By all appearances, your calendar is full. You’re “connected”: you consult, you share office space, you refer out when needed to an expansive network of trusted colleagues. And yet, it’s possible (and overwhelmingly common) to still feel deeply alone in your work.

That loneliness isn’t just individual, it’s systemic. While this hasn’t been a subject of much formal research, the anecdotal validation is overwhelming. The reasons for these feelings of isolation are complex: packed caseloads, emotional fatigue, the weight of bearing witness to pain without reciprocity. And for many clinicians, the very structures designed to support us, like consultation groups, have quietly become just another place to perform competence.

But what if consultation could be more than a clinical tune-up? What if it could be the beginning of a space for collective care?

When Support Becomes Superficial

Most of us were trained to view consultation as a professional safeguard: a space to get input, check for blind spots, and ensure ethical compliance. And to be clear, that function matters –  consultation keeps our clients safer and our practices sharper.

But in reality, many consultation groups operate like mini staff meetings: efficient, clinical, and emotionally guarded. There’s often little room for the more vulnerable truths, about feeling stuck, areas of deeply personal countertransference, about losing empathy, about coming home from work with no empathy or emotional energy to give to anyone in your personal life.

So why does this happen? Because our professional culture subtly (and sometimes overtly) discourages therapists from expressing too much personal emotion among peers. Because many of us are afraid to appear “less than competent.” And because the burnout so many of us feel has quietly narrowed our capacity for depth.

As a result, even therapists with robust consultation routines often feel profoundly unsupported. The group may be there, but the connection isn’t.

The Untapped Potential of Deeper Peer Conversations

When held with intention, consultation groups can become something more. They can evolve into brave spaces. And there’s evidence to back this up.Consultation groups are invaluable job resources that support therapists’ health and well-being at the individual level. A systematic review by Duncan and Pond (2024) highlights how both formal supervision and informal peer support emerge as key strategies in preventing burnout. Therapists reported that regular engagement in supportive networks helped them feel grounded, less isolated, and better equipped to manage the emotional challenges of their work. In essence, peer consultation that fosters authentic emotional expression plays a crucial role in enhancing clinician well-being and reducing professional isolation

In short: deeper dialogue matters. These kinds of groups offer what individual supervision often can’t: a horizontal structure where clinicians witness and care for one another, outside of hierarchy or evaluation. They allow us to bring not just our treatment plans, but our questions. Not just our stuck points, but our stories.

They offer us community, not just critique.

Shifting Your Group Toward Something More Meaningful

So how do you get there? Not every consultation group needs to become a therapy circle. But every group can be made more emotionally sustaining with a few simple shifts:

1. Name the Desire for More

This is often the hardest part. But someone has to start it. Try something like: “I’ve been realizing that I’m craving more honest reflection in our group. Less just case talk, and more about how this work is landing in us.”

Be prepared to get a little vulnerable when you share about what you have been experiencing in the group compared to what you want group consultation to feel like. You’ll be surprised how many heads nod in recognition.

2. Build in Ritual and Rhythm

Start or end each meeting with a quick emotional check-in. Simple prompts like “What’s alive in your work this week?” or “Where are you emotionally in your caseload right now?” can open space for presence without derailing the agenda.

Rotating facilitators can also flatten hierarchies and build shared ownership.

3. Use Reflective Prompts That Invite Meaning

Not every session needs one, but consider weaving in occasional prompts that can allow for deeper connection. Choose one prompt perhaps at the start or end of your group, set a 2–3 minute time limit per person, and remind folks: No one needs to fix or advise. Just listen. Some reflective prompts can include:

Emotional Check-Ins

• What’s alive in your work this week?
• What’s weighing on you right now, professionally or personally?
• Where are you feeling stretched thin right now?

Meaning & Identity

• When do you feel most connected to your “why” as a therapist?
  What part of your work feels most life-giving lately?
• What part of this job feels like it’s asking too much of you?

Case Reflection Beyond Technique

• What part of this client’s story is resonating with something unspoken in you?
• Where do you feel stuck—and what does that feel like in your body?
• How are you experiencing yourself in the room with this client?

Burnout, Grief, and Repair

• What are you grieving in your practice right now?
• What has surprised you lately—good or hard?
• What do you wish someone had said to you this week?

Resilience and Joy

• What are you celebrating this week, big or small?
  What’s something that made you laugh recently in your work?
• What moment reminded you that this work matters?

These kinds of questions allow you and your peers to process the emotional labor and impact of the work, not just the logistics of treatment.

4. Establish Group Agreements Around Boundaries and Consent

Deep connection requires clear safety. Make agreements explicit: no rescuing, no fixing, confidentiality always. If someone shares something vulnerable, the group can offer validation and empathy, not clinical analysis or unsolicited advice.

5. Leave Space for Joy and Messiness

Deeper connection doesn’t mean everything is heavy. Some of the best bonding comes from laughter, from swapping memes about progress notes, from naming the absurdity of billing codes or the deeply human weirdness of therapy itself.

Humor is medicine. So is being witnessed in your mess without needing to clean it up.

Consultation Groups are an Adjunct to Other Communities

While a consultation group can be a great place to open up the conversation for more than shop talk, it’s important to consider that there are other spaces for connection and collective care available to you, like professional organizations, online forums, or grad school networks.

No one consultation group can do everything. Sometimes your needs may fall outside what a group can offer, and that’s ok. Our desire for connection – both professional and emotional –  deserves to be honored, and we can find that connection in multiple places. 

Consultation Can Be Collective Care

We ask our clients to show up honestly, to name what they need, to tolerate discomfort in the service of growth. We coach them toward relational repair, into deeper belonging. But too often, we don’t ask that of ourselves.

The beauty of reimagining consultation groups as reflective spaces is that it allows us to embody the very values we hold sacred: authenticity, presence, connection. It allows us to care for ourselves in the way we care for our clients – not with perfection, but with consistency and compassion.

Especially in light of growing caseloads, complex crises, and moral fatigue, we need more than professional scaffolding. We need each other. Not just to help us think through a case. But to remind us that we’re not alone in carrying it.