Brown Girls Working It Out – A Therapy Group for Women of Colour

2022 sees the start of a new project for The Therapy Hour.

While I’ve run a variety of different groups over the course of several decades of working in the field mental health/wellbeing, being based outside a large metropolitan city has significantly limited my reach.

One of the few gifts sent to us all by the Covid pandemic has been the new horizons opened up by the ease and accessibility of online video calls. The last 2 years have seen me working with clients from all over the world and one of the most obvious groups of enquiries comes from BAME women/women of colour.  

While it’s been a privilege to work with women with such a wide range of experience, I’ve noticed that there is almost always a felt sense of isolation, a sense of feeling misunderstood and/or excluded by both wider society and the family/community of origin.

While blogs and social media provide a degree of access to a shared experience, these forms of communication have their limitations in that they are often semi-anonymous and not in real-time. Being unmoderated, they also have the potential to become toxic, creating space for everything from bullying and trolling to the creation and perpetuation of rigid orthodoxies which can in themselves be as alienating as those we are seeking to escape in the outside world.

Brown Girls Working It Out is a project which will attempt to provide a safe space for us all to explore ourselves, to share our experiences and in doing so, grow and develop into our full potential. 

Devised as a therapy group following Schema Therapy principles, we will examine our feelings, beliefs and behaviour patterns, trying to understand our triggers and the coping strategies we habitually employ to manage them. We’ll look at the ways in which we are both limited and limit ourselves and work to find a greater sense of personal freedom and autonomy in a world where we are frequently invisible or pigeonholed without individuality. At the same time, we’ll seek to avoid turning ourselves into victims or becoming paralyzed by anger. I really hope that the group will be a source of support, learning, growth inspiration… and lots of laughs!

The Format

The group will have a minimum of 5 participants, maximum of 10. It will run on Zoom for an initial 8-week trial period beginning April 2021. It will run for 90 minutes on Thursdays, 18.30-20.00 UK time. In addition to attending weekly group sessions, all participants will have access to a 50-minute individual session with me every 4 weeks.  Those new to working with me will need to complete an assessment form and attend an initial (free) consultation with me.