Every person’s life is a path to oneself, an attempt to find this path, to find a pathHerman Hesse One day in your life you will go traveling. This will be your longest journey. This is a journey in search of oneself. Katherine Sharp Art therapy group...Dance movement therapy group...Parent-child relationship group...Life script group...Conflict resolution group...Sexuality group... etc. and so on. Every day you are offered to take part in some kind of group... Why is this necessary? What is a therapeutic group? Why do people go to groups? What is different about communication in a group, what is special about it, what cannot be found in a family or group of friends? "If you imagine To imagine an absolutely “naive” observer who would look into the classes of several groups, it is unlikely that he would even understand that he saw varieties of any one phenomenon. In the first case, our observer would have to carefully walk around the jars of water, because the participants in the training group were concentrated paint on large sheets of paper. Perhaps he would have been able to hear - and, most likely, from the leader of this group - the topic, and then it would have become clear to him that these people do not paint for the sake of beauty, but are trying to express with paints either a state or something. problem, or something else that worries them... In another, our observer would see people in sportswear, making strange movements to equally strange music, and the presenter would clearly direct this process. Somewhere he saw a circle of people who are enthusiastically talking about something... Or it could not be a circle, but many small subgroups - three, for example; these three could argue fiercely about something, act out a conflict or a dream in their faces, “sculpt” each other in turns into some kind of “living sculptures”, either an aggressor and a victim, or a parent and a child... Eight people or twenty. With or without movement. By talking about yourself or expressing yourself in some other way. But all this would be therapeutic groups!... Let’s leave our imaginary observer to think about what he saw and ask a question that would certainly arise in him: “What is common between everything that we managed to spy?” In all these groups, people in one way or another express something that is important to them, and this becomes a reason for interaction. In the group, no one owes anything to anyone, no one is called upon to love and no one is obliged to be “good”, just therefore, it is easier to treat people well, empathize, and be open. There is no need to “keep up your face” and meet someone’s expectations. You can be angry, sad, say stupid things. You can be silent without it being impolite. You can experience different feelings for people, not be afraid of it and see how it resonates in others. A group is perhaps the only place where people are truly interested in each other, watch and listen with attention. Here you can finally focus on yourself and not feel guilty about it, risking being accused of selfishness, because everyone else came for it too. Moreover, a group is a place where different people help each other think about themselves, their feelings and desires" (E. Mikhailova). What else can you say about the training? Do you like to travel? Participation in a therapeutic group is a journey... Because: Travel is more than just changing places. During the trip, we finally do what we really want, and not what everyday life obliges us to do. In ordinary life, we often “run away” from. ourselves, filling and overflowing ourselves with obligations to others. While traveling, a person can enjoy freedom, pay attention to himself, manage time at his own discretion. Traveling brings us back to ourselves. When we travel, we feel like adventurers: discoverers, adventurers, nomads. to get to know ourselves better. When we travel, we live more intensely.Traveling stimulates our intellect, sharpens and “enlivens” our senses, and makes sensations more vivid. When traveling, we often have to give up our usual comfort, and we often expose ourselves to dangers. Traveling is a challenge. We discover new possibilities in ourselves, become more resilient, patient, and decisive. Traveling teaches us to be prepared for surprises in life and to endure them tolerantly. Forces appear that we had no idea existed. While traveling, we “live out” our fantasies and dreams. On a journey, we learn to be responsible both for ourselves and for other people. Traveling is about meetings and partings... The people with whom a person comes into contact are fellow travelers. They are temporary, fleeting... But on the other hand, they sometimes give a person the opportunity to open up internally, since a fellow traveler does not have a predetermined concept of you, this is a kind of opportunity to start living again, without fear of consequences; if something goes wrong, you can simply disappear, get lost forever in the maze of roads... By getting to know a new culture, landscapes, cities and people, we enrich ourselves. We want to understand them, we live in their traditions and customs, thereby expanding our worldview. At the same time, your own problems become less significant. Travel changes us, helps us break out of numbness and stagnation. Travel opens up for us a new perception of time and space. We feel the bustle of big cities and the slowness of the provincial hinterland. The experience of “accelerated” and “extended” time calls habits into question. Through the experience of space and distances, we feel the relativity of the world where we live and our role in it. All this breaks stereotypes and makes us more receptive to everything new. Traveling opens up opportunities for personal growth, change, self-knowledge... The main goal of the traveler (and life is also a journey) is strengthening one’s own identity, affirming one’s “way of being in the world”, searching for answers to the questions “Who am I?”, “What am I?”, “What do I want from life (my goals)?”, “How should I achieve my goals? If a person is not aware of his own individuality, he falls apart into millions of incoherent thoughts and impressions. Identity is the center of command and control that unites the individual into a single whole. Identity can be seen as a story about oneself that one continually rewrites and edits, a story that reaches its completion only with the death of the narrator. An endless story... A lifelong journey. Drawing boundaries is an integral part of the process of identity formation. They appear when we try to answer the question of who we are by comparing ourselves to others and determining who we want to be like and who we want to be different from. Travel is about crossing borders and coming home. For a person, time is often divided into everyday life, full of worries and hardships, and “real life” - travel. The border between these two lives is furnished with peculiar rituals of transition (gatherings, farewells, etc.). The rituals of return are less festive, but just as obligatory: detailed reports to friends, presentation of gifts, display of photographs... What does training have to do with it? Leaving home, parting with the usual circle of family and friends, subsequent return - a story about the impressions received during the training work, showing group photographs... does not remind you of anything? The trip itself usually takes place in a mode that psychiatrists call an altered state of consciousness: excessive excitement, euphoria, tension bordering on pain... A person returns from a trip not at all “rested” and “full of strength”. He returns differently, having tried on a different life, unaccustomed to performing the usual household roles and having difficulty getting involved in routine duties. Traveling is an escape from adult responsibility into a world of freedom and spontaneity, where all taboos are removed, dreams come true, fantasies come true... Such a temporary “go away” is often…»