Online Group Therapy: Can You Really Connect Through a Screen?
Updated: Sep 18
The idea of sharing personal parts of your life with a group of strangers can already feel intimidating. Add a screen between everyone, and another question often comes up: Can online group therapy actually feel like a real group?
It's a reasonable concern. Most of us have experienced video calls where people talk over each other, someone is frozen mid-sentence, and half the meeting feels like people waiting for their turn to speak. Therapy is supposed to depend on connection, vulnerability, and relationships. How can that happen when everyone is sitting in a different room?
The answer is more nuanced than simply saying online group therapy is convenient. Virtual groups do have limitations, and they aren't the right format for everyone. But when an online group is thoughtfully structured and skillfully facilitated, something surprising can happen: after a while, the screen can become much less important than the people on it.
Online Group Therapy Is More Than a Group Video Call
Group therapy is sometimes imagined as several people taking turns talking about their week while a therapist offers advice. Some groups do have educational or skills-based formats, but interpersonal process therapy groups work differently.
In a process group, what happens between members becomes part of the therapy. You might notice that you rarely speak unless someone asks you a question, become anxious when another member disagrees with you, automatically take care of someone who becomes emotional, or assume that people are judging you when the group gets quiet.
These moments matter because many of the ways we relate to people outside therapy eventually appear inside the group.
Perhaps you avoid conflict with friends and discover that you also avoid telling another group member when something they said bothered you. Maybe you're usually the person everyone relies on and realize you're doing the same emotional caretaking in group. Or you desperately want closer relationships but notice how difficult it is to let other people see you when you're uncertain, hurt, angry, or vulnerable.
As we explore more deeply in Why Is Group Therapy So Powerful?, group therapy gives you an unusual opportunity: instead of only talking about your relationships, you get to experience and understand your relational patterns as they're happening.
And yes, that can happen online.
Can You Really Feel Connected to People Through a Screen?
One of the biggest concerns people have about virtual group therapy is whether it will feel emotionally distant.
Initially, it might. There can be an adjustment period while everyone learns names, gets comfortable with the technology, and figures out how to read a room that exists in small rectangles rather than around a physical circle.
But connection doesn't depend entirely on physical proximity.
Over time, members begin remembering what is happening in one another's lives. Someone notices that you're quieter than usual. Another member asks about the difficult conversation you mentioned the previous week. Someone says something you've thought for years but never heard another person admit aloud.
Those moments are often where a collection of people on a screen begins to feel like a group.
The therapeutic relationship isn't created by the room everyone sits in. It's created through attention, consistency, vulnerability, curiosity, honesty, and the experience of being known by other people.
There Are Things Online Groups Can Make Easier
The most obvious advantage of online group therapy is accessibility. Without a commute, people who live farther from Atlanta or Decatur can participate from elsewhere in Georgia, and scheduling a 90-minute group may become more realistic when it doesn't also require travel time.
But accessibility isn't only geographic.
For someone with social anxiety, entering a room full of unfamiliar people can feel overwhelming. Joining from a familiar environment may lower the initial threshold enough to make participation possible. Neurodivergent clients may appreciate greater control over lighting, seating, sensory input, or the ability to use discreet regulation tools. People balancing work, caregiving, disability, or transportation barriers may also find a virtual group easier to sustain.
For clients from marginalized communities, online therapy can expand access to groups specifically designed to be culturally or identity affirming. Instead of being limited to whichever groups happen to exist nearby, someone may have a better chance of finding a space where they don't have to spend the first several sessions explaining basic parts of their identity.
ACIP's online therapy services similarly allow clients throughout Georgia to access care without having to live near one of our physical offices.
But Online Group Therapy Has Real Limitations
Virtual group therapy isn't simply in-person group therapy with a webcam.
Some nonverbal information is harder to read. You may see someone's facial expression clearly but not notice that they're bouncing their leg anxiously or turning their body away from another member. Natural eye contact works differently on video, and subtle shifts in the room can be easier to miss.
Technology can also interrupt meaningful moments. Internet connections fail. Audio cuts out. Someone accidentally talks while muted. A powerful interaction can suddenly be interrupted by a frozen screen.
Privacy can create another challenge. Group members need a confidential space where roommates, partners, family members, coworkers, or other people cannot overhear the session. Headphones can help, but they don't solve every privacy problem.
And for some people, simply being physically present with others matters. They may feel more connected, embodied, or emotionally engaged when everyone shares the same room.
These aren't reasons that online group therapy doesn't work. They're reasons that the format matters and fit matters.
The Screen Can Become Part of the Group Process
Interestingly, some of the limitations of virtual therapy can themselves reveal meaningful relational patterns.
Maybe you frequently look at your own image because you're worried about how other people perceive you. You might turn your camera off when you become emotional, glance at another window when the conversation becomes uncomfortable, or find yourself distracted because no one can tell exactly where you're looking.
Perhaps being at home makes it easier to be vulnerable. Or perhaps it makes it easier to hide.
A skilled group therapist can become curious about these moments rather than treating them simply as problems with virtual therapy.
What happened just before you looked away?
What made you want to turn off your camera?
What is it like knowing everyone can see your face while you're listening to this?
In process-oriented therapy, even the medium through which people connect can become information about how they experience closeness, visibility, and vulnerability.
Online Group Therapy Still Requires Participation
Joining a group isn't the same as watching one.
It can be tempting in an online setting to remain quiet, listen to everyone else's experiences, and wait until you have something perfectly formed to contribute. You may even tell yourself that you're benefiting simply by observing.
Listening can certainly be therapeutic. But much of the power of interpersonal group therapy comes from gradually allowing yourself to become part of what is happening.
That might mean telling someone that their comment affected you, admitting that you felt left out of a conversation, noticing that you're intimidated by another member, accepting support without immediately changing the subject, or allowing people to see that you're having a difficult day.
You don't have to reveal your deepest experiences immediately. Trust develops over time. But group therapy becomes more powerful when members move from watching connection happen to participating in it.
What About Awkward Silences?
There will probably be some.
Silence can feel particularly strange online because it's harder to tell whether someone is thinking, waiting for another person to speak, or experiencing a technical problem.
But not every silence needs to be rescued.
If you're someone who automatically fills uncomfortable space, group may help you notice that impulse. If you assume silence means people are judging you, you can become curious about that interpretation. If you're waiting for someone else to decide what the group should talk about, you might explore what makes it difficult to bring your own needs into the room.
A good process group isn't designed to eliminate discomfort. It creates enough safety and support to become curious about what the discomfort might be showing you.
Group Therapy Can Be Especially Powerful for Loneliness
You don't have to be socially isolated to feel lonely.
You can have friends, coworkers, family, or a partner and still feel that very few people truly know you. Sometimes the problem isn't the number of relationships in your life but how much of yourself you feel able to bring into them.
Group therapy creates a place to experiment with something different.
You can practice saying what you actually think instead of what seems safest. You can discover how other people experience you. You can learn that disagreement doesn't necessarily end a relationship and that someone can see a part of you that you're ashamed of without rejecting you.
Our article on why sharing experiences in group therapy can promote healing explores another part of this process: the relief that can come from discovering that an experience you thought was uniquely yours is understood by someone else.
For people who have spent significant parts of their lives masking, code-switching, adapting, or wondering where they belong, that experience can be particularly meaningful.
Is Online Group Therapy the Same as an Online Support Group?
Not necessarily.
Online communities and peer-support groups can provide valuable connection, validation, information, and mutual support. But psychotherapy groups are clinical services facilitated by trained mental health professionals and intentionally structured around therapeutic goals.
Even within psychotherapy, groups can look very different. Some focus on education or coping skills. Others address a particular concern or population. Interpersonal process groups focus more heavily on relationships and what unfolds between members in real time.
At Aguirre Center for Inclusive Psychotherapy (ACIP), our group therapy program includes small therapist-led groups designed to foster deeper self-awareness, authentic connection, and healthier ways of relating to others.
Finding the right group therefore involves more than searching for people who share the same diagnosis or experience. It also means considering what kind of group experience you want.
Who Might Benefit From an Online Process Group?
You don't need to be in crisis or have a particular diagnosis to benefit from group therapy.
A process group may be worth considering if you find yourself repeating similar relationship patterns, struggle with vulnerability, feel lonely despite having people in your life, worry excessively about what others think of you, avoid conflict, have difficulty trusting people, or frequently become the caretaker in your relationships.
Group can also be valuable if individual therapy has helped you understand your patterns intellectually but you want a place to practice doing something different with other people.
For young adults, these questions can become especially relevant during periods of changing friendships, dating, independence, career uncertainty, family expectations, and identity development. Our article on feeling stuck in your 20s explores how process groups can offer connection during a stage of life that can feel surprisingly isolating.
The best way to determine whether a particular group fits your needs is usually to speak with the group therapist before joining.
Online Group Therapy in Atlanta and Throughout Georgia
ACIP offers culturally responsive, identity-affirming group experiences for people who want to understand themselves more deeply through relationships with others. Our current group program includes online interpersonal process groups as well as specialized group spaces, with offerings changing over time.
Our groups are intentionally small so members have room to develop meaningful relationships rather than disappearing into a crowd. Current offerings may include groups for adults, young adults, specific identity communities, and therapists or therapists-in-training.
We serve clients in Atlanta, Decatur, and throughout Georgia, and our approach is affirming of BIPOC, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent, immigrant and first-generation, polyamorous/CNM, and other diverse identities and relationship structures.
If you're curious about group but unsure whether it's right for you, you don't have to decide based on a webpage. Explore ACIP's current therapy groups or contact us to start the conversation. We offer a free 15-minute phone consultation to answer questions and help determine whether one of our current groups may be a good fit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does online group therapy actually work?
Online group therapy can provide meaningful therapeutic connection and support when the format is appropriate for the members and the group is thoughtfully facilitated. The experience differs from meeting in person, but meaningful relationships, vulnerability, feedback, and interpersonal learning can still develop virtually.
Is online group therapy awkward?
It can feel awkward initially, especially if you've never participated in group therapy. Video delays, silence, and figuring out when to speak can add another adjustment. As members become familiar with one another and the group's rhythm develops, these aspects often become less prominent.
Do I have to talk about everything in group therapy?
No. You decide what you share and when you share it. However, interpersonal group therapy generally becomes more useful as members gradually take relational risks, communicate honestly, and allow other people to know them more fully.
What's the difference between online group therapy and a support group?
Both can provide meaningful connection, but they aren't necessarily the same. Psychotherapy groups are clinical services led by trained mental health professionals and structured around therapeutic goals. Support groups may be peer-led or facilitated and often focus more heavily on shared experiences, information, or mutual support.
Is online group therapy confidential?
Group therapists establish confidentiality expectations, and members are expected to protect one another's privacy. In online groups, members also need a private location where other people cannot overhear sessions. Your group therapist should explain confidentiality, privacy expectations, and the limits of confidentiality before you join.
Does ACIP offer online group therapy in Georgia?
Yes. ACIP currently offers online therapy groups for eligible participants in Georgia, including interpersonal process groups and specialized group offerings. Because groups and openings change over time, the current Group Therapy page is the best place to see what's available.
About the Author
Dr. M. Sophia Aguirre, Ph.D., CGP, FAGPA is a licensed psychologist and the founder and director of Aguirre Center for Inclusive Psychotherapy (ACIP) in Atlanta. A Chicana/Latina psychologist and Certified Group Psychotherapist, she specializes in culturally responsive and affirming care for BIPOC, Latinx, LGBTQIA+, and high-achieving adults navigating anxiety, depression, trauma, identity, relationships, neurodivergence, and systemic stress. Her work is relational, trauma-informed, and grounded in anti-oppressive and decolonized approaches to mental health and healing.
Dr. Aguirre provides individual and relationship therapy and leads therapy groups for clients and therapists. Through ACIP, she is committed to creating affirming spaces where people can explore culture, identity, relationships, and mental health without having to leave important parts of themselves outside the therapy room.
