groups

I like to think of group therapy—but specifically interpersonal process groups—as practice at being an emotional warrior. This isn’t to say that group teaches us how to wage war with our emotions (we do enough of that already, without trying!), but that it instills us with the courage and resilience that are required to both express and sit with our most difficult emotions. It also provides us with weekly opportunities to connect with other people on a profound (not superficial) level.

Groups are a microcosm of society, and in working with them we can see our patterns, projections, and vulnerabilities in ways that often don’t come up in one-on-one therapy sessions, where the therapist has been trained to respond in certain ways. Group members (unless it’s a group of therapists!) don’t possess that training and therefore tend to trigger one another, usually unintentionally. In learning to respond differently to such triggers—using words instead of behaviors—members experience profound healing.

I’m convinced that the world would be a much happier, healthier place if every one of its citizens were in a process group! All of us stand to benefit greatly from engaging in the honest emotional communication that such groups encourage. Everyone agrees to put feelings into words, not into behaviors, and to say what what they’re feeling as they feel it, to the person they’re feeling it toward. This sounds simple, and it is.

Simple, but not easy.

This type of group work is challenging. But for those who want to know themselves better and show up as more of themselves in relationships—and in every other facet of life—the effort is well worth it. Most of us don’t realize just how much of our emotional experience goes unsaid. Such silence prevents others from knowing us better, which in turn prevents us from knowing ourselves better. And the more we know, the more we love—the more readily we can access the love that we are.