Group Psychotherapy

Group Psychotherapy can be as effective as individual therapy for treating a number of problems and situations. The combination of both group and individual therapy can be an  ideal treatment.  Group Psychotherapy can offer opportunities to work on interpersonal goals and new ways of relating which you have learned in individual work.  Group members are challenged to relate to one another in more authentic ways, leading to greater intimacy and more self-compassion. The power of the Psychotherapy process groups lies in the unique opportunity to receive multiple perspectives, support, encouragement, honesty, as well as provide direct and specific feedback from different types of individuals in a confidential, safe, controlled, learning environment. Groups provide individuals with ways of better understanding troublesome interpersonal patterns and working on alternative ways of relating using more effective communication skills.  The group members learn to build different types of strategies to deal with conflict and to become more assertive in getting their needs met through healthy dialogue.

We all develop ways of responding to others through interactions with our early caregivers/family.  While these protective emotional strategies may have worked well to get our needs met in that particular (often unhealthy) environment, these survival strategies from childhood often create new challenges when we bring them into our adult world of relationships.  They are less effective in the present when we default to them as a way of relating to partners, friends, and authority figures such as supervisors at work and our own children.  Group therapy is the ideal way to learn and practice alternatives.  When we enter a group we naturally and automatically begin to relate to one another in familiar ways. Through the group process, and with the help of a group therapist, we can better understand and examine our automatic responses and try out new behaviors and communication strategies with the goal of translating these into our relationships outside of therapy.

Some groups I offer or have offered in the past include:

  • Interpersonal process groups
  • Graduate student groups
  • Dream interpretation groups
  • Groups for individuals experiencing creative blocks
  • Adult children of alcoholics (ACOA)
  • LGBTQ groups
  • Gender Identity groups
  • Adolescents/ Adult children of divorced parents
  • Survivors of sexual abuse
  • Groups for helping professionals
  • Interpersonal process groups for psychotherapists