What Is Group Psychotherapy?
Group psychotherapy is a form of psychological treatment where a small group of individuals meets regularly with one or more therapists. The focus is on sharing experiences, exploring emotional challenges, and building interpersonal skills through group interaction. Unlike individual therapy, group therapy leverages the dynamics of peer support, mutual feedback, and social learning to foster healing and growth. It’s grounded in the idea that people can benefit from seeing how others handle similar issues and from expressing themselves in a safe, structured setting.
The Role of the Therapist in Group Settings
In group therapy, the therapist serves multiple roles: facilitator, observer, educator, and sometimes mediator. They help manage group dynamics, encourage participation, and ensure that each member feels heard and respected. Therapists may also gently challenge unhelpful behaviors, provide psychoeducation, and help members make connections between their feelings and actions. Unlike in individual therapy, the therapist in a group often steps back to allow peer interactions to take center stage, intervening strategically to guide the therapeutic process.
Benefits of Group Psychotherapy
Group therapy offers a range of benefits that individual therapy can’t always provide. These include:
- Shared experience: Realizing you’re not alone in your struggles reduces feelings of isolation.
- Feedback from others: Group members often provide valuable insights or mirror behaviors that individuals may not see in themselves.
- Social skills practice: The group provides a live setting to develop communication, empathy, and conflict resolution skills.
- Cost-effectiveness: Group therapy is often more affordable than one-on-one sessions.
- Support and accountability: Regular meetings with others facing similar challenges can foster motivation and consistency in the healing process.
Group Therapy for Integrating Psychedelic Experiences
Something unique we can offer here at Clinica Synaptica is group therapy for those who have undergone ketamine-assisted psychotherapy with us, as well as those who have participated in therapeutic psychedelic sessions outside of the clinic.
A common thread in all psychedelic experiences is the difficulty of putting these sensations and realizations into words, especially for those who have not gone through their own experience. Therefore, these groups offer a safe space in which to discover more about each other’s experiences and share personal experiences in a supportive and open environment.
Group therapy in Barcelona
In Clínica Synaptica, we provide group therapy in a small group format. We meet once every two weeks for a session lasting 90 minutes. These sessions are accompanied by two therapists of our team — sessions often include open sharing, guided discussion, and therapeutic exercises. Groups are closed (this means it is a fixed group that begins and ends together), so please contact us in case you are interested in joining the next one. Hope to see you there!
