2026 AGPS Annual Conference Preview with Speaker Annie Weiss, LICSW

This article has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.

Steve Cheney: All right, everybody. Well, we have Annie Weiss here. She will be hosting our conference on April 25th called Deepening Connection in the Here and Now. It sounds really exciting and we're really happy to have you. What are you looking forward to most about the conference, Annie?

Annie Weiss: I'm really excited to come to Austin, a place I've never been, where so many colleagues that I really admire and enjoy live and work. And I'm really excited about having a conversation in this community about what does a leader do moment to moment that truly helps people engage and connect and not only understand their self-limiting behaviors and beliefs, but to actually heal and transform them, including what's stored neurobiologically in the body. And I'm excited to hear what people have to say about what I'm going to present and where the conversation takes us.

Steve: Oh, that sounds exciting. Well, and I don't know if I we should give any spoilers, but did you want to say more about things that might be stored in the body or self-limiting beliefs? That sounded pretty intriguing. 

Annie: Well, we're going to be talking a little bit about Polyvagal theory, a little bit about interpersonal neurobiology, a little bit about cognitive distortions, and then how does that all inform how we self-regulate ourselves as therapists when things get stormy or provocative or overwhelming? And then how do we also bring that to our group members to help them expand their tolerance for strong affect, to express and receive aggression, and to expand their play space so that they can have livelier and more exciting relationships. 

Steve: That sounds super fun and intriguing, and especially relevant because all of us have been in that stormy fog where we don't know what we're doing. That sounds really great. And we're always interested in how we end up in the group world... So, how did the "group bug" bite you?

Annie: I think it's always an interesting question how any of us end up devoting our lives' work to helping people have better relationships. And I certainly have my own backstory on that, which I'm happy to get into at some other time. But suffice to say, I really liked bringing people together into community and trying to help them work together to solve problems. I was really involved in women's empowerment spaces in college and I started working with various kinds of supports groups before I even went to social work school. I had the opportunity in Boston, where we ourselves had a really rich and deep group therapy psychodynamic training community, to have amazing mentors and teachers. And we had back in the day, we don't have it so much anymore, a really pretty intense long three-year certification training program. It really exposed me to some brilliant thinkers and the power of group. And then I had an amazing opportunity to co-lead a group with Scott Rutan who was really such a lion, still is, such a lion in the group world. And that was a group that was observed by other clinicians. So I ran that group for about 12 years and it was incredible to have weekly supervision from a group of clinicians, interns, and professionals who really helped me notice what was I responding to, what was I not responding to, what were the blind spots in my own field of vision, and the incredible range of opportunities of things we could pay attention to, the choices that we could make. That was a very enriching experience. Now I love nothing more than watching a group work through whatever the barriers are to really meaningful contact, connection, presence, love. It brings me to tears multiple times a week. I really never get tired of sitting with a group. Most of the groups I work with now are groups of clinicians doing a training process group. That work has also been really fun and meaningful to me.

Steve: Oh wow. Thanks for sharing all that Annie. That was really touching, and what a great story. We're really looking forward to hearing more and can't wait to have you here in Austin. 

Annie: Thank you. Can't wait to eat some of the tex-mex.

Steve: Oh yeah. Well, there will be plenty of that. Well, we will see you and everybody on Saturday, April 25th.

Annie: Thanks so much, Steve. I'm really looking forward to it.