The idea of sharing personal struggles with a room of strangers stops a lot of people before they even ask what group therapy actually involves. That hesitation is understandable and, for most people who eventually try it, unfounded.
Group therapy is a structured treatment with its own research base and its own specific advantages over individual sessions, not a lesser or cheaper substitute for one-on-one work.
Through The Woods Psychological Services offers group and individual therapy across New York City and throughout New York State. Here is how it actually works.
What a Typical Session Looks Like
Groups typically run six to twelve members with one or two trained facilitators, meeting weekly for a set session length, often ninety minutes.
Structure varies by group type. Some follow a specific weekly curriculum, teaching skills in sequence. Others are more open, with members bringing whatever is current for them and the group responding in real time. Most groups establish ground rules early: confidentiality, respectful communication, and expectations around attendance and participation.
New members typically go through a brief screening conversation before joining, to confirm the group is a good fit for what they are working on.
Why Group Therapy Works
The mechanism is different from individual therapy, and that difference is the actual point rather than a limitation.
Hearing other people describe similar struggles reduces the isolation that often accompanies mental health difficulties. Many people arrive believing their specific experience is uniquely shameful or incomprehensible, and discovering that others share it is itself therapeutic.
Group therapy also provides real-time feedback on interpersonal patterns. A group is a small social environment, and how someone relates to other members often mirrors how they relate to people outside the room, which gives both the person and the group material to work with directly rather than through secondhand description.
Practicing new skills, communication, boundary-setting, tolerating disagreement, happens live with other people rather than only being discussed in the abstract.
What Group Therapy Treats
Groups exist for a wide range of concerns, often organized around a shared experience or goal.
Common formats include process groups focused on general interpersonal patterns, support groups for a shared circumstance like grief or a health diagnosis, skills groups teaching a specific approach such as DBT, and issue-specific groups addressing anxiety, depression, trauma, or substance use.
Some groups are open, allowing new members to join at any time. Others are closed, with a fixed membership that starts and ends together, which tends to build deeper trust over a defined period.
How It Compares to Individual Sessions
These are not competing options, and many people benefit from understanding when each fits best.
Group therapy tends to work particularly well for concerns that are fundamentally interpersonal: social anxiety, relationship patterns, isolation, and difficulty trusting others. Individual therapy allows more focused attention on a single person’s history and pace, without needing to share time with others in the room.
Combining both is common. Many people do individual work alongside a group, using each for what it does best.
Is Group Therapy Less Effective Than Individual Therapy?
This is a common assumption, and the research does not support it.
For many concerns, group therapy produces outcomes comparable to individual therapy, and for issues centered on interpersonal difficulty specifically, it sometimes outperforms one-on-one work, since it offers something individual therapy structurally cannot: a live social environment.
It is a different tool rather than a lesser one.
Addressing the Hesitation
A few concerns come up repeatedly before someone tries a group, worth naming directly.
Confidentiality is taken seriously and is typically an explicit group agreement from the first session. You are never required to share more than you are comfortable with, and most facilitators actively protect members from being pressured. And the fear of judgment tends to fade quickly once people realize everyone in the room has their own reason for being there.
Getting Started With Group Therapy in New York
Through The Woods Psychological Services offers both individual and group therapy across New York City and throughout New York State, in person at our Midtown Manhattan office and online statewide.
With over 60 positive reviews from NYC clients, we help clients figure out whether an individual, group, or combined approach fits their situation.
Call us today or schedule a consultation to talk about whether group therapy could help.
Let’s walk through the woods—and into healing—together.
