Lisa Kays

Group Psychotherapy is an affordable, accessible way to access therapeutic support from qualified mental health professionals. To learn more, DM us for the link to learn more and register for group sessions.

-The "Emotional Lab": Group provides a practice arena for skills you're learning in individual therapy. You can test out new ways of being in a safe container with immediate feedback.

-Real-Time Feedback: Group members trust and take in feedback from peers differently than from therapists. When someone in a group says, "You do this thing where you apologize after everything you say," it lands differently than when a therapist says it.

-Multiple Transferences: In individual therapy, you might successfully avoid certain types of people or dynamics. In a group, they show up—the person who reminds you of your critical mother, the one who triggers your people-pleasing, the one whose confidence you envy.

Group therapy does things individual therapy simply cannot:

But I get the resistance. Most people think, "It can't be as good as individual therapy, right?"

Wrong.

Here's what might surprise you: Research consistently shows that group therapy is as effective as individual therapy—sometimes more so. Irvin Yalom has documented this over 60 years of controlled studies.

And when it works, the results seem to hold, too.

The solutions clients find for themselves are often innovative and surprising--to both of us.

I wrote a bit about it here in case your're curious about it, or your therapist has offered it, and you aren't so sure...

Curious about clinical hypnosis?

It can seem mystifying and a bit weird, woo woo, or even potentially embarrassing, i.e. what if I say something strange I wouldn't say otherwise?

As a therapist recently trained in it, I have to say, it's getting results for folks. And fast.

Lisa Kays | Substack News and information about the private practice of Lisa Kays, The Shift Happens Collective. The Shift Happens Collective serves clients and social work supervisees in DC, VA, MD, and OR. Click to read...

Subscribe to my Substack to read more about relationships and how they're impacted by the social container and culture we're sitting in: shifthappenscollective.substack.com

Sometimes, the most insidious thing that happens is that your truth is never acknowledged. When we suppress our own thoughts and feelings, we know it takes a toll on our physical and mental health.

It’s not always physical abuse. Often, it’s what we call coercive control—a slow erosion of autonomy through monitoring, isolation, and subtle threats. You start second-guessing yourself. Diminishing your needs. Shrinking to keep the peace.

And when they name it, they’re often met with gaslighting, excuses, deflection, or silence. They are asked to hold and take more seriously the experiences of everyone but themselves.

And yet, so many of the relationships I hear about don’t meet that basic bar. Women carry the majority of unpaid labor, from child-rearing and housework to emotional support and mental load.

It's a space where everyone can flourish—not just survive. There’s no coercion or abuse. No one benefits at the other’s expense. Everyone’s labor—emotional, cognitive, physical—is recognized and respected.

What Is a Healthy Relationship?

This may sound obvious, but for many people, especially those socialized as women, this question gets blurry fast. A healthy relationship is mutual. Collaborative. Safe.

New ep drop! We answer a lovely listener's ? about if monogamy can be a good thing (the answer is yes, sometimes, of course, because many things are true at once!) and explore some ways to think about protecting your attention and using it as a force of good for you, and maybe even the world!

Lisa Kays | Substack News and information about the private practice of Lisa Kays, The Shift Happens Collective. The Shift Happens Collective serves clients and social work supervisees in DC, VA, MD, and OR. Click to read...

I talk about this experience on the Therapist Uncensored podcast and continue to write and reflect on it. For upcoming writing and thinking about improv's role in social justice and anti-oppressive ways of being, subscribe to my Substack: shifthappenscollective.substack.com

And somehow, through that strange mix of laughter and grief, we found a way to talk about oppression, power, and identity without collapsing into shame or rage.

We didn’t fix the world. But we stayed present. We stayed kind. And we stayed connected.

And then we played.

We did movement-based games. We clapped when someone made a mistake. We laughed. We shared painful truths. We said “yes, and” instead of “yes, but.” We practiced being in our bodies, together.

But I grounded myself in what I know improv can do. I opened the session with a personal “yes, and” statement—naming the harm I’ve caused and the harm I’ve experienced due to varying places of privilege and marginalization. I situated myself in complexity. I asked the group to do the same.

Tensions were high. The room was filled with therapists—many of them brilliant, passionate, and understandably wary of being vulnerable in a group.

Honestly? I was scared.

I was recently led to remember leading a workshop at a recent professional conference called Improvisation for Decolonization. I had no idea when I proposed the workshop that October 7 would happen before I would offer it, meaning that when it was time to lead, I was unsure what I was walking into.

Listen to the full episode of the Therapist Uncensored Podcast here: lnkd.in/du7iryg5.

Paula and I also talk a lot about improv and its connection to healing and oppression (and getting un-oppressed) on the What If Nothing's Wrong With You? podcast: lnkd.in/emjRXyvs

Improv culture is the opposite of white supremacy culture.

So, I made a little chart. I did a ton of research. And once again, I found myself thinking I was inventing something new, only to learn, yet again, that it was something civil rights and social justice advocates have known all along.

Then a social work board rejected my proposal to teach a CE workshop on “Improv and Self-Care.” So I pivoted: “Improv and Social Justice.” To prepare, I started studying Tema Okun’s work on white supremacy culture—and it hit me:

Coming out of the pandemic, though, I had a realization: We need improv now more than ever. I had become too rigid, too angry. I saw relationships crumble, organizations struggle. I lost my own sense of play.

Then everything shifted. George Floyd. The Trump era. The pandemic. It felt like the world cracked open. I started questioning everything—including improv. I thought, "This is frivolous. We don’t have time to play anymore. So I shut it down. Got serious."

I launched Improv for Therapists workshops. I wanted to use improv for anxiety work, but many therapists were hesitant. “Anxious people doing improv? No, thanks.” Recruitment was tough.