Group Therapy and the SIT Framework
Dr. Mark Yarhouse coauthored an article with Dr. Lee Beckstead that appears in the journal, Counseling and Values, Vol. 56, no. 1-2, October 2011. The article is titled, “Using Group Therapy to Navigate and Resolve Sexual Orientation and Religious Conflicts.”
Here is the abstract:
This article considers the use of group therapy to explore sexual identity questions in light of religious beliefs and values. The authors describe the basis of their group therapy approaches for sexual, religious, and social conflicts that differ from approaches that provide group members only the option of sexual reorientation to an ex-gay identity or adoption of a lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity. The authors come from different backgrounds and discuss how their perspectives and biases can potentially affect group process and outcome. They present guidelines, structure, content, and strategies for their group therapy approaches.
The Sexual Identity Therapy (SIT) Framework is discussed in the journal article as one of several emerging approaches to resolving sexual identity conflicts. Dr. Yarhouse then goes on to write about how he conducts group therapy within the SIT Framework by drawing on cognitive-behavioral, person-centered, and narrative theoretical orientations by focusing on attributional search for sexual identity, navigating religious identity, and facilitating personal congruence. The articles closes with a discussing of the authors’ combined understanding in terms of how their approaches are similar and strategies they recommend for resolving sexual identity conflicts.
Dear Dr Yarhouse,
I am a Relationship Counselor practicing in Queensland, Australia. I recently worked with a Christian client ( I’m a Christian also) whose marriage is in danger of failing because his Christian wife wife is enormously frustrated and tormented by the fact that he is disinclined to want her sexually and she believes that he is homosexual. They are currently living apart from each other. On the Epstein scale, this man came up as being marginally more heterosexual than homosexual. He was sexually abused by a strange man at a school swimming gala when he was a young boy and has had several homosexual liaisons as an adolescent and young man. He is now in his late 30s. They have two young children together. He was recently counseled by a church pastor with some counselling background I am told . This counselling was more by way of trauma counselling for the sexual abuse incident, I was told. They have tried the Masters and Johnson “Sensate Focus” exercises but without success.
Can I refer them to you? If so how?