How Group Therapy Improves Self-Esteem

Sense8 and Group Therapy

I just finished watching Season 1 of Sense8, a Netflix show about eight people who are telepathically connected, able to share experience, skills and perspectives instantly with each other, no matter where they are geographically.

I thought about Group.

For about a year and a half, I've been a member in a training group for Group Therapists which is a combination of supervision and therapy. I'm noticing more and more that the other members are living inside my psyche, that their attitudes, strengths and insights are available to me when I'm thinking about a challenge in my own life and work.

It's not the same as being able to immediately access the lifelong training of a martial artist, but it's something--a feeling of being more powerful than I would be otherwise, more supported, more balanced.

I don't know how to end this post, so I'm letting my mind glide over the members of my group, imagining their reactions. They're urging me not to leave out the unpleasant parts of being so connected.

The people in Sense8 often feel invaded, swept up in the feelings and experiences of another member of their cluster. They have to learn how to regulate, to focus and maintain their own self even as they are constantly joining with others.

This is also true for Group, just as it can be true for life. Connecting with other people means being affected by them. Their pain and sorrow touches on my own, activates desires to help, to be in control, to change the situation. I'm reminded of my powerlessness to "make it all better," I may feel rage, fear, despair.

Many of us spend a lot of energy suppressing these feelings. They certainly are uncomfortable. They are also crucial to truly feeling alive.