When Parallel Process Meets Goodbye: The Shared Experience of Therapist and Patient
Jackie Corrigan
Antioch University New England
Over the past several months, I have found myself thinking a lot about what it means to be a group facilitator. While this may go without saying, there are aspects of group work that feel entirely different from individual therapy.
Recently, I have noticed myself paying closer attention to my internal monologue during difficult group moments. When a group member becomes highly dysregulated, defensive, or begins directing anger towards me or other members, I can often feel a wave of anxiety move through my body. In those moments, my mind starts searching for answers. Why is this happening? Why am I feeling so activated? Is this countertransference? Transference? Am I responding to something being communicated within the group?
As therapists, we are taught to pay attention to our emotional reactions. Strong feelings often tell us something important. Rather than pushing those feelings away, I have tried to become curious about them.
Initially, I assumed my anxiety was related to concern for the group. I worried about how other members might be impacted. I worried that the emotional safety of the space had been disrupted. Yet when I looked around the room, I often noticed something very different. Rather than withdrawing, group members frequently responded with compassion, support, and understanding. The adults I work with, they get to know each other very well. They spend nine to twelve weeks together. Many had developed genuine care and concern for each other. Therefore, when they saw someone they care about in distress, they leaned in. They showed up for one another. Isn’t that what it’s all about?
So, If the group was okay, then perhaps something else was happening.
Over time, I began to notice a pattern. These moments rarely occurred at random. More often than not, they seemed to emerge when a group member was approaching discharge. The person who suddenly appeared angry, disconnected, argumentative, or disruptive was often someone preparing to leave the program. What initially felt like resistance began to look like something else entirely.
As I reflected on these moments, I found myself wondering whether what I was witnessing was less about opposition and more about grief.
For many of the adults I work with, relationships have often been marked by trauma, inconsistency, loss, or abandonment. Group therapy may be one of the first places where they experience feeling understood, accepted, and genuinely cared about by others. Then, after weeks of building trust and connection, it is time to say goodbye.
That is not an easy thing to do.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that perhaps I was focusing so much on understanding the client’s emotional experience that I had overlooked my own. The truth is that saying goodbye can be difficult for facilitators as well. We spend weeks witnessing growth, celebrating victories, sitting with pain, and watching people take risks. We become invested. We care.
And perhaps that anxiety I felt in my body was not simply a reaction to the client’s distress. Perhaps it was a reflection of the fact that we were both experiencing the same reality: our time together was ending.
In therapy, we often talk about parallel process. I wonder if this was one of those moments. While the client was struggling with the feelings associated with separation, loss, and transition, I was experiencing my own version of those emotions as well. What initially appeared to be disruption may have been grief. What felt like resistance may have been fear. And underneath it all was something deeply human: the difficulty of saying goodbye to people who matter to us.
As I prepare to complete graduate school and move into the next phase of my own professional journey, I find myself thinking about endings differently. There is often excitement about what comes next, but there is also sadness about what is being left behind. Growth and grief frequently arrive together. Being ready to move forward does not mean we are not scared. It does not mean we will not miss the people who helped us get there.
Perhaps one of the most meaningful interventions we can offer is not helping clients avoid those feelings, but being willing to sit with them. To acknowledge that endings are hard. To model that relationships can matter deeply and still come to a close. To show that we can feel sadness, gratitude, fear, and hope all at the same time.
Sometimes the work is not about preventing the goodbye. Sometimes the work is learning how to have one.