WHAT GROUP THERAPY IS LIKE
Although your experience with group therapy will vary depending on which school of therapy you have chosen, you will find some common elements regardless of the approach.
Initially, there is likely to be a period of group confusion, awkward periods of silence, some polite superficial conversation, and often a frustrating lack of overall organization and continuity. Different group members will speak up, and what they say may have absolutely nothing to do with what the previous speaker has said; people are waiting for the chance to talk about themselves and tend to concentrate so much on what they are preparing to say that they don't pay attention to what others have been saying.
Gradually, a more organized style of interacting comes into being through the directive efforts of the therapist or as a result of general group frustration over the lack of coherence. At the same time, group members will begin to feel more at ease with one another and will in time begin to lift their public masks and reveal more of their private selves—their often hard-to-admit feelings of loneliness, pain, anxiety, depression, etc.—and to express their personal needs.
Frequently, the first steps in the direction of expressing private feelings will involve attacks on the therapist for not structuring the group's interactions more or attacks on one member for monopolizing group sessions. Experienced group therapists realize that these common negative attacks are understandable tests of the trustworthiness and the safety of the group as a place to express personal feelings. If an atmosphere of acceptance is established, and these initial complaints are allowed to occur without catastrophe, some group members will usually then begin to open up, to reveal some deeper feelings. One member may begin to talk about her unhappy marriage, a man about his gambling obsession, another about his loneliness since his wife died.
At about this time it is common for group members to begin to tell one another how they feel about each other, how they see one another. Some of these comments will be positive, some negative. Here are some examples:
"You have a really nice smile."
"You remind me of my father, all these shoulds, oughts, and rules!"
"You never say much, so I feel you're just sitting there judging us."
"You make me nervous, biting your nails all the time."