will’. Now I get that I’m in this group for a reason, however I am NOT vibing with it. Changing is also not an option, there are actually 0 other psychotherapists around me and that one is the only one, by around me I actually mean in my country (I’m in a small country) so changing psychotherapists is not on the cards at all.
To clarify - the reason I didn’t bring it to the group is because as above the sessions have been scattered and sometimes it’s just hard to get everything in when there’s a few members and only a set amount of time, other people need to have their say on their issues and sometimes immediate things for myself are more important than discussing the medication.
Has anyone any experience with psychotherapy in a group setting?