Change UP
What is it?
The Change UP group is a 10 week therapy group which is aimed at helping people overcome a range of emotional problems. These include anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic and social anxiety. It is an integrative approach that brings together a range of techniques and is run by NHS psychologists.
Please note, due to COVID-19 the group is only running in an online format at present.
The Change UP group is based on materials from the Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders with permission from the author David Barlow and colleagues. The aim of the group is to increase understanding of emotional reactions and experiences and the sessions focus on building skills to help participants respond more adaptively to emotions. These skills include mindful emotional awareness, increasing flexibility in thinking patterns, reducing avoidance and changing problematic behaviours driven by emotions.
What does the group involve?
The content of the group is designed to help you deal with intense or uncomfortable emotional experiences that may be getting in the way of your life. We will invite you to talk in the group but nobody will be put on the spot. The group provides learning through course material and practical tasks to do in the group and at home. We do invite people to talk about common shared difficulties as this helps with our understanding of our difficulties and helps people to see how common their difficulties are. We ask that you only share what you are comfortable with other people knowing.
You will receive a workbook for each session which will be used in the group and you can continue to use these at home afterwards.
The group is a closed group which means that only people who are invited to the group can attend and new people will not join after the second week. Participants need to be able to commit to attending all of the sessions in order to gain maximum benefit. If you are interested in attending this group, you can click below to request an assessment appointment with a clinician in order to discuss whether the group might be helpful for you.
How will this help me?
Course Content
For best results, try to come to every session so you don’t miss any important information.
Introduction: We can experience emotions as strong, intense and uncomfortable and at times emotions may seem to take over our life. Motivation for change and goal setting are discussed and we consider how this applies for ourselves.
Understanding your emotions: This session explores the role of emotions and the purpose they serve. Emotions can be broken down into thoughts, physical sensations and behaviours and starting to notice this can make them feel less overwhelming. The session looks at how noting the triggers, responses and consequences of emotions can help us understand our emotional experiences.
Mindful emotional awareness: Increased awareness of our emotions as they unfold can be important in how we respond. Learning to objectively and non-judgmentally observe our emotions and our reactions to them is discussed and practised, as well as ways we can anchor ourselves and be in the present moment.
Understanding thoughts: The way we interpret the world around us can influence our emotional experiences. The session looks at how the way we interpret things can be automatic and suggests ways we can practice being more flexible in the way we view things.
Understanding our behaviours: This session looks at automatic behaviours and the tendency to avoid things that cause uncomfortable emotions. This avoidance may provide relief in the short term but tends to make things worse in the long term. The session looks at how some of the behaviours we do when we feel strong emotions can become unhelpful and how taking a different action can help.
Understanding and confronting physical sensations: The role of physical sensations and the way we interpret these as part of our emotional experiences is explored. Ways to begin feeling more comfortable with these physical sensations are discussed and practised.
Facing fears and confronting emotions: The benefit of approaching and confronting uncomfortable emotions is discussed and we look at ways we can do this in day to day life. Participants are assisted in developing a hierarchy of exposure tasks that are relevant to their own difficulties.
Putting it into practice: These sessions focuses on putting the skills learned in previous sessions into practise, including planning and doing exposure tasks at home and within the sessions. This helps us develop new associations and responses to uncomfortable emotional experiences.
Putting it into practice: These sessions focuses on putting the skills learned in previous sessions into practise, including planning and doing exposure tasks at home and within the sessions. This helps us develop new associations and responses to uncomfortable emotional experiences.
Looking to the future: Making changes can be a journey which takes time, and the skills learned can help you continue to make progress and be able to respond in a helpful way to your emotions. This session provides an opportunity to review the skills covered in the group, reflect on your progress and make a plan for moving forward and dealing with setbacks in future.
