Module | Contents | Example (home) exercises |
---|---|---|
1. Introduction & compassion | ▪ Participants are welcomed and become familiar with each other ▪ Psychoeducation about personal recovery and compassion ▪ Collective compassion exercise ▪ Homework: Fill in handout about personal goals and optimism | ▪ Wish yourself something good: be mindful and identify needs and use your inner voice to repeat your compassionate wish [86]. ▪ Common humanity: Realize that negative feelings and experiences are universal [87, 88]. |
2. Personal goals & optimism | ▪ Based on the handouts, participants talk about personal goals and wishes and specify personal goals in the group ▪ Individually adjusting personal goals ▪ Collective optimism exercise ▪ Reading and discussing letter from an experienced person with BD ▪ Homework: Working on personal goals, writing a letter from the future | ▪ Imagine your best possible self: Visualize yourself in a future where everything has turned out in the most optimal way [42, 89]. ▪ Letter from the future: write yourself a letter from a future perspective |
3. Positive emotions | ▪ Read out letter from the future ▪ Psychoeducation about positive emotions ▪ Collective positive emotions exercises ▪ Homework: Taking a photo of a positive moment or experience, working on personal goals | ▪ Three good things: Think about three good things that went well today and savor these moments [90]. ▪ Expressing gratitude: identify what you are grateful for in the context of your illness and share those experiences [91]. |
4. Coping with fear of relapse | ▪ Sharing photos of positive experiences and talking about the photos ▪ Talking about participant’s fears, how fear is experienced and internal barriers ▪ Psychoeducation about fear and (un)healthy emotion regulation strategies ▪ Collective exercises on how to efficiently cope with fear ▪ Homework: Do something you find exciting, perform personal strengths exercise, completing mid-treatment measurement | ▪ Learn to tolerate and accept fear as important part of life and learn to regulate positive mood and gain a more open view towards them [43]. ▪ Compassionate coping with inner fear: learn to be compassionate towards yourself, your emotions and your negative experiences [86]. |
5. Personal strengths | ▪ Identifying strengths ▪ Psychoeducation about personal strengths ▪ Personal goals and strengths: which strengths can be used to achieve personal goals? ▪ Homework: Keep training with exercises, record possible benefits and barriers while performing the exercises | ▪ Identifying strengths: Describe an activity you enjoy to someone else and he/she names strengths deriving from this activity. ▪ Top 5 strengths: Choose your top 5 strengths that give you energy and pleasure [92, 93]. |
6. Positive relationships | ▪ Participants name skills they gathered in the course of the intervention so far and described one example from the last week ▪ Psychoeducation about positive relationships ▪ Participants describe a relationship they want to reinforce positively ▪ Collective positive relationship exercises ▪ Homework: Keep training with positive relationship exercises | ▪ Acts of kindness: Performing unexpected acts of kindness for someone else [94]. ▪ Active-constructive responding: Respond positively to good news shared by someone else. Use active communication skills [95, 96]. ▪ Expressing gratitude [91]. |
7. Compassion | ▪ Psychoeducation about emotional systems and evolutionary background ▪ Collective exercises mindfulness and compassion ▪ Coping with thoughts of inferiority and self-critique ▪ Homework: Writing a response to the letter from the second session, fill in questionnaires for post-measurement | ▪ Develop a compassionate inner voice: Write about situation in the past week where you showed self-compassion [86]. ▪ Grandma exercise: Imagine a person you feel comfortable with. Concentrate on how it feels to be together with this person and savor this moment [43]. |
8. Conclusion | ▪ Talking about results of the questionnaires and figuring out which aspects are going well and which should receive some extra attention in the next weeks ▪ Read out response to the letter from the second sessions ▪ Participants thank each other | ▪ Not applicable. |