“What we cannot hold we cannot process, what we cannot process we cannot transform, what we cannot transform haunts us. It takes another mind to help us heal ours. It takes other minds and hearts to help us grow and re-grow the capacities we have to transform suffering.” Joseph Bobrow
I would like you to consider the above quote in relationship your mental wellbeing. Are you confused by your reactions to thoughts, emotions and feelings, do they seem to come out of the blue? In a group you have a space, with others, to connect with and explore where these feelings and emotions are coming from.
In Group Analytic Psychotherapy, we learn to identify emotional states of mind, fear, anxiety, anger, love, and hate whilst we experience the biological reaction in our bodies; the mental and physical experience of trauma and stress.
At the present time we are facing the daily trauma of living through a pandemic that is killing people worldwide. We are bombarded with information through social media. We try to make sense of what is true/real and what is not. The social and collective nature of what we are experiencing impacts on our relationships with those close to us. The social matrix is changing rapidly we feel out of control, we look to those in power to take control and feel angry when they seem to let us down. This leads to greater divisions in the social matrix divisions occur that lead to greater anxiety and chaos, which, can predispose us to difficulties with regulating our reaction in our work or close intimate relationships.
The group provides a space for the transformation of our thoughts and preoccupations, working through our experiences, creating understanding through thinking, talking and feeling the emotion behind anger and stress. The group space, with an experience group conductor, can hold and contain you through this process.
To enquire about group sessions with Thea Beach, please contact her here, or to view our full clinical team, please click here.
Dorothea Beech is a Group Analyst with many years experience working in the UK and overseas. She worked as A Group Analyst in South Africa as a Lecturer at Cape Town UCT and at Kwa Zulu Natal University in Durban, lecturing on a Masters Program in Group Work. Her MA in Applied research was on Eating disorders. Her interests are in cultural diversity and trans-generational influences on the individual. Thea is available at our Brighton and Hove Practice.
Further reading by Thea Beech
Group Psychotherapy in a post ‘Pandemic World’
Termination and endings in Psychotherapy
What is Social Unconsciousness?
Crossing Borders – Group Analytic Society Symposium, Berlin 2017
Social unconsciousness is a term used by Earl Hopper to describe the effect of living in a world where we are connected by our common histories, culture and social, political and economic environment. 
On my way into work the other day I happened to be listening to the radio when a program called “Inside Science” was playing. The theme for the program was “Alien Minds”. A man called Peter Godfery–Smith was talking about his book “Other Minds”. He described how we assume the existence of a central nervous system, like our own, a brain commanding the peripheral nervous system. He then went onto describe the Octopus, whose decision making processes, not sure this is the right word, are distributed throughout the body, the tentacles can act separately to the rest of the body. He describes the research that discovered this; the podcast is available for you to listen to on BBC podcasts.
Most of us, at one time or another, have avoided groups. Whether it was not attending a party, preferring to stay at home and watch TV after a long week or finding a reason not to go to that meeting at work because it always makes us feel uncomfortable.
