EMDR-Based Group Coaching vs. Group Counseling

EMDR-Based Group Coaching vs. Group Counseling:

What Is It, What’s the Difference, and Which One Is Right for You?

By Edwige Theokas, LPC, M.Ed., M.A.

Group Coaching session

🌙 EMDR-Based Group Coaching vs. Group Counseling:

Introduction

Have you been feeling called to join a support group, but are unsure about all the options?

Should you sign up for a support group like AA? Is a counseling group, run by your local hospital or therapist, what you need? Or is a coaching program more your speed?

If you’re exploring ways to heal, grow, and reconnect with yourself, you’ve probably noticed that “group work” comes in many flavors.

Both group counseling and group coaching involve gathering with others, guided by a facilitator or co-facilitators.

Both types of groups are powerful and are designed to help you heal. Both types of groups help you build awareness, tools, and community.

But here’s the thing: they are not the same.

As a licensed therapist who offers EMDR-informed group coaching for high-achieving women, I want to clear up the confusion and sprinkle in some education, spiritual truth, humor, and human design wisdom so that you can choose the path that actually aligns with where you are in this season of life.

🌱 Core Differences: Therapy vs. Coaching

Group therapy often includes a clinical diagnosis

🪷 What Is Group Therapy?

Group therapy (also called support groups) is a structured, therapeutic service usually led by a licensed professional. There is a clinical component to group therapy. It is designed to address specific mental health concerns or diagnoses, such as trauma, depression, anxiety, or grief. Group therapy often follows evidence-based treatment protocols.

Key Features of Group Therapy:

• Led by a licensed mental health provider

• Focuses on mental health diagnosis and treatment

• Often covered by insurance (depending on your plan)

• Often involves psycho-education to help you understand your behaviors and past events that may be impacting your current functioning.

• Often has a curriculum designed to meet certain treatment goals with evidence-based practices.

• Confidentiality and ethics that are bound by legal and professional standards

• Best for when you’re in a season of active healing and recovery

🪷 What Is A Support Group?

Support groups are loosely structured services designed to support a person who is experiencing a life changing event (i.e., sobriety, divorce, medical condition, grief). It can be led by a professional or a member of the community who has experience with the life-changing event. Support groups may depend on a resource or curriculum to help a person navigate this event, through sharing or hearing from others who are also experiencing the process. It can be temporary, while the person adapts to their new normal, or it can become an integral part of their life. experiencing.

Key Features of A Support Group:

• Led by a facilitator (may or may not be a licensed provider)

• May include psycho-education

• Focuses on supporting a person going through a life-changing event

• Often free and offered to all community members

• Often involves a focus on sharing, hearing, and processing current events that may be impacting your current functioning.

• May or may not have a curriculum designed to meet certain goals.

• Confidentiality is implied

• Best for when you’re in a season of active healing and recovery

  
  

  

  Group members support one another in a coaching program

🌟 What Is Group Coaching?

Group coaching is not therapy. Group coaching is a personal growth container. It’s future-focused, skills-based, and designed to help you shift patterns, step into alignment, and grow into the next version of yourself.

Key Features of Group Coaching:

• Led by a facilitator (may or may not be a licensed therapist). Not designed to diagnose or treat mental health disorders

• Highly individualized. Focused on your personal growth, performance, and future goals

• Often includes self-paced education and course content

• Offers tools and strategies for resilience building, mindset shifts, and forward progress

• Groups are not bound by confidentiality or state laws. The confidentiality of the group is intrinsically enforced by the group members who want to create a safe space for one another. It’s a safe space created by the collective, not state laws

• There is greater flexibility and a capacity to incorporate alternative-based healing practices (i.e. Reiki, Affirmations, EFT Tapping).

All options are important. Each can work hand-in-hand. But the purpose, boundaries, and scope are very different.

Why Does Making This Distinction Matter?

It is important for ethical and practical reasons to understand the boundaries:

• Therapy is for healing and treatment of mental health conditions. It can be passive and active (you can just show up, but it is also expected for you to actively implement tools for your well-being).

• Support groups focus primarily on support and can be passive (you just show up and listen).

• Coaching is for growth, skill-building, and future-focused change. It is predominantly active in that you must do the work of transforming your life. You can show up for inspiration and motivation.

  
  

Think of it like this:

• Group Therapy (counseling) is like visiting the archeological dig site of your psyche. You’re carefully uncovering, examining, and processing past experiences and present behaviors because it is negatively affecting your ability to function in the world. With professional guidance and with the shared experience of others also struggling to make sense of their lives, healing is fostered.

  
  

• Group Coaching is more like designing the blueprint for your dream house. You’re doing well overall, but you want something better for yourself and your life. You’re building, expanding, and manifesting the future you want, using practical tools and aligned energy.

Even when a coach has a therapy background, like I do, we must keep those roles separate in order to protect your safety, clarity, and progress.

🔮 Who Benefits Most

Group Counseling is ideal if:

• You have a mental health diagnosis like PTSD or severe anxiety

• You need structured, clinical support

• You’re ready to process past trauma in depth

• You have recently undergone a life change (death, divorce, sobriety, etc.)

Group Coaching is ideal if:

• You want tools for a better life and greater alignment to bigger goals

• You crave a community that understands what you’re going through and support each other in accomplishing their goals.

• You’re not in crisis and are ready to focus on the next chapter rather than just the last one

  
  

The Pros & Cons

• Group Therapy

✅ Clinical support for mental health conditions✅ Helps process trauma and painful memories✅ Often covered by insurance❌ Waitlists and rigid structures❌ Past-focused, less about visioning the future

• Group Coaching

✅ Future-focused, flexible, and creative✅ Community and accountability with less stigma✅ Includes tools like EMDR-informed techniques, meditation, journaling, and energy practices✅ No diagnosis or paperwork required❌ Not appropriate for crisis or untreated trauma❌ Usually self-pay

🌙 What is EMDR-Based Group Coaching (My Approach)

After years of working in groups and one-on-one with clients, in an insurance-based system, I realized that the model focuses on “what’s wrong with you” and “fixing you”.

Group counseling tends to create a place where labels thrive, and who you are as a gifted and talented individual is lost under the weight of a diagnosis.

Typical support groups often focus on looking at a person as one-dimensional rather than a complex individual who has the capacity to do great things. And when you look at a person as one-dimensional, you can only offer one-dimensional solutions.

While I love helping people heal from past traumatic experiences, I find more and more that I lean towards a model of “there is nothing wrong with you, you just need to author a new story”.

This is not to say that events of the past have not impacted you, but rather, I’d like to focus on creating a positive, empowering story that you want to tell about yourself and your life moving forward.

And that’s what my Aligned Motherhood group attempts to create.   

My coaching philosophy is different:

🌿 There’s nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. It may just be that you want more, and what you’ve done is no longer working for you. You may just need to lay new tracks and author a new story so that you can step into the version of you that is designed for greatness.

In EMDR-based group coaching, I blend the best of both worlds, evidence-based practices and tools that call in strategies that can’t be measured or observed.

I use EMDR-informed strategies for personal growth, mindset shifts, and emotional regulation without diving into trauma memory processing (that belongs in therapy). I stay in the “coaching lane” rather than the “clinical treatment lane.”

We focus on:

• Rewiring subconscious beliefs (hello, money blocks, people pleasing & mom guilt 👋)

• Strengthening nervous system resilience

• Using spiritual tools like guided meditations, rituals, and even lunar cycles to support alignment

• Infusing humor to remind you that healing doesn’t have to be heavy

• Using astrology and human design to honor your natural wiring while building new pathways

For me, these groups are about helping women create the future version of themselves who feel grounded, radiant, and unapologetically aligned. These women are tired of just always doing the “right” thing, and being “good” at the expense of their own dreams and well-being.

In my groups, the structure often looks like weekly implementation and monthly reviews:

• Nervous system tools for real-life stress

• EMDR-informed resourcing and bilateral stimulation

• Spiritual alignment (think: manifestation, intention-setting, guided rituals)

• Humor (because sometimes you need a laugh while healing!)

• Astrology & Human Design insights to understand your unique energy blueprint

In addition to offering a different structure and content from group therapy, there is frequent contact. My groups are high touch, which means that we connect more than just once a week. There are opportunities to connect with me and the group members daily, to help us keep each other accountable and inspired. Change can be isolating and scary, but with the capacity to connect with those also focused on the wobbly path of change, your transformation is more likely to occur and to occur permanently.

📊 Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Group Counseling	EMDR-Based Group Coaching
Led by	Licensed therapist	Coach (with therapy background)
Goal	Treat symptoms, heal trauma	Growth, nervous system balance, aligned living
Trauma processing	Yes	No
Insurance	Sometimes	No
Structure	Clinical protocols	Flexible & intuitive with clinical structures infused
Community	Yes	Yes
Extras	Evidence-based therapy like CBT and/or EMDR	EMDR, EFT, Astrology, manifestation, human design, humor ✨

Final Thoughts: Which Is Right for You?

Final Thoughts: Which Group Is Right for You?

Both group counseling and EMDR-based group coaching are powerful in their own ways.

• If you’re in a season of healing, working through trauma, or managing a mental health diagnosis, support groups or group counseling is the right fit.

  
  

• If you’re ready to focus on your next level, want to strengthen your nervous system, and want practical tools for everyday life, EMDR-based group coaching might be exactly what you need.

Either way, you deserve to have the right support for where you are now.

If you’re curious about how EMDR-based group coaching could help you feel calmer, more confident, and more in control of your life, especially as a high-achieving mom, I invite you to join my upcoming group.

I invite you into Aligned Motherhood Circle, my EMDR-informed group coaching program that integrates nervous system science, spiritual alignment, and community support to help you deal with burnout, overwhelm, and a general sense that you are meant for something bigger.

In my Aligned Motherhood Circle Group, we use EMDR-informed coaching tools to:

• Identify and shift subconscious beliefs that keep you stuck in burnout

• Build nervous system capacity so you can handle stress without collapsing or overreacting

• Learn fast, effective regulation tools you can use anywhere, from boardroom to school pickup, to bedtime.

• Create a personal growth plan that fits your life as a high-achieving mom

  
  

I answer more questions here and here.

We do not process traumatic memories or diagnose mental health conditions in this setting.

If during our work it becomes clear you would benefit from therapy, I would recommend therapy and provide resources to ensure you get the right support.

If you’re interested in booking a consultation call to apply and learn more, click here.

Either way, you deserve to have the right support for where you are now.

📅 Click here to learn more and join the Aligned Motherhood Circle

My name is Edwige (Eddie) Theokas, and I am a trauma-based therapist and group coach in Bordentown, NJ. I am licnesed to provide therapy in New Jerseylicensed in person and on-line. My group coaching program is nationwide and I work with women in the United States and Canada

I specialize in EMDR to address trauma, anxiety, and stress. I work specifically with moms who are experiencing burnout and stress.