Have you been looking for community and support but not found a place for someone like you?
We help quirky queers and cultural renegades get the tools they need to feel supported, through group courses with folks who are lot like them.
Do any of these sound like you?
- Your emotions are getting in the way of you having the relationships and life that you want.
- You are avoiding important things because you're afraid that you'll get overwhelmed and make everything worse.
- Your relationships are suffering because it is really hard to contain your emotions in conflict, or because you shut down;
- You're finding it hard to act in line with your values when you're distressed or angry.
We get it! We want something different for you!
If you’re a quirky queer, or cultural renegade — like us — we know it can be really hard to know whether a particular therapist or skills group will be appropriate for us. When we looked for a community, we couldn’t find what we are looking for, so … we created it!
The groups we run are full of folks who are a mix of queers, sex workers, neurodivergent humans and other sex and relationships geeks. One of the best parts of working with this mix of folks is that we get to see each other in the midst of struggles with emotions, relationships and life in general. Whether we are sharing our experience or witnessing others, it is powerful to feel less alone with our struggles and to recognise ourselves in others.
Want to get started very soon?
We created Calming the Chaos because we wanted to build a community that wasn’t interested in:
Following default scripts about how gender, sexuality and relationships ‘should’ work.
Becoming more “normal.”
Reinforcing binary notions of how to relate to each other and ourselves.
Ready to calm the chaos in your emotions or relationships?
A subscription community to create better relationships with both your emotions & the people in your life.
Calming the Chaos is a subscription membership community that’s especially helpful for you if you’re:
- in queer relationships*
- finding consensual non monogamy or BDSM is intensifying your emotions or bringing up new issues in your relationship
- hoping to build skills with your family of choice, not exclusively romantic or sexual partners
- doing work that makes relationships tricky to navigate sometimes and you're looking for a space where you won't be judged for doing sex work or being a performer
What they're saying:
I have found ways to cope and been encouraged to use them as and when I’m up for it, long term. I feel like I can work with my traits that I used to think of as negative/ want to avoid.
Jade
The skills classes gave me a lot of useable tools and skills with an emphasis on progressive learning and adapting things to different situations I was in to meet my needs.
Robin
WHAT'S INCLUDED IN THE COURSE?
One live monthly class
A 90 minute live class on the third Wednesday of the month.
Learning materials
Workbooks, videos, and podcasts to support your learning.
COMMUNITY
A group of other quirky queers and cultural renegades & their closest people to learn alongside you. Meeting monthly means we get to know each other better and better over time.
CHAT WITH THE COMMUNITY
A slack community where you can ask questions between sessions and share how things are working for you.
SKILLS
Skills that give you more choices and control in your life.
WHAT'S INCLUDED IN THE COURSE?
TWO LESSONS EACH MONTH
Live classes on the first and third Wednesday of the month.
Learning materials
Workbooks, videos, and podcasts to support your learning.
COMMUNITY
A group of other quirky queers and cultural renegades & their closest people to learn alongside you.
CHAT WITH THE COMMUNITY
A slack community where you can ask questions between sessions and share how things are working for you.
RELATIONSHIP TOOLS
Skills that give you more choices and control in your life.
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
READY TO SIGN UP FOR THE SUBSCRIPTION MEMBERSHIP?
This subscription membership is for you if:
- You want ongoing support and encouragement to learn skills that help you build the life YOU want.
- You want to befriend your emotions & understand what they are communicating.
- You want to learn to cope with intense emotional experiences without making things worse.
- You want to learn to accept uncomfortable emotional experiences and to change unwanted emotions.
- You want to learn how to communicate what you want more effectively.
- Want to learn with other quirky queers and cultural renegades and their closest people.
- You're motivated to learn new skills and put them into practice in your life.
- You feel able to put learning into practice without needing to have homework assignments checked.
- You're willing to try out new ideas!
This membership is NOT for you if:
- You're currently in crisis & need more intensive support.
- You want a more traditional DBT group with more formal homework checking & accountability.
- You want to suppress or ignore your emotions & think that is always the best way to deal with emotions.
- You aren't a quirky queer or cultural renegade, or doing the course with someone that fits that description.
- You don't want to put the work into learning and practicing new skills.
- 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.
LOOKING FOR OTHER COURSES?
FAQS
We mean this expansively and we will not be policing identities. Anyone that is LGBTQ, a sex worker/performer and/or consensually non-monogamous certainly fits within our community. Many of us are neurodivergent, and this often links to our experiences of queerness in other parts of our life. We particularly welcome and center neurodivergent folks. Oh yeah, we won’t be checking any of your diagnoses, if you think you’re neurodivergent then you probably are.
You can, but you will probably get more from the course if you come with someone else. You may find one of the DBT courses or the Self Consent course more helpful if you want to come to something alone.
YES! We are excited to have folks who prioritise their relationships with people they live with and friends. We think many of these skills are useful in housemate and friend relationships.
Yes. As long as your partner has an awareness that their orientation and gender are centred in most of society, and will not be in this group. This space isn’t designed to teach cisgender heterosexual people about gender or sexual identities, but rather to give space for LGBTQ+ and their partners to learn skills.
We make cancelling very easy – there is a page set up for it and you are welcome to do so at any time. You can find more information about billing and cancelation at on the course page.
We will do our best to make accommodations when we know what folks need. We are disabled folks ourselves and have experience of asking for accommodations to be made and we know that can be very difficult. We have worked to make the course as accessible as possible, and would love to know what you need to make it work for you.
No. This is a place for learning skills. We recognize how many of us live with trauma and aim to operate in a trauma informed way. We have some guidelines about topics we avoid during our time together to keep the focus on learning skills. We think it is essential to have chances to work with and process trauma, and believe that many of the skills we will learn together are helpful in stabilizing mental health, which may make working with trauma in other spaces more effective.
Because they work. We have learned these skills and found them incredibly useful in our own lives and seen how they have improved the lives of people we have taught them to. We also know the evidence stacks up across different cultures, racial groups, age ranges, sexualities and class backgrounds. We know that learning DBT skills reduces distress, increases enjoyment of life and relationship satisfaction. Because we believe these skills to be particularly powerful and liberatory when taught by peers outside of institutions.
We think that some of the skills offered by related approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Emotional efficacy Therapy are really useful too! (and they also have a good evidence base). We have integrated the skills we believe will most effectively help folks understand their emotions, cope with distress and build communicative, close and authentic relationships.
A way of centering a consensual relationship with yourself in your life. Recognising your desires, limits and boundaries and attending to them like they matter. Making choices based on what you value, want and need, rather than subjugating yourself and focusing primarily on the requests and demands placed upon you by others (or social/familial norms).