How the Trial and Error of Group Therapy Creates Success
Throughout life we move fluidly from group to group. Entering, participating, and exiting multiple groups is part of life. Sometimes life’s groups intersect; other times, the group lacks any commonality in membership or topic. I don’t quite remember the particulars, but being in a group can remind me of the movies from 4th & 5th grade science class. You remember - the video where it’s just a screen full of cells merging and separating. At times, it’s most helpful for the cell to move on its own. Other times, the cell needs to join other cells to create a beautiful new shape, yet all the while keeping its nucleus.
Likewise, people seeking therapy may need singular attention. They may also benefit from the make-up of a group. Or they may even profit by moving fluidly between one-on-one and group therapy. Individual therapy has the benefit of a very focused, controlled environment. Group therapy has a dynamic fluidity, still in a controlled environment, that benefits our movement in the oft unpredictable natural environment of life.
Group therapy can be especially helpful to those who find their social experiences to not be working. Consider a single cell existing on a microscope slide. In order to gain experience, test its boundaries, and determine whether it will survive, the cell must move to a petri dish and be with other cells. Through exploration, observation, trial and error, that cell is then more capable to join the mass of cells outside the laboratory with greater success. Therapy is a path for us to live more comfortably with ourselves as well as interact more comfortably with others.
Just as a scientist explores how cells move and react within their environment, the process of group therapy allows us to explore how relationships are formed and cultivated. Members of the group learn through experience how their interpersonal dynamics have an impact on others. Group therapy is an excellent space for us to learn emotional literacy. New group members often have a goal of increasing their emotional vocabulary and growing the freedom to use language to communicate their thoughts and feelings as well as increasing their interpersonal availability. During times of individual processing or group member interaction within group therapy, group members will have the opportunity to become better acquainted with the full spectrum of their feelings and learn how to utilize all of their feelings within relationships.
Group therapy is a place where group members can freely investigate both their feelings and the feelings of others. Group members find examples of what works in a “controlled” environment and are then able to model that behavior in the free-flowing nature of the outside world, most often experience the positive or desired results they had hoped for.
Jeff Grossman offers individual and group therapy in Nashville & Brentwood, Tennessee.