Activities for Group Counseling

Group counseling can be an excellent way to diversify your therapy private practice. Meet with multiple clients, seeking treatment for similar issues, at once by employing a variety of activities for group counseling. 

An effective counseling group has a primary focus. Typically, there is one element that the group leader and members have agreed to meet together regularly to discuss and address. Some general group counseling topics include communication skills, coping skills, and psychoeducation for specific issues.

Depending on the age of the group members, more specific counseling topics can be addressed. For instance, group counseling topics for adults may include stress management, parenting, grief and loss, anxiety, depression, anger, separation and divorce, and job loss or life transition. 

If we’re working with a particular population, such as military members or college students, you can narrow a group’s focus even more (i.e., transitioning from military to civilian life or from high school to college).

When deciding on activities for group counseling for teenagers or children, a more tailored and thoughtful approach is required to accommodate their younger developmental and life stages. 

Examples of topics for adolescent groups include academic stress, peer pressure, and parents’ separation or divorce. For children’s groups, potential topics include social skills (i.e., taking turns, showing good manners, helping others), managing emotions, dealing with bullies, and phase of life experiences (i.e., becoming an older sibling, moving homes or schools). 

Below, we’ve included several counseling group activities that you can use with clients in your practice.

Group counseling activities for adults

These activities for group counseling may be especially relevant for your adult clients. 

The ‘Get to Know Me’ Puzzle

Instructions:

1. Bring a puzzle to the group session and put all the pieces in a basket. The puzzle should not be complicated (no more than 50 pieces). 
2. Set up a small table before starting the group session for members to complete the puzzle.  
3. Share with the group how it’s difficult for us to open up about ourselves to others, especially if our comments have to do with something we struggle with or feel embarrassed about. 
4. Pass around the basket, inviting members to take as many pieces as they choose. 
5. Once the basket is empty, ask members to share something about themselves for each puzzle piece they have. For instance, the member who is holding four pieces should share four details about themselves. 
6. Emphasize that members can be as personal as they wish and that there isn’t a penalty for not sharing. 

After all those who want to participate have done so, provide clients with prompts for discussion, such as: 

• How difficult (or easy) was it to talk about yourself? 
• What are the benefits and risks of being vulnerable with other people? 
• Is it easier for you to share about yourself with other group members than in other relationships? 
• Conclude the group by inviting members to combine their pieces at the table and complete the puzzle. 

Values Inventory

Instructions:

1. Print out a list of personal values (about 20-30) and pass them out at the start of the group, along with pens or pencils. 
2. Explain to the group how our values have a significant impact on the choices we make, such as the job we work, person we date, or friends with whom we spend our time. 
3. Challenge group members to identify their top five values and then number them in order of importance. 

Allow 10 to 15 minutes for completion and then open the discussion with questions: 

• What are your top five values? 
• Why are these values the most important? 
• Is your current lifestyle consistent with these values? If not (or if so), how do you know?

Coping Skills Bingo

Instructions:

1. Create your own Bingo cards or use a premade version that has coping skills listed on each square. 
2. Pass out the cards as you begin the group, along with small items, like dry beans or small stones, so that each member has supplies to mark when a coping skill on their Bingo card is called. 
3. Emphasize the importance that coping skills play in our ability to live life well. 
4. Ask members to share examples of unhealthy and healthy coping skills to help them build insight. 
5. Lead the group in several rounds of Bingo, occasionally offering more detailed explanations of coping skills and asking for members’ input. 
6. You can get creative by offering a prize to the winners (or all participants)—for putting a healthy coping skill into action that day, while also reinforcing these coping skills (i.e., stress balls or journals).

Group counseling activities for elementary students

Below are three examples of counseling group activities that may be better suited for your younger, elementary-age clients.

Emotions Charades

Instructions:

1. Show students a deck of emotions cards and explain that each person will pick a card and have a turn acting out that emotion in front of the group. You can use a premade deck or make your own. For example, one of my coworkers printed their own selfies showing different emotions, while another printed various emojis and laminated them. 
2. Pass the deck around the circle, encouraging students to keep others from seeing their card. 
3. Direct each student to act out the feeling on their card, whether they remain seated or stand in the middle of the circle, while others try to guess the emotion represented. 

Ask questions afterward to help students better understand emotions, such as:

• When is a time you’ve felt [insert emotion]?
• How can you tell when someone else is feeling [insert emotion]? 

Where I’ve Lived

Instructions:

1. Give each student a sheet of paper, along with markers, crayons, or colored pencils, and tell them to draw as many houses as they can remember in which they’ve lived. 
2. Allow 10 to 15 minutes for drawing before inviting students to share their artwork with the group. Be prepared for the description of multiple homes and the feedback which can follow (i.e., frequent moves due to a parent serving in the military, short stays at houses because of foster care placement, or sudden relocation because of parents’ divorce). 

After 10-15 minutes, ask questions to build rapport and insight among the students, such as: 

• What is fun (or tough) about moving?
• When you grow up and have your own house, what do you want it to be like?
• How can you help another student who just moved here?

Pushing Buttons

Instructions:

1. Flip a cereal bowl upside down and trace a large circle onto construction paper. 
2. Make enough circles for each member of your group to have two. 
3. After cutting out all the circles, place them in a pile along with markers, crayons, or colored pencils. 
4. As you start the group, tell students that we all have ‘buttons’ or triggers which cause us to become angry. If we get mad when someone yells at us, takes something from us, or blames us for something we didn’t do, it means our ‘buttons’ have been pressed and we’ve been triggered. 
5. Pass the circles around the group and tell each student to choose two. Explain that one button represents a helpful way to handle anger, while the other stands for a harmful way to handle it. 
6. Direct students to decorate their buttons to show these different responses. Give examples of helpful and harmful ways to deal with anger. Helpful ways to deal with our anger can include going for a walk, taking deep breaths, and talking to a friend. Harmful ways to deal with our anger are yelling at others, throwing things, and fighting. 

Provide 10-15 minutes for students to finish their buttons. Invite students to share their creations with the group and start a discussion with simple prompts: 

• What are your ‘buttons,’ and what happens when someone pushes them? 
• Is this a helpful or harmful way to handle anger?
• What is a healthy way to react when someone ‘pushes your buttons’?

Group sessions give us many opportunities to incorporate unique and fun activities for group counseling. 

We can introduce hands-on projects, like arts or crafts, or more introspective tasks, such as inventories and assessments. Group counseling activities can be shared with members of various ages—with modifications made to fit the particular age range with whom we’re working.

If you aren’t already working with clients in group therapy, consider the advantages of bringing activities for group counseling into your practice.  

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