Therapists don’t often go into the field with the specific goal of wanting to run groups. In graduate school, I had one class on group therapy that gave me a little inkling that there was a whole separate skillset for group work, but little competency. After graduation, I landed a post-graduate fellowship in social work that happened to include specialized training in group work. THANK GOODNESS! The benefits of specialized group training has paid off professionally and personally and here’s how:
I KNOW WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING IN A GROUP
I know what the heck is happening in a group, so I also know what the heck to do. Especially early in my career, a large portion of my clinical role was to run groups. This is often the case for folks early in their therapy careers, so it’s just weird that specific training in group work isn’t emphasized. New therapists are thrown to the wolves! Participation in group conferences through AGPA, group trainings, and my own group therapies allowed me to have confidence and competence in my group conceptualization and facilitation.
RAISED MY AWARENESS OF GROUP DYNAMICS EVERYWHERE
We are in groups all the time, everywhere. The board room is a group. My family at the dinner table is a group. Everyone sitting at the DMV is a group. The citizens of the United States are a group. There are dynamics zigging and zagging in each of these group contexts that can be talked about and understood better with some education about dynamics, roles, and power that exist in therapeutic groups as well as all groups. Things get way more interesting at your family’s dinner table when you can tap into this knowledge.
RAISED MY INTERPERSONAL AWARENESS
It was hammered into me that part of being an ethical therapist is attending to my own therapeutic work. The implicit message in that was engaging in individual therapy, but group therapy most certainly should have been emphasized because it is within that context where I was able to gain a different insight about how I’m perceived by other and what comes up for me within a group context that doesn’t come up one-on-one. It helped me learn how to give and receive feedback from peers. It helped me gain insights into how my past shows up in the present in a way that individual therapy couldn’t have done.
DIFFERENT WAY TO PRACTICE
While I didn’t go into this field thinking about doing group, I am so grateful to have it as an intervention I can facilitate proficiently and integrate into my private practice. If allows for more variety in my work in private practice, which is enjoyable for me. For my clients, it gets at a different therapeutic angle for clients, which some really need beyond their individual therapy. There are also monetary advantages. For my clients, it can be more affordable since they pay less per hour. For myself, I can make in an hour if I have enough people in the group— win/win for all.
COMMUNITY
It stands to reason that people who are interested in groups would be fun to hang out with. The people I have met in group therapy circles generally have a more interesting take on what it means to be in relationship because they take some time to think about it explicitly. I have found it intriguing, sometimes scary, and ultimately very fulfilling to build relationships and learn alongside people who demonstrate through their interests and actions that relationships and groups are important.
The Atlanta Group Psychotherapy Society (AGPS) offers opportunities throughout the year to learn and connect around group therapy in the Atlanta area via training and social gatherings. Check out the events page on this website for more information. AGPS is an affiliate of the national organization, American Group Psychotherapy Society, which hosts a national conference every year and offers online learning, experiential groups trainings and more.
