Transformations and Train Wrecks: Some Reflections on Group Therapy

I became a member of a process-oriented therapy group without really knowing anything about these groups. If you know something about process groups, then you’ll recognize that this would make a good premise for a skit on <i>Saturday Night Live</i>. If you don’t know about these groups, then you’re probably as confused as I was that first night.

“Process,” of course, is therapy-speak for your present emotional experience. If you’re in a process group, you and the other group members are expected to talk about your respective present emotional experiences. It’s inevitable that you’ll sometimes talk about the past or the future, but your goal is to stay in the present. And yes, telling a group of strangers your innermost feelings is as awkward as it sounds. If you acted this way in everyday life, people would unfriend you on social media and make a point to cross the street when they saw you coming. In a process group, however, this behavior is not just tolerated but demanded. And yet things can still get messy.

Example #1. The group moderator, seemingly out of the blue, asks if there are any crushes in the group. Even if I had a crush, there is no way I would admit it. Because awkward, right? Another group member, Lyle, says that he’s long harbored a crush on Cheryl, the only woman in the group. I turn to see Cheryl’s response, and she starts crying. I turn to Lyle, who has no idea what to say. I turn back to Cheryl, who’s crying harder than before.

Example #2. Connor tells the group that he’s had a rough week. The group is silent for several seconds, a not uncommon occurrence, and finally Cheryl says something comforting to Connor. The rest of us nod our heads in agreement. Cheryl starts tapping her foot and finally says that she’s pissed off right now. Whenever someone needs comfort, she says, we men look to her. And it’s a burden, she says, and it’s not fair. Just because she’s the only woman doesn’t mean we have the right to expect her to be the comforting one. The rest of us look down at our shoes. Because awkward, right?

I felt during those first few months like a remedial French student who’d been mistakenly placed in the advanced class. Everyone else seemed so skilled at articulating their deepest fears and frustrations and longings. When attention turned to me, I would start to perspire and struggle to lump together enough words to form an actual sentence.

And so, you’re probably wondering, why anyone would subject themselves to such an experience? I also wondered that for several sessions but then found the answer the evening that Cheryl reproached us for placing unfair expectations on her. Cheryl had grown up with a domineering father, and even after moving out of his house, she had felt uncomfortable asserting herself with men. When she asserted herself in the group that night, she did something she hadn’t done before. And when, after looking up from our shoes, we responded with empathy, she received a new experience, thus encouraging her to continue being assertive with men in the future.

This new, corrective experience is the holy grail of process groups, what makes all the messiness worthwhile. However, as I learned one evening, sometimes things get so messy that corrective experiences cannot develop. Cheryl had been talking about gender roles, and when the moderator asked how I was experiencing the conversation, I shared that political discussions made me nervous. Lyle, who is transgender, said he understood that some people didn’t like discussing politics but that my reluctance to do so made him feel like I might be an “ally failure.” Feeling the need to explain myself, I said that political discussions in my family of origin could quickly turn volatile, disagreements leading to condemnations and yelling matches.

“That’s why political discussions make me nervous,” I continued. “Even the thought of discussing politics in this group makes me nervous. I’m sure that not all of our beliefs perfectly align. When I was growing up, I had family members reject me for being too liberal, and I’m afraid that if I shared my beliefs in here, I’d be rejected for being too conservative.” Everyone looked at me, wanting me to say more. “Like that book White Fragility. I know it might not be a popular opinion here, but I hate that book. I think it’s genuinely bigoted. Look, I don’t even want to talk politics. What I’m trying to say is that it would be nice to know that I could share my beliefs in here. It would be nice to know that, even if you disagreed with some of my beliefs, you would still see that I’m a good person and still want me to have a seat at the table.”

Lyle, himself white, like the other group members, looked up and said that white men like me had always had a seat at the table and that I should spend less time trying to make my views heard and more time listening to the views of others. “I think everyone should have a seat at the table,” I said, “I just want to know that I’d have a seat too.” He then said that I, as a white man, had no idea what it was like to be a “minority.” “I never said I knew what it was like to be a minority.” And, he continued, it was arrogant for me to believe that I “knew better” than “minorities.” “But I never said that.” We went back and forth like this. 

As the session came to an end, Lyle said that he no longer knew whether he was safe in the group, as he didn’t know if I supported his rights as a transgender man. I felt that my actions over the past eighteen months had clearly shown that I supported his rights, and it was infuriating that he kept distorting my words and seemed so intent on not hearing me. Some of the other group members, evidently worried about Lyle’s emotional state, asked how he was doing but said nothing to me. I felt alone, and I felt rejected, just like I had during my family’s political blowups. I just wanted to disappear, and as I drove home later that evening, I decided I would not be going back.

A process group can feel like a crapshoot, its success dependent on the right mixture of personalities, a combination that creates enough friction for people to be challenged but not so much that they feel overwhelmed. And it’s often impossible to know beforehand whether a given combination of people will strike that balance. The results are predictably mixed; sometimes there are transformative corrective experiences, and sometimes there are train wrecks.

Stated in more technical terms, groups function best when members have relatively developed capacities for psychological mindedness and mentalization. That is, they should be able to recognize that their emotions are not infallible sources of information and simultaneously experience and maintain control of them. Additionally, they should be relatively skilled at understanding the intentions and inner complexity of others and when in doubt assume positive intent. When some group members struggle in these areas and when, as happened in my case, other group members espouse a type of identity politics that sanctions the inequitable treatment of certain members, the results will not be positive.

After leaving the group, I continued seeing my individual therapist. We occasionally had conflict, and when we did, we would talk about what had happened and eventually reach a deeper understanding. Our conflicts, in other words, led to corrective experiences. In our sessions I also came to realize that Lyle’s past experiences had undoubtedly prevented him from hearing me that night and that my own past experiences had convinced me that the rupture that had occurred in our relationship could not be repaired.

Thanks to my individual therapy, I’d like to believe that, if Lyle and I had that conflict today, I would have more confidence in our ability to work through it. I’d also like to believe that Lyle, who stayed in the group, would now be better able to genuinely hear me. Although like I said, these groups are crapshoots, and it’s possible that that particular mixture of personalities would have ever met my needs.