GPR07 – What Do I Need to Thrive as a Human Being AND Therapist Right Now? with Sam Perry – Group Practice (R)evolution

Home » GPR07 – What Do I Need to Thrive as a Human Being AND Therapist Right Now? with Sam Perry – Group Practice (R)evolution

Business Therapy
13 Aug, 2025
Lane

GPR07 – What Do I Need to Thrive as a Human Being AND Therapist Right Now? with Sam Perry – Group Practice (R)evolution

“Being with other humans and their pain and their suffering and their strategies is really complex. We can’t just simplify it to a list of what makes a good or a bad therapist.” – Samantha Perry

The solution to all (okay, most) of the challenges facing group practices is embedded, quite cleverly, in the name. It doesn’t matter what role you hold inside the group. Owner, admin, or therapist, your individual participation informs the altruistic and financial goals of the entire practice.

And also…

Groups are powered by people––real, live humans with individual expectations, convictions, experiences, and traumas. How do groups reach equitable agreements around financial compensation, work-life balance, or social justice engagement?

I ask these questions keenly aware that 2020 was a record scratch between the old ways of working and the new. Samantha Perry, LCSW, encourages folks on both sides of the “old school/new school” divide to get comfortable with transparency and vulnerability. She also recommends committing to intrapersonal healing work, especially around our faulty strategies for addressing shame (excessive caretaking, aversion to feedback, etc) or how those strategies sabotage the work environments we’re trying to create!

“We have to create more space, over time, to let those shame stories be a little bit more flexible, to release the desire to be good, or to prevent someone from being disappointed in [us],” says Sam, who is coordinator of group therapy and training at LifePath Therapy and Associates in Chicago. She’s also a certified NARM therapist who loves supporting folks who want to build their capacity for connecting to themselves and others, create a new relationship to their body, or develop freedom and flexibility around their experiences of shame.

We love a therapist who practices what she preaches. We also adore Sam for lending “both sides now” nuance to complicated inquiries around what it means to work in the therapy field now. “One thing I’ve thought to myself is I never wanna own a group practice,” she laughs. “I’ve seen more of the behind-the-scenes complexity. I’ve felt the softening in myself around things that I had felt frustrated or, maybe, even anger or annoyance about. Those feelings haven’t gone away, but I think there’s been more space created around them.”

Omnidirectional thinking isn’t easy, but it’ll foster the creation of more collaborative, soul-centered group practices in the future.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

The NeuroAffective Relational Model™ (NARM)

University Of Chicago – Crown School of Social Work

GUEST CONTACT & BIO

LifePath Therapy Associates
Samantha Perry (she/her) is an LCSW, working at LifePath Therapy Associates in Chicago as the Coordinator of Group Therapy and Training. She is a certified NARM therapist, and loves supporting folks who want to build their capacity for connecting to themselves and others, create a new relationship to their body, or develop freedom and flexibility around their experiences of shame. She specializes in working with folks healing from religious and complex trauma. When she’s not learning or working, you can find her quilting, dancing, or writing, where she is learning to embrace her own perfectionist parts.

____________________________________________________________________________

Join the Group Practice (R)evolution! GPR is a new platform and podcast series offering insights from owners, employees, and experts, and resources to support this wildly ambitious vision for the future. For a limited time, podcast listeners can get a full year of membership for only $19.99 by using the discount code PODCAST.

Visit: https://tinyurl.com/GPRPodcast and click on “have a coupon” and enter PODCAST to enjoy all the perks of Group Practice (R)evolution for a year!

Get Support! Earn CEs!