Experiential individual, couples and group therapy toward inner freedom and fuller contact with your life
In-person in Atwater Village, Los Angeles
A room where you can risk being known
In an interpersonal process group, we meet every week to find out what happens as we try to be with one another. There's no topic and no lesson. We might begin with something from somebody's week and find ourselves interested in the way a member has gone silent, an unexpected rush of affection, or how much someone wanted to be noticed.
Talking about relationships is one thing. In a group, the people you have feelings about are right there, and you can speak to them.
What group can open up
Over time, people often become more spontaneous. They say the thing as it arrives, without rehearsing it, and discover the group can take it. They come to know themselves more fully, partly through other people's eyes, and let themselves be known in return, which is often the harder part. Many describe feeling more alive: more able to want, to play, to be angry and to be close, sometimes in the same evening. And intimacy gets easier to stay inside, even when it's uncomfortable.
What happens in a group
Over an evening, the attention keeps coming back to what's happening between the people in the group. You might notice you went quiet when someone raised their voice, or felt left out when two members laughed together. You can say so, to them, and hear how it lands. That includes what you feel toward me, and what your body is telling you: a tightening, a change in your breath, a warmth or an impulse. Others will have reactions to you, and they can say those too.
The group gets curious about where a reaction comes from, and about what's emerging that's different now. Over time you share the story that has shaped you: your family and relationships, and the social, cultural and historical forces around them, at whatever depth and pace you choose. We pay attention, too, to how identity, culture and differences in power shape how we experience ourselves and one another. Week by week, the ways you tend to be in relationships show up here, where you can see them as they happen, and something new can happen instead.
You spend the evening making sure everyone else gets heard, and leave feeling invisible. The next week you say, "I was really disappointed that nobody asked about me." One member says you seemed to keep them at a distance. Another had wanted to know you and assumed you preferred listening. Something becomes possible that couldn't happen while everyone carried their own version home.
Or someone tells you they find you intimidating. You're surprised, having worked hard to seem agreeable. Another member finds you comforting. Each is telling you about their experience of you, and you can take it in, check what fits, and disagree.
There's room for silence too. Sometimes the most important moment in an evening is someone pausing to find what's actually there before they say it.
What I noticed, what I'm telling myself, what I feel
These three get tangled easily. A member might say, "I noticed you haven't looked at me all evening. I'm telling myself you're angry with me. And I feel scared, and a bit hurt."
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The other person may be having a completely different evening, and now the two of you can find out.
Sometimes there's a fourth thing underneath all three, harder to name, and it's worth waiting for.
Every feeling belongs
You may find yourself drawn to someone, suspicious of someone, tender toward someone you dislike, envious of the attention another member gets, or angry at the person you most want to impress. Affection, rivalry, attraction, boredom, laughter and disappointment all belong, and so does the work of repairing something after it goes wrong. Feelings are for putting into words. Needs have a place here too: to be seen, to belong, to be let in. Saying one out loud, to the people it involves, is often where something changes.
What I do as the leader
I'm active, and I'm responsible for the group's boundaries and for keeping it a place where difficult things can be said. I might invite you to speak directly to the person you've been talking about, ask what you're feeling or imagining, or name what I see happening in the room. I can be playful, still, moved or challenging. I attend to each person's pace, and the relationships belong to the people in them.
When differences of race, gender, sexuality, class or culture come up between members, sometimes painfully, I'll help the group stay with them instead of smoothing them over.
I'm also a person in the room, and when something keeps coming up in me that matters to the group, I'll say it, as mine.
Joining a group
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Groups meet weekly for 90 minutes on Monday and Wednesday evenings at 7:30pm, in person in Atwater Village
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Groups are ongoing, and new members join as places open. The Wednesday group has space, and the Monday group has a waitlist
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There's a three-month minimum commitment
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Before joining, we meet individually to talk about what draws you, what worries you, and the group's agreements on attendance, fees, confidentiality and contact outside the group
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Members agree to keep what is said in the group private. I'll be honest about what that agreement can and can't guarantee
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$70 per group session
Nervous about group? I was when I started. You don't need to be good at it, interesting, or tell everything at once.
My group training
I train in Modern Group Process through the Center for Group Studies, I'm a member of two ongoing training process groups led by Aaron Black, PhD, CGP, AGPA-F and with Katie Griffin, LPC, CGP; and I consult weekly on my groups with Annabel Raymond, LMFT, CGP. I belong to the American Group Psychotherapy Association and the Group Psychotherapy Association of Los Angeles.