Out of control emotions can make it hard to maintain friendships, romantic relationships and can even jeopardise our careers. Many of us never learned the skills we need to cope with intense distress, anger or overwhelm. This makes it impossible to deal effectively with stressful or distressing situations that inevitably come up in our lives. This course teaches participants how to survive distressing events without making things worse. It includes tools to reduce emotional activation and get through difficult events in effective ways.

This group course is for you if:

You want to learn how to reduce the intensity of overwhelming emotions
You want new coping mechanisms that are more effective than the ones you have right now
You want to learn the difference between things you have to accept and things you can change.
Want to learn with a wonderful group of neuroqueers and other cultural renegades
You're willing to try out new ideas!

This group course is NOT for you if:

You want to suppress or ignore your emotions
You aren't a quirky queer or cultural renegade
You already have a deep and thorough understanding of your emotions and how to change them when needed
You don't want to try new things that may make you feel a little uncomfortable sometimes

"I was really surprised to feel more comfortable than I have in any kind of therapy setting I’ve ever been in. I’ve been able to be really open and bring my full self to the skills group and I feel really very grateful for that."
Gray

Who we are at Love Uncommon

Love Uncommon was founded by Sophia Graham who is a sex and relationship geek trained in counselling, DBT & teaching. Sophia works with other coaches and therapists to provide courses on emotion regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness and self consent.

We work with quirky queers and cultural renegades including sex workers, performers, kinksters, neuroqueers, and people across the gender, sexual and relationship diversity spectrum. That means our clients are cis and trans; women, men and non-binary folks; people that are monogamous and non-monogamous; autistic and allistic; sexual and asexual, disabled and non-disabled.

This is what we will be covering!

Week 1 (12th September) – Orientation and mindfulness
This is all about understanding the DBT approach, the guidelines for the skills groups and the approach that DBT takes to mindfulness.

Week 2 (19th September) – STOP & TIPP
This week is all about changing your body to change your brain. Simple and effective skills to reduce emotional activation in a crisis.
Week 3 – (3nd October ) Improve the moment & Self soothing
This includes a mix of cognitive and body based skills to cope with a crisis. Even more ways to cope with crisis situations by using your senses.
Week 4 – (10th October) Distraction
This week is all about how to use healthy distraction to cope with difficult events. We will also talk about when we are over-using distraction and work on ways to identify when it is getting in the way of us having a life worth living.

Week 5 – (17th October) Radical acceptance
This is all about working out the things in life that need to be accepted in order to build a life worth living. It is finding ways to accept uncomfortable and even hellish realities as they are. This isn't about approval; it is just about acknowledging what is.
Week 6 – (24th October) Turning the mind
This week is all about reinforcing radical acceptance by turning your mind towards the reality you are accepting and away from denial and avoidance. We will delve deeper into the concept of the ‘wise mind’, the inner wisdom that we find between logical and emotional minds, which helps us to make balanced decisions and act on our values.
Week 7– (31st October) Willingness & Willfulness
This session is all about recognising feelings of willfulness and willingness without judgment. It can help us notice that we are having a willful moment and recognise that we have the opportunity to use other skills in that moment if we wish to (and have the capacity to) rather than reacting, shutting down, or dissociating. We will also talk about mindfulness of current thoughts.

Addressing financial barriers

At LoveUncommon, we strive to make our courses financially accessible to those who need them. We appreciate it when folks can pay the full price of the course because it helps us to continue doing our work, but we can offer some low-cost spaces for folks who need them. If you are BIPOC or a member of the global majority, you can use code GM75 to access the lowest-cost spaces. If you are struggling to support yourself and in financial distress, I have three places for folks using code "low70" for 70% off the course cost. I have an additional 3 spots for code "low 60" for 60% off and "low 50" for 50% off. If you are on a low income but not in financial distress, you can use code "low40" to get 40% off.

Join us!

$280 / €280 / £245

90-minute interactive lessons on Zoom every week starting 12th September 2024 at 7pm UK/EIRE and 2pm Eastern
Videos, podcasts, handouts and worksheets to support your learning.
A community to learn alongside