A Return to the Source

Five ways group therapy cultivates authenticity (which is the ultimate aphrodisiac).

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The common perception of group therapy is it’s for losers who gush about their emotions as if they don’t know the meaning of self-respect. To be honest, this is a totally accurate perception. It’s also an accurate perception of Twitter, but that doesn’t mean we cannot use it to our advantage.

Group therapy can provide us with the emotional training that keeps us stable when we deal with girls and their inherently challenging natures. Specifically, here's how it helps:

1. Regulates emotion

Nervousness, text barrages, indolence, hesitation—these are all symptoms of a deeper cause, the lack of emotional regulation.

Emotional regulation is the ability to sit with our emotions so we use them as tools for purposeful cognition and action rather than as unconscious acting out. A catch-all way to regulate is to relate with the feelings of others and identify their emotions as our own. The presence of others is a counterbalance that keeps us stable as our neurology becomes accustomed to the stress of emotional awareness.

When we’re out in the real world, the emotional triggers from the female tests and rejections lessen in intensity. Regulation is the gyroscope of our psyche that stabilizes no matter what happens to knock us off balance.

2. Builds charisma

The ability to be present with someone is a universally attractive trait—it’s the foundation of charisma.

When a therapy group of predominantly old, Jewish ladies, for example, prattles on about the price of blouses at Bloomingdales, it’s our challenge to feel the emotion they feel as they expound on spinster sob stories. Then we imagine when we have felt a similar emotion. This is the crux of listening that most of us miss. We listen to the words, yes, but more importantly true listening involves empathy with the emotion behind the words. This emotional attunement is so powerful that some of our most flawed politicians have rose to prominence on little else.

All the libido and confidence in the world cannot make up for an inability to connect with women.

3. Develops composure

Another universally attractive trait is composure. Men and women alike gravitate to men who have a steadiness about them no matter what happens to go wrong. Though this steadiness doesn’t come from affirmation or self-development seminars. Composure isn’t the strain of our consciousness against the chaos of an external situation—it’s calmness in the face of our emotional reaction to external situations.

Composure develops when we repeatedly face our own insecurities. This can only be achieved when we become ever more comfortable with ourselves by being comfortable with other people.

As we connect with the aforementioned old, Jewish lady's pain, we connect with our pain. Connection breeds emotional fluidity, which decreases the chance our latent baggage will control us outside our awareness.

4. Fosters honesty

The ability to act in the face of anxiety makes a man successful with women. But more important than the traits that attract women are the traits that weed out low-quality women. The ability to speak truth about who we are and what we want regardless of social pressure may not build the largest harem, but it will keep the loser women out of our lives.

It’s this kind of honesty that's fostered by a group's acceptance, which serves as an incubation chamber for honesty, no matter how trenchant it may be.

5. Assuages everyday misery

Fat girls, weak men, whiny kids, cats—the everyday misery of life congeals to form a base level of bitterness in our soul, which no healthy woman wants any part of. Rather than isolate and intellectualize, as men often do to defend themselves against misery, it’s helpful to cope with the misery—talk about it and, more importantly, listen to others talk about it honestly (Twitter doesn’t count).

Emotions are universal, so you'd be surprised how much you have in common with someone who’s seemingly different, even an old, Jewish lady.

More than 40,000 years ago in present-day Germany, our ancestors would gather to play a bone flute to appease the storm gods. Instead of the frequency of the flute, we now have the frequency of an emotion. Instead of the projection of a God, we have the demon of our inner turmoil. The fact that this appeasement has become a metaphor doesn't make it any less therapeutic.

Conclusion

Our issues with women can sometimes be solved through behavior correction. Text this way, kiss that way, respond to her tests with this line. But when the behavior has a deeper, emotional cause, we need to first address the dysregulation before the behavior can correct itself.

Group therapy can be the setting of this inner acclimation—just don’t let anyone know that's where you go on Tuesday nights.