Learn Hardcore German: In der Therapie lernen die Teilnehmer, ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen und emotional ehrlich zu sein. - In therapy the participants learn to understand their feelings better and to be emotionally honest.

Article form: “der” vs. “dem”
- Im = in dem (preposition + masculine/neuter dative singular)
- Therapie is feminine: die Therapie.
- Feminine dative singular is der, not dem.
- So you must say in der Therapie, never im Therapie.
Case: dative vs. accusative with “in”
- in can take dative (location: where?) or accusative (direction: where to?).
- Here the meaning is “during therapy / in therapy (as a situation)”, i.e. a location / state, so you use dative: in der Therapie.
- You would say in die Therapie gehen (to go into therapy) with accusative, because it’s movement towards something.

So “In der Therapie” = in therapy / during therapy and is grammatically correct because of both gender (feminine) and the static location meaning (dative).

Why does the sentence start with “In der Therapie” and not with “Die Teilnehmer lernen …”?

Both word orders are possible, but they have slightly different emphasis:

In der Therapie lernen die Teilnehmer, …
Die Teilnehmer lernen in der Therapie, …

German main clauses keep the finite verb in second position. If you move an adverbial phrase (like In der Therapie) to the front for emphasis, the verb must come right after it, and the subject comes after the verb:

In der Therapie (position 1)
lernen (position 2 – finite verb)
die Teilnehmer (position 3 – subject)

Starting with In der Therapie emphasizes the setting (“in therapy”) more strongly than the participants. Starting with Die Teilnehmer emphasizes the people more. Both are correct.

What grammatical role does “die Teilnehmer” have here, and why is it “die” and not “den Teilnehmern”?

Die Teilnehmer is the subject of the sentence:

Die Teilnehmer lernen … – The participants learn …

Because it’s the subject, it must be in the nominative case, and nominative plural is die Teilnehmer.

Den Teilnehmern would be dative plural, which you would use only if they were an indirect object, for example:

In der Therapie erklärt der Therapeut *den Teilnehmern etwas.
(The therapist explains something **to the participants.*)

Here, though, they are the ones doing the learning → subject → nominative → die Teilnehmer.

Why is there a comma before “ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen”?

The part “ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen und emotional ehrlich zu sein” is a zu-infinitive clause depending on lernen:

lernen, [etwas zu tun]

According to modern spelling rules, the comma before a zu-infinitive clause is often optional, but it is:

required when the clause is introduced by um, ohne, statt, anstatt, außer, als, or
always allowed and often preferred for clarity otherwise.

So here:

Mit Komma: In der Therapie lernen die Teilnehmer, ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen …
Ohne Komma: In der Therapie lernen die Teilnehmer ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen …

Both are correct. Many writers use the comma because it clearly separates the main clause (lernen) from the infinitive clause (ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen und …).

Why is it “ihre Gefühle” and not something like “die Gefühle” or “sie Gefühle”?

“ihre Gefühle” is a possessive phrase meaning “their feelings”:

ihr- is the possessive stem for sie (they) → ihr = their
Gefühl = feeling, Gefühle = feelings
The article-like ending -e on ihr (→ ihre) matches plural accusative (Gefühle).

So:

ihre Gefühle = their feelings (accusative plural)

Alternatives:

die Gefühle would be “the feelings” (no explicit possessor).
sie Gefühle is impossible: sie is a personal pronoun, not a possessive determiner.

Thus, ihre Gefühle correctly shows who the feelings belong to (the participants) and matches in number and case.

Why is “Gefühle” plural and in this form (with -e)?

The base noun is das Gefühl (feeling), which forms its plural as:

das Gefühl → die Gefühle

In the sentence, Gefühle is the direct object of verstehen (to understand), so it is in the accusative case:

Was (what) lernen sie besser zu verstehen? → ihre Gefühle.

For neuter nouns, nominative and accusative singular and plural often look the same as nominative:

Nom. sg.: das Gefühl
Akk. sg.: das Gefühl
Nom. pl.: die Gefühle
Akk. pl.: die Gefühle

So “Gefühle” is plural and functions as accusative object here.

Why is it “ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen” and not “besser ihre Gefühle zu verstehen”?

Both word orders are grammatically possible:

ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen
besser ihre Gefühle zu verstehen

General tendencies:

In German, direct objects (like ihre Gefühle) often come earlier than adverbs (like besser) in longer infinitive phrases, making “ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen” sound very natural.
besser can move for emphasis or style, but it should stay close to the verb it modifies (verstehen).

Subtle nuance:

ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen: neutral, natural word order.
besser ihre Gefühle zu verstehen: can put a bit more stress on “besser” (the improvement) and sounds slightly more spoken-style.

In standard written German, “ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen” is often preferred.

Why do we use “zu verstehen” and “zu sein” instead of just “verstehen” and “sein”?

After lernen in the sense of “learning to do something”, German uses the structure:

lernen, etwas zu tun
= to learn to do something

So:

lernen, ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen
= learn to understand their feelings better
lernen, emotional ehrlich zu sein
= learn to be emotionally honest

This is a zu + infinitive construction. Using bare infinitives (verstehen, sein without zu) here would be incorrect:

✗ lernen, ihre Gefühle besser verstehen (wrong in standard German in this sense)
✓ lernen, ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen (correct)

Why is the “zu” before “sein” (→ “zu sein”) and not in another position, like “emotional zu ehrlich sein”?

In German zu normally stands directly before the infinitive verb it belongs to:

zu verstehen
zu sein
zu machen, zu helfen, etc.

Other elements like adjectives or adverbs (e.g., emotional, ehrlich, besser) go before the verb but after zu, or before zu+verb as a group, depending on structure. In this simple case:

emotional ehrlich zu sein = to be emotionally honest
(zu
- sein stay together)

A phrase like emotional zu ehrlich sein would mean something else:

zu ehrlich = too honest
So emotional zu ehrlich sein ≈ to be emotionally too honest, which is not the intended meaning.

In the given sentence, zu must directly introduce the infinitive sein, giving zu sein.

What does “emotional ehrlich” mean, and why are there two adjectives in a row?

German often uses adjectives both as adjectives and as adverbs with the same form. There is no separate -ly form like in English.

emotional here functions like “emotionally”
ehrlich means “honest”

So emotional ehrlich ≈ “emotionally honest”.

Structure:

emotional modifies ehrlich
ehrlich then describes the way of being (how they are when they are honest emotionally).

Two adjectives in a row is normal when one functions adverbially:

politisch aktiv = politically active
innerlich ruhig = inwardly calm
emotional ehrlich = emotionally honest

Why is it “ehrlich zu sein” and not “ehrlich sind”?

The phrase “ehrlich zu sein” is again a zu-infinitive clause depending on lernen:

lernen, [ehrlich zu sein]
= learn to be honest

If you used “ehrlich sind”, that would form a finite verb and start a new main clause:

In der Therapie lernen die Teilnehmer, sie ehrlich sind.
→ ungrammatical and semantically wrong

After lernen (in this sense), German uses zu + infinitive, not a full conjugated verb. So ehrlich zu sein is required.

Why is there no extra comma before “und emotional ehrlich zu sein”?

The whole infinitive part is:

ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen und emotional ehrlich zu sein

These are two zu-infinitive phrases joined by und. They together form one unit that depends on lernen:

lernen, [A und B]
- A = ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen
- B = emotional ehrlich zu sein

Because A und B belong to the same larger infinitive structure, you put one comma before the whole infinitive group, not before each part:

Correct:
…, ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen und emotional ehrlich zu sein.
Incorrect:
✗ …, ihre Gefühle besser zu verstehen, und emotional ehrlich zu sein.

The und already connects the two infinitives inside the same clause, so a second comma is not needed.

Could we say “In der Therapie lernen Teilnehmer, …” without “die”? What would change?

Yes, you can drop the article:

In der Therapie lernen die Teilnehmer, …
In der Therapie lernen Teilnehmer, …

Difference in nuance:

die Teilnehmer: refers to a specific, known group (e.g., those in this particular therapy group).
Teilnehmer (no article): more generic or indefinite, like participants (in general) in therapy learn…

In many real-life contexts (e.g. talking about a concrete therapy group), “die Teilnehmer” is more natural because you typically mean those particular participants.