The powerful and novel experience of Emotionally Focused Group Therapy (EFGT) has shown itself to be an 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 Therapy exactly, 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 he has about his traumatic childhood. He has begun to make sense of the story (his trauma narrative) and how it led to his emotional challenges. He has learned to identify emotional “triggers” that lead to his panic attacks and self-defeating behaviors. Nevertheless, Shmuely continues to suffer from 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 nine, and the trendsetters in their community and bungalow colony. In addition working full time 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, using a full DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) skills set she has learned with her therapist. Although her therapist recommended she joins a DBT group, Rivka refused to do so because that would put her at “risk of letting others out there know about her imperfect life… and 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 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,” like her husband.