The parallel process of resistance by clients and therapists to starting groups: a guide for nurses

Group psychotherapy is well recognized as a treatment modality with a powerful healing capacity. Yet, as experienced group therapists will attest, it is immensely difficult to begin a group. Assembling clients who have sufficiently dealt with their resistance to join a psychotherapy group is a painstaking process. Students in group psychotherapy training programs also find beginning a new group an arduous and frustrating task. The authors have had the benefit of postgraduate group psychotherapy training program to build on the expertise and skills already familiar to the Clinical Nurse Specialist. Our understanding of the parallel process in the resistance to beginning a group grew out of our training experience. We will explore within the parallel process framework some of the factors that make the development of a group psychotherapy practice as complex. Parallels will be drawn between clinician resistance to beginning a new group and client resistance to joining a group.