Group psychotherapy is a powerful tool and a highly effective form of treatment. It is intended to help people gain support, increase self-awareness, and learn new ways to cope with personal or interpersonal challenges. Group therapy in our Arlington offices can be especially effective for people interested in exploring their interpersonal style and improving their approach to relationships in areas such as trust, intimacy, anger, conflict, assertiveness, risk-taking, or improving self-esteem. It’s a phenomenal place to practice being your best self and your worst self and get honest and direct feedback on both.
“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”
– Helen Keller
Our clients are incredibly successful, smart, engaging, and driven people who are open to and seek growth. When you enter one of our groups, you enter a totally confidential and exclusive association with others who are committed to living well, taking risks, giving and receiving honest and direct feedback. This association is rare and priceless in what it can offer you in your life.
Many of our character strengths and weaknesses are developed in the context of relationships. Our early life experiences with others shaped how we see the world and learned how to attach to others. Sometimes we learned how to do things that protected us in relationships at the time, but that won’t do us any favors as adults. The group helps us learn and practice new attachment strategies that allow us to have more healthy and fulfilling relationships.
Group therapy is appropriate for people with a variety of interests, problems, or challenges. It is especially effective for people who would like to improve and better understand their interpersonal patterns in relationships, whether these involve difficulties in social, academic, professional, romantic, or sexual relationships. It is also suitable for people who struggle with emotional difficulties such as anxiety or depression.
The issues discussed each week in a group arise from the members rather than being initiated by the group leaders. Participants can discuss personal concerns or problems from everyday life; relationships with friends, family members, or significant others; but, when the group is most effective, participants are expressive of specific reactions, thoughts, or feelings to events occurring within the group at that moment. Essentially, no topic is off limits in the group.
Ongoing, process-oriented group therapy works on many levels. It provides a strictly confidential space to be open about issues that trouble the individual. Each member of the group agrees to strive for authenticity and vulnerable openness to both share and accept feedback. This is not a place for keeping social norms or being politically correct. It is a place for direct, open, and honest interaction. Within the safety of the group, members are able to try out new ways of relating that can then be put into practice in other relationships outside of the group. To maintain the safety within the group, we require strict confidentiality and we expressly forbid members of the group having contact with each other outside of the group.
