group therapy

How does it help?

I like to think of group therapy—but specifically interpersonal processing 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 have that training and therefore tend to trigger one another, usually unintentionally. In learning to respond differently to such triggers—using words instead of behaviors—profound healing takes place.

When is it needed?

Most insurance companies would say that it’s never needed! But I’m convinced that the world would be a much happier, healthier place if every one of its citizens were in a processing group. All of us stand to benefit greatly from engaging in the honest emotional communication that group encourages. That’s the contract: Put feelings into words, not into behaviors. Say what what you’re feeling as you’re feeling it, to the person you’re feeling it toward. This sounds simple, and it is.

Simple, but not easy.

In most interpersonal exchanges, a lot goes unsaid. And whatever isn’t said is acted out, sometimes in subtle ways, and sometimes in not-so-subtle ways. People rarely say, “I feel angry,” or “I feel disappointed,” or “I feel ashamed.” Instead, they express themselves from those angry, disappointed, and ashamed places—usually in ways that will help them avoid the real experience of those emotions. In group therapy, the social contract is much, much different.

benefits of group

  • connection

    People crave true connection now more than ever before, because we’re getting less and less of it. With so many of us in possession of our own private computers and cell phones, we no longer “have to” rely on other people for assistance. But we actually need to rely on other people in order to feel human. Group therapy is an opportunity to experience healthy interdependence with others. We can practice being vulnerable in the admission that we need someone’s support (or guidance, or validation, or even anger), and in turn we can be a source of support for others.

  • aliveness

    While there are many skills we can acquire in a processing group and then use in our everyday lives and relationships, some benefits of group are only experienced in the group itself. Feeling alive is perhaps the greatest of such benefits. Most of us are so accustomed to not sharing our emotional experience in real time that it feels scary to do so—even when we’re sharing something positive! The heart beats faster, we feel a little shaky, our mouth gets dry, our throat constricts. We experience the thrumming physicality of ourselves, and it’s incredibly enlivening.

  • tolerance

    Participating in a processing group not only expands our tolerance of people who are different from us (because it allows us to get beyond superficial labels), but it also increases our tolerance for sitting with our own difficult emotions. A typical knee-jerk reaction to an unpleasant feeling is to push it away, or cover it up with another feeling that isn’t as threatening to our sense of self. In learning to tolerate our own emotional experience, we can show up more for others’ emotional experiences, and therefore have more authentic and fulfilling relationships.