The powerful and novel experience of Emotionally Focused Group Therapy (EFGT) has demonstrated itself to be the innovative and effective therapeutic tool. Amazingly, EFGT reduces the time and cost of therapy and offers greater satisfaction in relationships with others, improved self-perception and self-esteem, and the ability to lead a happier more meaningful life. EFGT is a rich group therapy experience which creates meaningful connections for clients both within themselves and with others.
Interpersonal and attachment struggles are part of what makes us human. Countless clients have perceived us, their therapists, as reassuring, validating and boosting their confidence, because "that’s your job as a therapist….but others don’t feel that way about me." We often tell them that if they could only be a fly on the wall of our consultation rooms they would see that many of their feelings and experiences are normal, and that some of their notions about others would be modified. This got some therapists thinking about bringing people together in order to augment the limitations of individual psychotherapy. What is Emotionally Focused Group Therapyexactly, and how does it work to improve lives like that? Let’s take a peak…
Shmuely, an intelligent, soft-spoken thirty two year-old “bochur”, is self-described in shidduchim as a “learner/earner” professional, who often devotes time as a volunteer, mentoring teens at risk in the community. Paradoxically, he also carries hurt from his own history of trauma and abuse, suffers from depression, periodic panic attacks and well hidden chronic anxiety. Shmuely has become addicted to unhealthy behaviors that he uses to “numb” himself from his emotional pain. Counseling by a trauma specialist has helped Shmuely remember and express the feelings that he has about his traumatic childhood . He has begun to make sense of the story (his trauma narrative) and how it lead to his emotional challenges. He has learned to identify emotional “triggers” in his life that lead to his panic attacks and self-defeating behaviors. Nevertheless, Shmuely continues to suffer greatly with low self-esteem, fear of intimacy and trust, and difficulties standing up for himself and saying no to people who manipulate him. He worries that these interpersonal difficulties engendered by fear of being manipulated and shamed by others, will impede him from finding and committing to an appropriate shidduch match.
Rivka is an artsy and sophisticated mother of six and grandmother of two; she and her children are known to be perfectly dressed to the nines, and the trendsetters in their community and bungalow colony. In addition to her almost full time work schedule and organizing her children’s school PTA functions, she regularly opens her home to parlor meetings and visiting Rabbonim from abroad who stay for periods of time to fundraise for their yeshivas and kollelim. Behind closed doors, her own shalom bayis is somewhat complicated. Her husband has insisted that she enter counseling because of her dissatisfaction and constant anger, her criticism of him and of their relationship and her unyielding unrealistic emotional demands of him. The extreme pain she is currently causing her husband, makes him unwilling to participate in couple’s therapy, “until she makes changes in her behavior”. In individual therapy, Rivka has gained insight into her emotional sensitivity, including a full DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) skills set that she has learned with her therapist. Although recommended by her therapist, Rivka would not consider a DBT group because that would put her at “risk of letting others out there know about her imperfect life…..as this could potentially have a long term negative impact on her children’s shidduchim”. Rivka’s intense feelings of hurt and anger invade and overwhelm her in many of her relationships. This has led Rivka to feel confused, guilty and ashamed, and has limited her ability to understand and empathize with other people, especially with people who get “too close” to her like her husband.
Rivka and Shmuely were each looking for other options for getting help, especially as they each invested considerably in long term individual therapy, some with several (highly recommended) licensed mental health clinicians in succession. Each of their respective individual therapists introduced both of them to EFGT (Emotionally Focused Group Therapy). They became two of the growing number of people using this new group therapy model to transform themselves and how they relate to others. EFGT has given them new treatment options that they had not considered before, because it feels safer than support group or traditional group therapies known to most, where the risk feels “too huge”.
Most people know either from their own therapy or from others that in general, therapy asks clients to talk in depth about their personal lives and to describe their day to day struggles with specific people, whether it is with spouses, family members, bosses, neighbors, etc. They are therefore surprised to learn that in EFGT this is actually not permitted. Precisely because the focus of the group is on feelings and behaviors of its members rather than on other personal information about the group’s members, allows for the members to gain insights in a comfortable and safe setting. This is a closed group that allows only new members ready to commit for a minimum of six months on a weekly basis. Group members cannot share their last name, professions, marital or other status. There is no concern about Lashan Horah or maligning of family members of their private lives. In this group, all such identifying content stays outside the door. “We leave that in Coney Island” (referencing life outside the group). Instead, group members describe aspects of their personalities and the way they act in relationships that they would like to change or improve on, and that get them into trouble or cause emotional distress.
After the initial understandably “cautious leaning in” to the introduction process, soon enough, the group members begin to interact with each other addressing both shared concerns and individual differences. The interactions always express the ways in which each member believes that he/she thinks, feels and behaves in the “outside world.” However, because they do not know each other and are not allowed to have any interaction between the weekly sessions, the group develops a sense of safety and closeness, in which people eventually feel free to act themselves, without worrying how their interactions will affect them in “real life.”
The goal of the group is to recreate an experience similar to that of growing up in a family. Only this time as adults and with the help of professional therapists, who act as facilitators, the group strives to create a more ideal family experience in which there is love, support, understanding, and safety. Inevitably conflicts arise as in any family. Yet, since they are with people who are never exactly the same as the real family members of the members, and with the support of other members of the group who are also learning and working hard to create their own ideal group experience, the individuals have an opportunity to resolve issues in more effective and successful ways.
As in all support groups or therapy groups, the feedback and suggestions the members offer each other are often easier to accept coming from peers rather than from a professional therapist, who may be seen as an authority figure. It is astounding how the EFGT approach helps members overcome their inhibitions and open up to each other about how they feel about one another, even if at times that means confronting each other or the group facilitators.
In their respective groups, Shmuely and Rivka have followed the encouragement of their group to try different ways of interacting that they had never felt safe to do before. In that sense, the group sessions are like a laboratory for the members to utilize new ways of relating that may be too frightening or uncomfortable to start with people with whom they have ongoing relationships in their lives outside the group. When members succeed in using skills they have never been aware of or have been too afraid to try, they learn the benefits of these changes first hand, and become more confident to act in the new ways in many other situations and with many other people in their lives.
In Rivka’s group, other members pointed out to her that her fear of rejection was stopping her from expressing her needs in a more effective way. She has now begun to seek her relationship needs in a more vulnerable and less demanding way than in the past, and this has helped improve her marriage.
When Shmuely, initially, a real “observer” who was afraid to risk being vulnerable, realized that (yet again as in his life in general), he did not get the attention he wanted from the group, he began standing up for himself. He had quietly watched as others advocated for themselves. After seeing other members trust each other without getting hurt, he slowly overcame his fear that had caused so much confusion and pain in his relationships. Ironically, Shmuely has begun to observe that he feels his older bochur status everywhere in his life but this group, as no one in the group is even aware of his single status. Neither would anyone know about other status or situations that are seemingly front and center in other peoples’ lives, be it spoken or hushed about in families (such as primary or secondary infertility, divorce, widower/widow, unemployment, cancer, gambling or other addictions and the like). With encouragement and positive feedback, Shmuely courageously began to change the way he interacted with others in his “outside life.” He began to date women without the irrational fear that they would always take advantage of, ridicule or harm him, and he is presently going out with a woman seriously. EFGT shaped his confidence in a few months, more than years of individual therapy.
It has been said that no man is an island. Human beings are inherently social beings that are hardwired for connection and were created with a strong need for the support, acceptance and mutual understanding of other people in order to function optimally in life. EFGT which is rooted in attachment theory has illuminated ways that our feelings influence the way we relate to others and to ourselves. Rivka and Shmuely are two examples of people who found safety, security, and a sense of belonging in EFGT groups. As many others, they were able to experience relationships and “family” in a new way. Everybody can benefit from improving the quality of their interpersonal relationships, and group therapy is an effective (and very affordable) way to learn and grow.
For more information on Emotionally Focused Group Therapy, please contact the author, Lea Koplowitz, LCSW. Currently, there are mixed and separate gendered EFGT groups. EFGT has received the haskama of Rabbonim.
Lea Koplowitz, LCSW 718-972-5817 [email protected],
Neither Rivka or Shmuely, profiled in this article are actual group members (as that would violate Halacha and Professional Code of Ethics), these some of the many composited examples of individuals who may benefit from EFGT as an adjunct to their individual therapy, couple therapy, post- therapy or as group only intervention by itself.