Individual vs. Group Consultation: How to Decide
The question usually gets asked as a scheduling question: individual or group, which one do I book. It's worth treating as a clinical question instead, because the two formats don't just differ in price and pacing. They build different things in you as a clinician, and picking based on convenience alone means leaving one of those things underdeveloped.
What EMDRIA actually requires
For EMDRIA Certification, at least 10 of your 20 required consultation hours must be individual. The rest can be individual, group, or a mix. Individual consultation is defined simply: the consultant and one consultee, 1:1. Group consultation is capped at 8 participants under current standards, and it's possible to accrue individual-hour credit within a group setting under specific conditions, though that requires clarity with your consultant about how those hours are being counted and documented.
That structure isn't arbitrary. EMDRIA requiring a minimum of individual hours, while leaving room for group, reflects the fact that both formats are doing real, different work, not that one is a lesser substitute for the other.
What individual consultation actually builds
Individual consultation gives you sustained, uninterrupted focus on your own caseload. A single case can unfold across the full hour if it needs to. There's no competing for airtime, no compressing your case presentation to fit a shared clock. This format is well suited to:
Working through a stuck point pattern that keeps showing up across your own clients
Deep case conceptualization on a genuinely complex presentation
Getting direct, unfiltered feedback on your specific clinical decisions without the diplomacy that group settings sometimes require
Building confidence with a new population or protocol modification before bringing it into a group setting
The tradeoff is exposure. An hour of individual consultation teaches you a lot about one case. It doesn't teach you much about the range of presentations other therapists are managing.
What group consultation actually builds
Group consultation trades depth for range. You're hearing how other therapists conceptualize cases, where they get stuck, and how a consultant responds to problems that aren't yours. That's a different skill than solving your own cases, and it's one individual consultation can't really provide on its own:
Pattern recognition across presentations broader than your own caseload
Exposure to how other clinicians handle similar stuck points differently than you would have
Practice articulating your own case concisely, which is its own clinical skill
A working sense of how consultation itself functions, useful preparation if you're eventually working toward CIT status yourself
The tradeoff here is obvious: less airtime per person, and less control over which cases get discussed in depth.
Choosing based on what you're actually working on
If you're stuck on a recurring pattern in your own caseload right now, individual consultation is probably the better use of the hour. You need sustained attention on your specific cases, not a wider sample of other people's.
If you're earlier in your EMDR practice and still building general pattern recognition, or if you're working toward certification and want the full range of case types EMDRIA's certification review expects you to be conversant with, group consultation adds something individual hours alone won't.
Most therapists end up needing both, which is consistent with how EMDRIA structured the requirement in the first place. A useful default: individual consultation for the cases that are actually giving you trouble right now, group consultation as a standing, lower-stakes way to keep building range over time.
A documentation note worth knowing in advance
One of the more common reasons EMDRIA certification applications get delayed isn't clinical at all. It's unclear documentation of which hours were individual and which were group. Ask your consultant upfront how they're tracking this, and keep your own running log with dates, hours, and format as you go. It's a small habit that saves a real headache when you're assembling your application months or years later.
Where I fit into this
I offer both individual and group consultation. If you're not sure which format fits what you're currently working through, that's a reasonable first question to bring to a consultation call itself.
If you're ready to get started, let's talk.
Sources: EMDR International Association (EMDRIA), EMDRIA Certified Therapist™ Application; EMDRIA Approved Consultant in Training™ FAQs; EMDRIA Certified Therapist™ FAQs; Consultation Packet, emdria.org.
