Act of Kindness Directive

In a Self-Esteem through Art Therapy group, I asked all the group members to do a random act of kindness for another patient sometime during the week. They would then come to the next group session and create an image about that experience. Some of the things that the patients did ranged from saying "Good Morning" to a peer he didn't like, to giving an old set of headphones to a peer who had an old damaged pair, to giving a peer some extra greeting cards because he knew that peer liked to send cards to his family. Doing something nice for someone else helped the patient feel good about himself and also helped him practice pro-social behavior.