Healing Happens in Connection | Thornwell Community Counseling Offers Group Therapy Experiences

For generations, Thornwell has believed something simple but profound: people heal in relationships.

It is a belief that shapes how we care for children, support families, and walk alongside communities. It is also the foundation of the work happening every day through Thornwell Community Counseling.

As the mental health needs of children, teens, adults and families evolve, Thornwell Community Counseling is continuing to adapt alongside the individuals and families we serve — finding new ways to meet people where they are and provide support that is accessible, meaningful, and rooted in connection.

In 2025 alone, Thornwell Community Counseling served 1,001 individuals through trauma-informed, attachment-based counseling services. Even more encouraging, 100 percent of families participating in counseling reported learning new skills to help them navigate future challenges and strengthen relationships.

Those outcomes reflect something our counselors see every day: healing is possible when people feel safe, supported, and understood.

That belief has inspired Thornwell Community Counseling to expand beyond traditional individual and family therapy and offer new opportunities for growth and healing through group classes and therapeutic groups for children and caregivers.

Because sometimes one of the most powerful things a person can hear is: “Me too.”

For a child with foster care or adoption experience, meeting peers who understand complicated feelings surrounding loss, belonging, identity, or change can reduce isolation and create space for hope. That’s what happened in Florida’s Finding My Story therapy group.

For parents and caregivers, sitting beside others navigating similar challenges can replace shame with encouragement and uncertainty with practical tools. That’s what happened in Columbia during the Nurturing Parenting workshop series.

For families, connection creates community — and community creates resilience. That’s what happened in the virtual Guiding Children with Connection and Confidence caregiver training series.

Group settings offer something uniquely powerful that individual services alone cannot always provide. Participants learn from one another’s experiences. They practice new skills in real time. They gain perspective, encouragement, and accountability from people walking similar journeys. Most importantly, they discover they are not alone.

This approach is a natural extension of Thornwell’s trauma-informed, attachment-based philosophy of care, grounded in attachment theory and evidence-based practices such as Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®).

Group programs also allow Thornwell to remove barriers to care and expand access to support for more individuals and families at a time when mental health services are needed more than ever. By serving multiple families simultaneously, group programming increases accessibility, creates affordable entry points, and allows counselors to respond to specific needs within communities that may otherwise go unmet.

This reflects Thornwell’s mission in action. For 150 years, Thornwell has adapted to meet the changing needs of children and families while remaining rooted in the same commitment: to walk alongside people with compassion, dignity, and hope. Today that means offering support online, in person, and sometimes in homes. It means serving children, teens, adults, caregivers, and entire family systems.

And increasingly, it means creating spaces where healing can happen not only between counselor and client, but among communities of people learning, growing, and healing together.

Because no one was meant to go through life alone. And often, healing begins the moment someone realizes they don’t have to.