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Group Therapy: A Mirror to the Self

Entering a psychotherapy group is like stepping into a circle of mirrors. If I look deeply at my reactions and feelings toward others, I find myself. More specifically, I find the parts of me that I hate, repress, or wish weren’t there.

One moment, I might feel admiration for someone in the group, a sign that I have unconsciously hidden my own greatness and projected it onto them. The next, I might experience bubbling rage when someone dominates the conversation, realizing that they embody something I never allow myself to do—take up space. My impulse to rage at them, gossip about them afterward, or shut them out reflects how I treat my own selfishness: as something immoral, something to be swept away or shamed into submission.

Group psychotherapy, as popularized by clinicians like Irvin Yalom and Molyn Leszcz, is built on the theory of the social microcosm—the idea that when we enter into groups and form bonds, our reactions, emotions, and behaviors often unconsciously mirror our early life experiences and family dynamics. Even if we’ve done years of personal growth work, group therapy often highlights where we are still awkward, unhealed, resentful, or lacking insight.

For example, if I learned as a child to prioritize others’ needs while ignoring my own emotions, I’m likely to replicate that role in the group. I might focus on attuning to others, stay quiet about my own struggles, and later feel resentful that I “didn’t get enough time.”

Recreating Our Personal Hell

At some point, I will inevitably recreate my personal hell in real time. Clinically speaking, this happens when the group triggers the very relational patterns I developed to cope with early attachment wounds.

But here’s the opportunity: when the ghosts of my past show up in the room, I have a choice. I can break old patterns, take the risks I once avoided, and free myself from roles that no longer serve me. Group therapy is a social laboratory—a safe space to experiment with the ways of being I long to embody in my life.

The catch? It takes courage. I must risk speaking my truth—admitting what I desire, revealing how angry I actually am—even if it means others might judge me or react negatively.

A Personal Lesson in Projection

Some of the most important learning about myself has occurred in groups. In one group I attended for several years, I unconsciously identified a certain member as the “leader.” He had been there longer, seemed wise and grounded, and often shifted the group’s focus when needed.

One day, another member kept interrupting people. He would pepper in irrelevant questions, clearly just hungry for attention. I kept looking to the “leader,” silently demanding that he call out the interrupter. As my anger grew, I thought about saying something—but a voice inside quickly shut it down with: Who are you to say that?

I stewed in silence, waiting for the group to end. That night, the realization hit me: I had projected my own unclaimed leadership onto this man. I wanted him to save me from the discomfort of confronting someone. If he did it, I could stay “the nice guy” while avoiding my own boundaries and anger.

I also wanted him to shut down the interrupter because deep down, I resented my own inner rule-breaker. The interrupter was daring to do something I would never allow myself to do—disrupt, take space, disregard social norms. I judged him because I judged that part of myself.

In the next group session, I shared my realization. Others admitted they had noticed my anger but were confused by my silence. I was struck by how my suppression of feelings didn’t just hurt me—it distanced me from others.

The Power of Group Feedback

Group therapy operates on two core principles: activation and illumination.

Activation means allowing raw, in-the-moment feelings and reactions to emerge within the group setting.

Illumination happens when those reactions are shared and explored in real time, giving members the chance to observe their own patterns.

Unlike individual therapy, where feedback is filtered through one therapist’s perspective, group therapy offers multiple mirrors—seven or eight minds reflecting back how I show up in relationships. This constant feedback creates a unique opportunity for deeper self-awareness and transformation.

A Radical Act in a Digital World

In an age of asynchronous communication and digital interactions, showing up consistently and taking emotional risks with a group is a radical act. Research suggests that despite being more “connected” than ever, people are also lonelier than ever.

Committing to a therapy group is one way to reclaim our innate human need for connection. It is an opportunity to break free from isolation, take emotional risks, and practice the kind of authenticity that leads to real intimacy.

Ready to Explore Group Therapy?

If you’re curious about what group therapy could offer you, let’s connect. I offer consultations to help you explore whether a group is the right fit. Reach out today to take the first step toward deeper self-awareness, emotional freedom, and meaningful connection.

Be well.

The Digital Crisis: Why Our Kids Are More Addicted Than Ever

In 2020 my life among everyone else’s changed dramatically as a result of the pandemic. We went into quarantine and like many therapists and healthcare professionals my work went virtual. As a result, the place my clients started to experience crisis went virtual as well. 

I’m trained as a sex addiction therapist which means I specialize in treating process addictions. Process addiction, like gambling, shopping, or sex addiction involves the person becoming addicted to a series of behaviors and rituals built around a stimulating and dopamine rich experience of euphoria. Their life becomes consumed in a predictable cycle of preoccupation (obsessive thinking about the behavior) that hijacks their attention, engaging in ritualistic behaviors that prepare the person for the compulsive behavior, getting as much of the behavior as they possibly can, and then inevitably falling into guilt and despair once the cycle ends. 

When the pandemic got into full swing, I became inundated with phone calls from families saying they were having trouble managing their children’s screen use. I heard stories from parents that their kids were having angry, violent outbursts when separated from their devices, staying up all night playing videogames and not sleeping, getting in trouble at school for sending unwanted nude photos of themselves to other classmates, and developing ADHD-like symptoms that weren’t present before. When I was able to meet with these young people, the way they presented in session looked familiar to me. They looked very similar to the methamphetamine addicts I’d worked with in residential treatment before going into private practice. An anxious, irritable disposition, squirming and fidgeting constantly, emotionally reactive to any perceived criticism or request, and an inability to tolerate stillness or distress.  They had the sunken look of someone chronically sleep deprived and struggled to maintain conversation that was synchronous (as opposed to asynchronous like texting or messaging) without experiencing tremendous anxiety. 

I realized quickly that these young people were displaying symptoms of addiction, but they came into the office accompanied by a host of other diagnoses. Many of them had been diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or autism spectrum disorder, others had conduct disorders or anxiety related issues. When I explored their relationship with technology what I found were several common threads. Most or all of the previous mental health practitioners they had worked with had never assessed their relationship with technology as a potential causal factor of their symptoms, many had been prescribed stimulant medications for their ADHD-like symptoms, and upon close inspection many had a timeline of progressively compulsive technology use that coincided with their mental health deteriorating. 

When someone is engaged in a compulsive relationship with technology they display a combination of the following symptoms:

·      Lack of distress tolerance/inability to tolerate uncomfortable emotion

·      High levels of anxiety in social interactions

·      Poor sleep quality

·      Increased depressive and anxious symptoms when not able to access their technology

·      Mental fixation on getting more access to the internet 

·      Engaging extreme methods of deception or manipulation to gain screen access

·      Lying about how much they use technology

·      Needing increased levels of access to technology or increased novelty

·      Using technology as a primary means of changing the way I feel or dealing with stress

·      Demonstrating a lack of interest in non-screen related activities 

·       Relationship with technology decreases the level of functioning in key areas of life (work, education, family, social life)

·      Extreme weight fluctuation

·      Age-inappropriate tantrums or violence when limits are set with screen use

·      Feelings always on, racing mind, difficult to experience stillness without distraction

The reality when it comes to doing what clinicians call differential diagnosis (trying to determine between a variety of diagnoses which is accurate and what might be one mirroring another) is that if someone is actively engaged in an addictive pattern of behavior, their brain is in a compulsive state. This makes it almost impossible for any mental health professional, regardless of how astute of a diagnostician they might be, to determine what is actually producing someone’s symptoms. What I often recommend to parents and clinicians working in this area is to have the person engage a period of total abstinence from the behavior (in this case screen and technology use) and then make a determination about a potential diagnosis. The danger if this doesn’t happen is what I commonly see with families I’ve treated. Kids get diagnosed with a litany of other disorders, the treatment they receive doesn’t target the causal behavior, their screen use continues unaddressed, and they gradually get worse. I have worked with families who’ve had to call the police because their child became so unpredictably violent during a time when they had their devices taken away that they attacked their parents. Others have failed out of their first year of college and returned home in a cloud of shame and defeat because once the guard rails of parental accountability were gone, the young person floundered in their addiction and couldn’t continue to function. 

Here's the good news. Parents and young people who become addicted to technology can and do get better. The first step is getting into reality. For parents, they need to look closely at what’s happening and how we got here. There are a few common elements to the development of a screen/internet addiction for most young people. They get access to a handheld device early in their life (before the age of 14), have access to a variety of stimulating devices, get compulsive screen use modeled to them by their parents or peers, don’t have consistent time boundaries set for them in congruence with their brain’s development and age (check out my recommendations in the link at the bottom of this page), don’t develop emotional regulation strategies outside of using tech, and engage in a constant struggle with their parents around screen time allotment. 

There’s a multitude of factors working against parents who are trying to protect their children from compulsive internet use. For starters, the invention of what’s called  surveillance capitalism and the widespread unethical harvesting of the average person’s data online, and the systematic methods used to sell the prediction products that data collection gathers, translates to enormous amounts of business being dependent on more folks becoming addicted to their devices. The longer we stay online, the more we hover our attention over reels, ads, profiles, and websites the more data is gathered that’s used as part of a massive machine of commerce. Data is the new oil, and it has been for a while. The sophistication of the presentation of technology to the average consumer is specifically intended to create as much addiction and dependence as possible. Dr. Shoshana Zuboff writes in her book, Surveillance Capitalism, about how this new form of capitalism emerged as the tech boom took off. To distill a few key points relevant to the work I’ve done with families affected by tech addiction, Dr. Zuboff highlights how the emphasis on collecting more data from the average consumer to sell prediction products to other companies has motivated tech companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon to hire teams of psychologists and behavior analysts to increase the addiction potential for their products. This includes how the content is marketed and who the apps are designed to attract. It’s a well-established fact that the earlier in someone’s development they get exposed to a highly stimulating experience, be it alcohol, pornography or social media, the more likely they are to struggle with compulsivity long-term. From a business perspective, getting large numbers of children hooked on the internet ensures a sustainable supply of data that can be mined for future predictions of our behavior and ultimately, massive profit. All that to say, parents are up against it. And it is a highly sophisticated system of data extraction hell bent on accruing larger amounts of wealth. 

In his book Anxious Generation, Dr. Haidt goes into depth about how companies like Meta (Facebook, Instagram) use psychological research to target teenagers and the vulnerability they have to becoming addicted to certain features of social media. Teens are in a phase of psychological development where they are establishing their sense of self and attempting to find belonging outside of their family of origin. Apps that allow teens to make posts where their sense of self can be curated without the flaws of humanity attached, can become highly addictive. A young person has the ability to fabricate a specific caricature of who they are and get that image reinforced by likes, shares, and comments. The pings and notifications roll in and the dopamine release follows. However, it’s not only a feel-good hamster wheel. What many teens experience, young women especially, is they find themselves engrossed in a cycle of constant comparison. They see the perfect face and body of other young people endlessly cycled through their app’s algorithm and are left to wonder how their face and body compares. The results are becoming increasingly disturbing. Young people are developing eating disorders, engaging self-harm, and experiencing suicidal thoughts at increasing rates. When looking at the trends of teen mental health, there’s a sharp decline in the early 2010’s when most of us started getting smart phones and teens were hit the hardest. 

In order to develop the necessary emotional and social skills to contribute to the world, children need large amounts of play and peer interaction. Play involves the ability to become completely engrossed in a fun activity to achieve a state of what researchers call flow. Flow means that we are able to sustain our attention for long periods of time on a behavior that might bring enjoyment, connection, or new learning. Flow enables to develop skills and competency. This flow state is greatly inhibited by addictive technology use in that our attention becomes scattered. Part of me wants to notice the facial expression of the person I’m throwing this ball to and experience the joy of watching their face light up when they see me make a perfect pitch, but my brain repeatedly gets hijacked by the concern of why my last Instagram post only had 10 likes and I’m obsessed with finding out why. How has the view others had of me changed? The reality is, large tech companies like Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Meta, and Verizon are in a frenzied competition for larger amounts of our attention. We have all become acclimatized to the current state of technology’s incursion into our lives and accepted it as normal, inevitable even. The truth is we just haven’t considered that there are other options and that in the not-so-distant past, much of our interaction with the world and physical space was free of observation. 

Many experts in this space advocate for governments to enforce mandatory minimum ages for access to smartphones and social media accounts. Countries like Australia have taken significant measures in this area so a government placing a minimum age of 16 for smartphone use is not without precedent. In the meantime, folks in the US are left to their own devices and therefore have to rely on their own ability to untangle themselves from compulsive tech use. Some of the most common recommendations I encourage people to try are below. I have done all of them myself and can attest to some of the common changes people experience. Which I’ll discuss briefly below. 

Things to try:

·      Spend the first and last hour of the day without using any screens (it helps to use an old school alarm clock, so you don’t rely on your phone to wake you)

·      Turn your phone’s color contrast off (it makes the interface black and white)

·      Delete social media apps off of your phone for 30 days

·      Unlink your email from your phone and schedule time for emails in your calendar and stick to it

·      Go 24 hours without any devices 

·      Never spend more than 15 mins at a time scrolling

·      Don’t have a TV in your bedroom. Leave the bed you sleep in for sleep and sex only. 

During a screen break last year where I spent 1 week without a phone or watching TV, I noticed some remarkable changes. First, I noticed that I went hours being completely present and unbothered by distraction and thought rumination. I have been practicing meditation imperfectly for the last 12 years. I meditate at least once every day even if it’s brief. I have tried guided meditation, mindfulness, structured respiration practices, transcendental meditation, Dr. Joe Dispenza’s meditations, EMDR resourcing, EFT tapping, IFS, and binaural beats music, to name a few. I’m always looking for new ways to tune in, slow down, and help me get present. I noticed during this week of screen abstinence how completely unnecessary meditation felt, because I didn’t need to get present, I already was. I also noticed that the constant nagging feeling that I was missing something or there was something I needed to be doing slowly left me. I noticed I was more patient, engaged in conversation with strangers more easily, and the days in general felt longer and less rushed. 

Taking a break from social media produced some interesting benefits as well. I noticed I reached for my phone dramatically less and when I did, I found myself just staring at the home screen wondering why I was looking here in the first place. I noticed some FOMO (fear of missing out) initially and slowly became less concerned with the constant social comparison, ‘keeping up with people,’ and noticed a new burgeoning desire to make phone calls to my friends instead of waiting for social media to prompt me to connect. My phone became a tool again and not an ever-present appendage that buffered, satiated, and filtered my view of the world. 

I’ve noticed in the last few years more and more of my attention as a therapist and researcher has become directed towards this area. Truthfully, it’s not the most interesting subject to me. I love working with trauma, helping people untangle themselves from the pathological beliefs their experiences stamped them with, watching that sigh that happens when someone gets on the other side of riding out their terror, it’s endlessly fascinating to me. At the core of who I am as a practitioner, healing trauma is the bedrock. It’s the emotional driver of the addictions people come in the door with, and its unresolved echoes are the ghosts that keep us moving a little too fast, vigilant when we don’t need to be, and unable to receive the love that might move freely toward us. However, I think the reality of technology addiction is one of the most important social issues of our time and I feel a duty to speak thoughtfully about it and raise it as an issue in the spaces I occupy. My hope is to be one voice among many, working together to let people know there’s a way out, you’re not crazy, and yes you should protect your children even if it makes you unpopular as a parent. 

Below are some recommendations for how to prescribe screen time for children. This information is a synthesis of the current recommendations from leading child development specialists.