This article is in two parts:

1, Group Therapy Sketchnotes

and #2 An Open Letter I’ve written to educators who are using Yalom’s text “Love’s Executioner” as a textbook. [click here to jump to Part 2]

---

Group Therapy Sketchnotes

In graduate school, I had the privilege of learning under instructors who were mostly very receptive to the idea that not all students take in, process, and organize newly learned information in the same way. Group therapy was one of several courses during my time at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology in which I was permitted to turn in book report type papers in the form of sketch notes. Since we know that information that is handwritten – and especially information that is drawn – is more easily remembered than information that is typed, being able to complete these sort of papers in the form of a sketch note facilitated my own learning and produced some pretty helpful resources that I’m able to share now.

In this selection of sketch notes (which it feels more accurate to call “doodle notes,” given my own style of visual note-taking), I summarized the high points of a few chapters from my group therapy class in graduate school. Most of these pages reference chapters in Irvin Yalom’s canonical group therapy textbook, “The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy.”

These pages discuss working in the “here and now” versus “there and then,” what it means to focus on process versus story, ways that leaders can miss valuable group-growth through efforts to avoid discomfort, how to facilitate vulnerability via engaging as a leader with vulnerability, etc.

As you might guess from this rundown, I didn’t choose to publish this old set of notes randomly – these instructions for facilitating an effective psychotherapy group are reminders we can all use right now as we navigate brave conversations around what is happening in our country as important discussions are coming to head in regards to racist criminal justice systems, white privilege and fragility, and police brutality.

Being able to hear someone else’s “here and now reality” without interjecting our own commentary can help us be better listeners. Willingness – even (especially) as people who may be “experts” in difficult conversations – to enter conversations brave enough to engage vulnerably even when we don’t know what to say can hold space for new levels of authenticity. (If you are a white person and you aren’t sure if saying anything at all right now is ok, check out last week’s sketchnote on Robin DiAngelo’s Article “Nothing to Add: A Challenge to White Silence in Racial Discussions” for some helpful points to consider).

If you’d like the full set of downloads, it’s available for a small charge that helps fuel the creation of more sustainable mental health art and resources.

Open Letter to Educators Using Irvin Yalom’s “Love’s Executioner” As a Text in Counseling, Psychology, and Social Work Training Programs.

Irvin Yalom is a venerable leader in our field, and an author whose prolific and authentic writing about the experience of being a relational psychotherapist has helped shape the clinical minds of thousands of young therapists. Today, however, I want to ask you to engage a more critical reading of Yalom and consideration of how the book “Love’s Executioner,” is placed within the context of your curriculum.

As you may be aware, a chapter in this book titled “Fat Lady” outlines – in vividly cruel detail – Yalom’s disgust with large bodies, his decision to take on a client in a large body on the basis of being able to use her body as a professional challenge, his delight in the woman’s development of disordered eating, and his conclusion that he healed her – despite his failure to develop the capacity to regard a large body with dignity.

Yalom’s text is not without merit if taught in an appropriate context, but if used in course readings without also exposing students to the robust body of evidence on the long term outcomes of restrictive eating behaviors,^{[12] [13]} students are at risk to read this text as prescriptive for their own work rather than as a route to understanding how all clinicians – even those as well-regarded as Yalom – have blind spots and biases.

Research shows that “people of all ages, sexes, and from a number of different cultures stigmatize and subsequently discriminate against obese people.”^[1] These stereotypes are independent of the body size of the person doing the rating^[2] and independent of the large person’s competency.^[3] Weight-based stigma is “pervasive and intensifying,”^[4] having more than doubled between 1995 and 2006.^[5]

Yalom, in his treatment of this client and in how he dismisses as “boring” her disclosures of stigmatization and marginalization, IS an act of stigmatization. Research shows that weight-based stigma negatively impacts mental health,^[7] increases binge eating,^[8] [9] decreases the use of health care services,^[10] and increases the likelihood of weight gain over time.^[11] Long-term studies repeatedly show that after a period of food restriction such as the one Yalom counseled his patient through, virtually all bodies will return to their beginning weight or heavier, often with poorer overall health due to the effects of weight cycling.^{[12] [13]}

If you choose to assign this text, actively engage it, and do so with the understanding that it is a dangerous text. Without a critical reading and robust discussion led by evidence-based HAES allies, Yalom’s text has the capacity to cause continued harm both to large-bodied students and all therapists who will encounter diverse bodies in their professional work.

Hopefully,

-Lindsay Braman

---