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Insights from the Military Spouse Support Group
Gabriel Pinckney
Department of Counselor Education, Clark Atlanta University
COUN 505: Group Counseling
Dr. Chassity Todd
March 19, 2024
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For my 2nd community-based group project, I decided that I wanted to switch it up from
what I did the last time. My first go around I decided to do an ADHD support group and
honestly, I learned a lot from it I learned a lot about just the initial flow and setup of a support
group and kind of what role the facilitators play and making sure that everybody feels
comfortable and feels heard. Also, as someone who has ADHD and deals with it on a daily basis
it was kind of interesting to say the least of how much I was learning and gaining from that
support group.
So, when I went in search of my group for my second time I really wanted to do
something that would show me kind of how the group can be run from the perspective of a more
emotionally heavy disorder. So, the group that I chose to do for my second go around was
spouses of retired and current military soldiers who suffer from PTSD and TBI. I honestly got a
very different perspective from this group and the ADHD group, with the ADHD group it was
more of a social hour for individuals who deal with it to come and chat and honestly felt more
like a group of friends having conversation over dinner. The support group for military spouses
felt more like the idea I had of traditional group settings.
The group was run with the mentality of you don't have to share you can just listen, I
think this works this way mainly because there are a bunch of people who have been coming to
this specific group for years and have built comfortability with each other. This aspect allowed
them to speak freely and comfortably and also allowed for the new people who joined to get a
sense of welcoming due to the fact that they weren't being forced to share their stories before
they were ready. A big thing that the group leader emphasized to me was to allow each person
the ability to adjust. She achieved that by allowing the newcomers to have a chance to observe
the social dynamics in the group for a couple sessions before she made them share.
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I also noticed that the group leader used a lot of open and did and probing questions when
each person would share stories to kind of really get to the root of what's going on and help the
members really dive into the current issue at that moment. I honestly enjoyed this group so much
to the point I made it my research topic and I look forward to seeing where else this could go and
observing more of that group.