Group Therapy
We learn about ourselves in relationship with other people—and some of our most meaningful change can happen there, too.
Why Group Therapy?
Group therapy offers something individual therapy cannot: the opportunity to explore how you connect with others while those relationships are actually unfolding. In a thoughtfully facilitated group, you can begin to notice familiar patterns—how you communicate, protect yourself, respond to conflict, seek closeness, withdraw, trust, or allow yourself to be known.
The group becomes both a place of support and a place to practice. You can experiment with new ways of relating, receive honest feedback, develop greater awareness of your impact on others, and learn to stay present in relationships that may feel challenging or vulnerable.
Interpersonal group therapy focuses on what happens between people—both inside and outside the group. Rather than organizing the group around a particular diagnosis or shared experience, the work centers on how you relate to others and the patterns that emerge in real time. The group offers a unique opportunity to better understand yourself in relationship, experience how others experience you, and develop new ways of connecting with greater openness, flexibility, and authenticity.
Group therapy is not simply individual therapy with more people in the room. The relationships among group members are part of the therapy itself.
2101 W 69th St, Suite 103
Sioux Falls, SD 57108
(605) 740-6557
Group ParticipantsAdults age 18 and older
Group FormatEach group consists of approximately 8–10 members. Groups are ongoing, with new members joining as openings become available when current members transition out.
Current Meeting TimesTuesday | 5:00–6:00 p.m.
Wednesday | 4:00–5:00 p.m.
Wednesday | 5:00–6:00 p.m.
Cost$55 per group session
Location2101 W. 69th St., Suite 103, Sioux Falls, SD 57108
Contact me for more information about current openings or joining an interpersonal psychotherapy group.
Group Psychotherapy at Kimberly Keiser
I offer in-person interpersonal group psychotherapy as an extension of my work in individual, couples, sex, and trauma therapy. My groups are not organized around a particular diagnosis, identity, or presenting concern. Instead, they bring people together to better understand how they relate to others—and to themselves—in real time.
Interpersonal group therapy provides a unique setting for exploring the patterns that shape relationships: how we seek connection, respond to vulnerability, navigate conflict, protect ourselves, communicate our needs, and experience closeness. With my facilitation, the relationships that develop within the group become an active part of the therapeutic process.
Groups meet weekly at my Sioux Falls, South Dakota office. Because interpersonal groups depend on continuity, trust, and the relationships that develop among members over time, prospective members meet with me individually before joining a group.
While individual therapy allows for the development of a meaningful relationship with your therapist, interpersonal group therapy draws on the relationships among group members as an additional source of therapeutic change. The group creates experiences that are not available in individual therapy alone. These include universality—recognizing that feelings, struggles, and patterns you may experience as deeply personal are also shared by others—and the instillation of hope that can come from witnessing other members take risks, make changes, and grow. These and other therapeutic factors make the group itself an important part of the healing process.
Group Therapy as Part of Your Treatment
Interpersonal group therapy can stand on its own or become part of a broader course of treatment. Group members may also participate in individual or couples therapy, work with a medical provider for medication management, or participate in a recovery or 12-step community. When coordination would be helpful, and with your written permission, I can communicate with other members of your treatment team to support continuity of care.
Individual Therapy and Group Therapy
Individual and group therapy offer different ways of understanding yourself.
In individual therapy, the therapeutic relationship provides a private space to explore your internal experience, personal history, symptoms, relationships, and patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. In interpersonal group therapy, many of those patterns become visible as they happen between people.
This makes group therapy particularly powerful alongside individual therapy. Something you understand intellectually in an individual session may emerge very differently when you experience it in relationship with another person. Likewise, something that happens in group may open an important area for deeper exploration in individual therapy.
You do not need to choose one or the other. For some people, participating in both creates a richer understanding of themselves and more opportunities to translate insight into meaningful change.
Medication and Group Therapy
Psychiatric medication and psychotherapy can also be used together. If you currently work with a psychiatrist, primary care physician, or other prescribing provider, group therapy can remain part of your overall treatment.
When clinically appropriate and with your permission, I can collaborate with your prescribing provider. If concerns arise during therapy that suggest a medication evaluation may be helpful, I can also discuss referral options with you.
12-Step and Recovery Communities
Interpersonal group psychotherapy can complement participation in a 12-step program or other recovery community, but the two serve different purposes.
Recovery communities often provide structure, shared experience, accountability, mentorship, and ongoing peer support. Interpersonal group psychotherapy is a professionally facilitated form of treatment in which the interactions and relationships among members become part of the therapeutic work.
In group therapy, members are encouraged to notice what is happening between them, give and receive meaningful feedback, examine recurring relational patterns, and experiment with different ways of communicating and connecting. The therapeutic boundaries of the group are also intentionally defined and maintained.
For someone participating in a recovery program, interpersonal group therapy can provide another place to explore an important dimension of recovery: how you relate to other people.
Getting Started in Group Therapy
Joining an interpersonal therapy group begins with an individual meeting with me. This conversation gives us an opportunity to talk about what brings you to group therapy, what you hope might change, and whether interpersonal group therapy is a good fit for you at this point in your life.
It is also a chance for us to begin getting to know one another. As the group therapist, I am responsible for creating and maintaining the structure that allows members to do meaningful interpersonal work together. Establishing our own therapeutic relationship before you enter the group helps create a foundation for that work.
Preparing to Join a Group
It is very common to feel uncertain about joining a therapy group. You may wonder what you are expected to say, how much you will be asked to share, whether you will fit in, or what it will feel like to talk openly with people you don't yet know. We will talk about those concerns before you join. You do not need to arrive already knowing how to “do” group therapy.
During our meeting, I will introduce you to how interpersonal group therapy works and what you can expect from me and from the other members. We will also begin identifying what you would like to understand or change about yourself and your relationships.
Before joining, we will talk about:
how the group works and what a typical session is like
participating at a pace that allows you to become meaningfully engaged in the group
using self-disclosure thoughtfully and therapeutically
giving, receiving, and making use of interpersonal feedback
confidentiality and the responsibilities group members have to one another
developing your own goals for group therapy
the potential benefits, challenges, and risks of interpersonal group work
what happens when you are ready to leave the group and how endings are handled
The goal of this first meeting is not simply to determine whether there is an open seat. It is to help you enter the group with an understanding of the process, a sense of what you want from the experience, and enough preparation to begin doing meaningful work with the people you will meet there.
How Change Happens in Group Therapy
What makes group therapy therapeutic? It is not simply having several people in a room talking about their lives. The potential for change comes from what develops between people over time.
Psychiatrist and group psychotherapist Irvin Yalom and his colleagues described a number of therapeutic factors that help explain why group psychotherapy works. These ideas continue to provide an important framework for understanding what happens in an interpersonal therapy group. Some of these experiences begin with simply realizing that you are not as alone as you thought. Yalom called this universality: recognizing aspects of your own fears, feelings, struggles, and experiences in other people. Shame and isolation can begin to loosen when something you have kept private is met with recognition rather than rejection.
Other therapeutic factors develop through belonging to the group itself. Cohesiveness grows as members develop trust, connection, and a sense that they matter to one another. Altruism emerges when you discover that you are not only receiving help—you can also be meaningful and helpful to someone else. Hope can develop as you witness other people take risks, struggle, change, and move forward. But some of the most powerful work in interpersonal group therapy happens through interpersonal learning.
We all have ways of relating to other people that have developed over the course of our lives. Some are remarkably adaptive. Others may once have protected us but now interfere with intimacy, trust, communication, or connection. Because these patterns happen between people, they can be difficult to fully understand by talking about them outside of the relationships in which they occur.
In a group, those patterns eventually show up.
You may discover that you become quiet when you feel overlooked. You may work hard to be liked, avoid disagreement, take responsibility for other people's feelings, withdraw when someone gets close, become uncomfortable receiving attention, or assume you know what another person is thinking about you. The difference is that in group therapy, we can become curious about those moments as they happen.
Other members can tell you how they experience you. You can learn whether the impression you believe you make on people is actually the impression they receive. You can say something you would ordinarily keep to yourself and discover what happens next. You can practice tolerating disagreement, expressing affection, asking for what you need, setting a boundary, receiving feedback, or allowing yourself to be known.
Group also provides opportunities for corrective emotional experiences. Familiar relational dynamics may emerge, but the outcome does not have to be familiar. A relationship can survive disagreement. Someone can know something vulnerable about you and remain connected to you. You can express anger without ending a relationship. You can receive feedback without being rejected. You can behave differently and discover that the relationship responds differently, too.
Other therapeutic processes—including self-understanding, emotional expression, learning from others, developing more effective ways of communicating, and taking greater responsibility for the choices we make—develop alongside this interpersonal work. Over time, the goal is not simply to become better at participating in a therapy group. It is to understand yourself more clearly in relationship with others and to carry what you learn in the group into the relationships that matter outside of it.