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Attending group therapy can be a valuable way to feel less alone in our struggles, and to explore ways of coping together with peers in a professionally facilitated supportive environment. To learn more about group therapy, what it involves and how it works, please download our brochure here (nó anseo).
Most students who attend group therapy initially feel nervous about participating in this kind of support. It might feel difficult to open up about personal difficulties with a wider group of peers. Yet by helping to overcome such anxieties and develop greater interpersonal confidence students tell us how powerful this way of working can be.
Pre-registration groups require a commitment to attend all sessions, while others operate on a Drop-In basis.
Scroll down for details on all our groups running this academic year.
All groups are free of charge.
Drop-In groups do not require any formal booking and you don’t have to have attended a SNAP before accessing these. Please email stucounc@tcd.ie with your student ID and the Drop In Group name if you want to be sent email reminders about the dates and locations these sessions are running in.
Drop-in Groups 2025-26
Date: Mondays, running weekly for 10 weeks starting 22th September 2025
Time: 12.00pm - 1.30pm
Venue: Seminar Room (318), SCS, 7-9 Sth Leinster St
Facilitator: Ciara Joyce
All of us have an internal self-critic who is quick to judge and can often lead to feelings of fear, shame or despondence. Informed by emotion and compassion focused approaches in therapy, this group is aimed at people who want to better understand and respond differently to their critic so that it becomes a less problematic part of our experience.
Date: Tuesdays, running weekly for 10 weeks from 7th October.
Time: 3.00pm – 4.30pm
Venue: Seminar Room (318), SCS, 7-9 Sth Leinster St
Facilitators: Debby Kluczenko
This support group is a therapeutic support space for students from different cultures and ethnic minorities, run within the Trinity Student Counselling Service. It offers an inclusive and supportive space for members of these communities to meet, share experiences and advocate for their needs. Students can come to seek support but it is also a space where students can come and give support to other students within the community who may be struggling with friendships, college life and any experiences of discrimination or isolation. This group will be facilitated by a counsellor in SCS and an external therapist from within this community, with a similar lived experience.
Date: Tuesdays, running weekly for 10 weeks starting 30th September 2025
Time: 6.00 pm - 7.30 pm
Venue: S2S Student Room (319) at 7-9 Sth Leinster St
Facilitators: Dee O'Keeffe and Aisling Holland
This Addictive Behaviour Support & Recovery is a safe and confidential space for members to support each other in relation to substance and alcohol misuse and other harmful behaviours. Group participants will respect the confidentiality of others in order to maintain a safe place for members.
Date: Wednesdays, running weekly for 12 weeks from 24th September
Time: 10.00 - 11.00am
Venue: Group Therapy Room, SCS, 7-9 Sth Leinster St
Facilitator: Joanna Kesicka
Are you struggling to find the time to just to sit down and feel grounded?
Too stressed to find a bit of breathing space?
Join our drop in guided mindfulness practice - no talking, just grounding, settling and resting. No registration or previous experience required.
Let's explore how to find calm and space in the face of increasing demands on our time and daily lives, with a curiousness and openness to work towards a better balance.
Date: Wednesdays, running weekly for 10 weeks from 24th September 2025
Time: 1.00pm - 2.00pm
Venue: SCS, 7-9 Sth Leinster St
Facilitators: Alice Kelly
The group offers students a supportive place where they can discuss any challenges they are experiencing in relation to their emotional wellbeing. It will focus on providing a place where students can connect with others in similar situations, gain psychoeducational knowledge and skills which might be useful for the distress they are experiencing and help them to reflect and gain validation and acceptance around their own individual experiences.
Date: Thursdays (monthly, see below for specific dates)
Time: 3.00pm - 4.30pm
Venue: St James’s Hospital (Rm PG4 ground floor in the Old Stone Building)
This Drop In Group meets on a monthly basis in St James’ campus and offers students in the healthcare professions a supportive place where they can discuss challenges to emotional wellbeing. Group will run on Thursdays between 3-4.30pm in St James’s Hospital (Rm PG4 ground floor in the Old Stone Building) and provide the opportunity for students to connect with others in similar situations, and gain psychoeducational knowledge, validation and acceptance around their own individual experiences. All undergraduate and postgraduate students in healthcare professions are welcome to drop in. Specific dates included below, please email stucounc@tcd.ie with your student ID and the group name if you want to be sent email reminders about these sessions. We will discuss and contract around maintaining confidentiality in every group.
September 25th 3pm to 4.30pm
October 23rd 3pm to 4.30pm
November 27th 3pm to 4.30pm
January 22nd 3pm to 4.30pm
February 19th 3pm to 4.30pm
March 19th 3pm to 4.30pm
April 23rd 3pm to 4.30pm
Date: Thursdays, running weekly for 10 weeks starting 25th September 2025
Time: 2.00 - 3.30 pm
Venue: Seminar Room, SCS, 7-9 South Leinster Street
Facilitators: Laura Fitzpatrick and Sadhbh O'Hanrahan
Blurb: Understanding your menstrual cycle every day can help you manage personal pain and ease mental suffering. This Group is aimed at empowering your understanding of your flow and uplifting all of those who menstruate to help ensure emotional and academic wellbeing
Date: Fridays, running weekly from 26th September, during term-time
Time: 11.00am - 12.30pm
Venue: Seminar Room (318), SCS, 7-9 Sth Leinster St
Facilitator: Lorraine Byrne
This group aims to provide an affirming space for all members of the LGBTQ+ Community to improve their mental health and resilience through providing support to one another as well as receiving support from professional group facilitators and SCS staff. At SCS, we recognize that Trinity students who are members of the LGBTQ+ community might experience inequality, prejudice, or bias during their lives based on their gender identity or sexual orientation, which can cause increased stress during their college careers. Members of this group will have space to process concerns and stressors through a strengths-based, non-pathologizing format. All Trinity students who identify as members of the broader LGBTQ+ community are welcomed and encouraged to join.
Drop-in Groups, Semester II Only 2025-26
Date: Tuesdays, starting in Semester 2 on 26th February 2026
Time: 1.00 pm - 2.30 pm
Venue: SCS, 7-9 South Leinster Street
Facilitator: Dee O'Keeffe and Tony Rice
Provides a confidential and supportive space for people who have family members or friends in addiction.
Pre-registration Groups
Date: Mondays, term 2 only (starting date TBC)
Time: 5.00pm - 6.30pm
Facilitator: Tony Rice
Venue: SCS, 7-9 South Leinster Street
Grief is a normal part of experiencing loss. Everyone grieves differently, and most people experiencing grief won’t require more than general support and information. For those who require additional support we provide an annual Bereavement Support Group (BSG). The BSG is a small group of no more than 12 students, which meets in a safe, confidential space. The BSG gives us space to talk with others who understand grief – we take time to talk about our lost loved ones and the impact of this loss on our lives. The goal of the group is to help you process your own grief and to find a sense of healing through this.
- The BSG meets annually for seven 90-minute sessions.
- To inquire about the BSG email us at student-counselling@tcd.ie.
Start Date: Tuesdays, starting 7th October2025
Time: 1pm - 3pm
Venue: Seminar Room (318), 7-9 South Leinster Street
Facilitators: Joanna Kesicka and Martin McAndrew
Surviving Your Postgraduate Experience (SYPE) is an 8-week support group exclusively for postgraduates who are experiencing one or a combination of the above common emotional and social challenges. It is co-facilitated by Student Counselling and the Postgraduate Advisory Service.
To register for group sign-up please email kesickaj@tcd.ie
Date: Tuesdays, starting 3rd February
Time: 6.00pm - 7.30pm
Venue: TBC
Facilitators: Ciara Joyce
This group is helpful for students who struggle to feel content, reassured or safe, and for those who have difficulty receiving compassion from others and offering self-compassion. The group aims to increase self-compassion and reduce self-criticism and shame.
Date: Fortnightly Wednesdays, starting 24th September 2025
Time: 2.30pm - 4.00pm
Venue: TBC
Facilitators: Sinead Crowley and Frances Walsh
To register for group sign-up please email student-counselling@tcd.ie
Participants are asked to commit to attending all 8 sessions. The group is reflective by design and some ‘homework’ (e.g. journaling, testing strategies and self-care practices) between group meetings will be required
Date: Thursdays, 16th October - 27th November 2025
Time: 6pm to 8pm
Venue: TBC
Facilitator: Graham King (Trinity Counselling Service) and Daniel Twomey (Trinity Sports)
Mind, Body, Boost is a custom designed fitness and mental health programme that includes mindfulness skills training, group inclusivity work, challenging physical activities and psychological support tools, while also addressing societal issues of social isolation and stress management. Trinity Sport and the Counselling Service will be recruiting participants shortly. To register your interest please email student-counselling@tcd.ie
Date: Thursdays starting 2nd October 2025
Time: 10am until 12pm
Venue: Trinity College Botanic Garden, Dartry, Dublin 6 (next door to Trinity Hall)
To book: Please visit: TBC
Facilitator: Kamila Kwasniewska
This group is for postgraduate students only.
Forest Bathing (or shinrin-yoku) is a preventive medicine technique that comes from Japan and means immersing your senses in the atmosphere of a forest. This nature-connection method was established in the 1980s and has been proven scientifically to reduce stress, improve well-being, reduce muscle tension, and boost the immune system and creativity. Forest bathing experience helps to turn the attention to nature through exercises and invitations designed by the guide.
It is an outdoor experience amongst the trees and shrubs of TCD Botanic Gardens. Each session is guided by a trained forest bathing guide and includes mindful exercises related to the senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste and proprioception), using props and natural features to create an engaging experience.
Date: Fridays, start date TBC
Time: 2.00pm- 3.30pm
Venue: TBC
Facilitators: Chuck Rashleigh
UP Group stands for Unified Protocol. It is a CBT based program with a focus on understanding, tolerating and accepting emotions. The group will be a mix of skills-based psychoeducation, homework, and process-based therapy. Each week contains general psychoeducation with modules tailored to specific elements of the emotional experience. Over the course of the group, we will be looking at:
Goal Setting
Understanding Emotions
Mindfulness
Cognitive Flexibility
Countering Emotional Behaviours
Facing Physical Symptoms of Emotions
Emotional Exposure
To register for group sign-up please email student-counselling@tcd.ie
Referral-only Groups
Date: Wednesdays
Time: 6pm - 7.30 pm (during term), 2.30 - 4 pm (out of term)
Venue: Group Room, SCS, 7-9 Sth Leinster Street
Facilitator: Mark Robinson and Lorraine Byrne
The Ongoing Therapy group at Trinity College SCS involves a group of up to ten students working with a group facilitator (therapist) in weekly therapy sessions. Group Therapy is a respected method of working through a wide range of distressing emotions such as depression, self esteem difficulties or discomfort in relationships. The characteristics of group therapy enable a type of interaction that is not possible in one to one counselling and offer a chance to learn through others, how to manage distress.
Learning Outcomes
- to explore emotional issues and receive support and reassurance from others
- to learn from others about how to manage distress and the chance to be creative about resolving these issues
- to achieve insight into repeated patterns of behaviour
- to increase confidence in group situations
- to improve ability to seek help when encountering problems
Referral is through your counsellor
Date: Tuesdays starting 30th September 2025
Time: 2.30pm - 4.30pm
Venue: Group Room, SCS, 7-9 South Leinster Street
Facilitators: Laura Fitzpatrick and Daragh Keogh
This group is an 8-week closed therapy group for students seeking support regarding issues related to eating and/or body concerns. Working one-to-one and within the group, members will be facilitated to recognise and explore some of the difficult emotions underlying and driving eating and/or body related issues. In particular, the group will focus on 'taming' the the inner critic, that of ourselves that criticises us for not being good enough.
For more information email: student-counselling@tcd.ie