Group Drawing

This week in my Empathy group, I had the members create a group drawing. Each person had 2 minutes to add to the drawing and then it went around again and each person had a minute more to add to it. This was a good exercise about boundaries, and I also noticed that each person generally drew their own thing, not taking into consideration what the others had drawn. Each patient seemed pretty self-absorbed in his own thoughts, ideas, or issues. I pointed out that when this happens, he may have less empathy for others because he is so focused on himself. I then had them do another group drawing with the instruction to try to be a little more aware of what the other group members drew and what was going on for them. The second drawing was more cohesive and supportive than the first disjointed, disconnected one.