10-Week Psychoeducation Group: A.W.E.S.O.M.E.
(Anxiety while embracing serenity, opportunities, mindfulness, and empowerment)
Event Description:
The purpose of this group is to teach emotional regulation skills to adolescent girls who experience anxiety as their dominant presenting issue for entering counseling.
The primary goals are to decrease debilitating symptoms of anxiety while training these adolescents to implement personalized coping skills that fit into their lifestyle and enable them to perform well in their everyday life despite their tendency toward anxiety.
Doing this in a group setting allows participants to learn from each other’s experiences, and participants can provide one another with validation, ideas, and feedback that is unique to the role of the therapist but nevertheless helpful in reaching their goals.
Target Audience:
Adolescent girls ages 13 to 16. The group will be limited to 8 participants.
Dates & Times:
Week 1: Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025
Week 2: Wednesday, April 9th, 2025
Week 3: Wednesday, April 16th, 2025
Week 4: Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025
Week 5: Wednesday, April 30th, 2025
Week 6: Wednesday, May 7th, 2025
Week 7: Wednesday, May 14th, 2025
Week 8: Wednesday, May 21st, 2025
Week 9: Wednesday, May 28th, 2025
Week 10: Wednesday, June 4th, 2025
Location:
This group will be help via our HIPAA compliant telehealth platform.
Pricing:
$50 per adolescent for the entire 10 week series, due upon registration
Facilitator Information:
This group will be led by Morgan Piercy, student therapist at Fortis.
Week 1:
Group Topic: Emotional Regulation Skills for Adolescent Girls with Anxiety
Session Focus: Exploring Personal Values
Session Purpose
The purpose of this session is for participants to explore their personal values and articulate them to others if they feel comfortable. This lays the groundwork for handling anxiety because it draws the participant's attention to who they are, what is important to them, and why they are striving to improve their anxiety. As adolescents, these participants are in a developmental stage where they are still forming their identity, and fixating on strengths, desires, and reasons for living outside of their anxiety will provide them with a deeper sense of purpose and identity. This pillar of ACT provides a more concrete direction for the acceptance and committed action techniques that will be taught later on.
Session Objectives
1. The first objective is for the participants to build rapport with one another. Values are an integral part of one’s identity and self-disclosure can be as basic or as deep as each participant feels comfortable. Commonalities between participants’ values will aid in building rapport.
2. The second objective is to collaboratively establish the goals and norms for the psychotherapy group.
3. The third objective is for participants to identify five personal values.