It’s the most common complaint about group therapy and the most common private frustration: one member takes a disproportionate share of the room, week after week, and nobody says anything.
Why it isn’t simply mismanagement
A new member assumes the leader should cut in. Frequently the leader is waiting, deliberately, and the waiting has a purpose.
If the leader manages the airtime, the group learns that the leader manages the airtime. Nothing changes for anyone. If the group learns to manage it, several things happen at once — and those things are the treatment.
The member who talks too much finds out how they affect people, which is very likely the pattern they came in with and which nobody in their life has told them. The quieter members practise taking up space and interrupting, which is very likely their pattern.
This is interpersonal learning and it’s what the format is for. It’s also why it feels, for a month or two, like the group is being badly run.
What a leader actually does
Not nothing, and less than you want.
Early on, quite a lot of structuring — protecting time, bringing others in. As the group matures, progressively less, and more of a particular kind of intervention: turning it to the room.“I notice Sam has been talking for a while. What’s everyone else doing with that?”
That question is uncomfortable and it’s the one that changes things, because it makes the pattern a shared piece of work rather than one person’s fault.
What to do if it’s bothering you
Say it in the room. This is the answer, and it’s the thing people will do almost anything to avoid.
It doesn’t have to be an attack. “I have noticed I stop trying to speak when the conversation goes this way, and I want to say that out loud.” That’s about you, it’s true, and it names the thing.
Not to the leader afterwards. Tempting, and it removes the material from where it can be worked on. A good leader will bring it back to the group anyway.
And notice what you do instead. Withdraw? Get irritated and say nothing? Wait to be invited? That reaction is at least as interesting as the other person’s behaviour, and it’s the half that’s yours to work on.
If it’s you
Some people read this and recognise themselves, usually with some discomfort.
Filling silence is rarely about wanting attention. It’s more often anxiety — silence feels dangerous, so you fill it — or a history in which not speaking meant not existing.
The useful move isn’t to go silent. It’s to say the thing out loud: “I think I take up a lot of room and I don’t know how to stop.” In a group that lands as courage rather than confession, and it’s frequently the point at which someone starts genuinely changing.
When it’s a problem the leader must solve
There’s a line. Monopolising that persists after it has been named repeatedly, that’s hostile, or that makes the group unusable for everyone else is a composition problem rather than material — and a leader who lets it run for a year isn’t being patient, they’re avoiding something.
If it has been named several times and nothing has shifted, raising that with the leader directly is entirely reasonable.