A Support Group for People Living with Chronic Pain/Illness
Mondays, 3:00-4:15pm PT | 8 weeks, beginning October 5 | Virtual
Living with chronic pain or illness can affect so much more than your physical health. It can be exhausting and isolating, and even when you’re surrounded by people who care about you, it can be hard to feel fully understood.
In this group, you will meet others who navigate not only the physical burden of living with chronic pain or illness, but its emotional impacts as well. It’s a space to share things you may not talk about with others in your life: how your pain or illness has affected your sense of self, your confidence, and your plans for the future, how it exhausts and preoccupies you, and how it leaves you constantly worried, anxious, angry, or depressed. It can feel isolating, even around your family, friends, and colleagues.
You’ll have the opportunity to connect with others who “get it” and gain strength, perspective, and hope from one another.
The goal of gathering this group together is not to fix you or find the magic bullet to cure your condition. You have likely already spent enough time seeking that. Instead, the goal is to help you find more peace, ease, and lightness in living with imperfect health.
This group is for anyone living with chronic pain or illness. It does not matter what your specific condition is. You may have a condition with a known diagnosis or one that does not fit neatly into a medical definition or explanation.
What matters is that living with chronic pain or illness has changed your life—and perhaps changed you—in ways that you would like to talk about.
This will be an open, discussion-based therapeutic support group, with some light educational content woven in. Each session will begin with a brief mindfulness exercise to help participants “arrive,” followed by check-ins and group discussion. Together, participants will help shape the themes explored from week to week, providing some structure while allowing the conversation to remain flexible.
Interested in joining the group? Fill out our brief interest form and we'll be in touch with next steps.
Tuesdays, 6:00-7:30pm PT | 8 weeks, beginning October 6 | In-person in San Francisco
Crafting process groups combine two things that support mental health on their own and work well together: an absorbing, repetitive handcraft, and a small group working toward something shared. Research on needlecraft and craft-based groups shows benefits such as reduced anxiety and stress, improved mood, a sense of accomplishment, and a stronger feeling of belonging within the group. Competence and belonging are both in short supply during adolescence, and a craft group supplies both at once.
This adolescent quilting process group runs for 8 weeks and combines themed check-ins with hands-on quilting. Alongside discussions about ordinary teen experiences like stress, school, and relationships, the group will work toward a shared goal: creating a quilt together. Each teen will design and sew their own panel, giving them an opportunity to express themselves while contributing to a project larger than any one piece.
This group is a good fit for teens ages 13–17 who are dealing with stress, anxiety, low mood, social difficulty, school pressure, or a sense of not fitting in. It is especially well suited to teens who find talk-only therapy difficult, who process through making things or through music, or who tend to say more when their hands are occupied.
Previous hand-sewing experience is preferred but not required. Everything is taught in the group, so motivation matters more than experience. Teens should be able to participate safely in a group setting. This group is not appropriate for teens in acute crisis or who need a higher level of care.
Each session will include a themed check-in and time to work on the group’s shared quilt. Choosing the colors, fabrics, and images for a panel gives teens a way to express themselves, and it produces a record of where they were over those eight weeks that they can look back on.
In the final weeks, the individual panels are joined into one finished piece, and at the final session, every teen takes home a quilted bookmark they made themselves using the same fabric from the quilt, along with a printed picture of the completed quilt.
All quilting materials will be provided. Because the group involves hand-sewing and the use of needles, a parent or legal guardian will need to complete a consent form before participation.
Interested in joining the group? Fill out our brief interest form and we'll be in touch with next steps.
Fridays, 6:00-7:30pm PT | 8 weeks, beginning October 9 | In-person in San Francisco
If you are reading this, you are likely someone who struggles to control their anger. In the past, you might have punched a hole in a wall, or slammed a door during a tense conversation, or said something unkind to someone you love. Regardless of the outcome, you’re finding that chronic anger is sabotaging your peace of mind, your relationships, and your life.
That’s where we come in. We’ll use a combination of research-backed therapies, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Control Mastery Theory (CMT), to help you tackle the problem of chronic anger. Frustration and rage can be very effective tools in combating injustice or maltreatment, but when misapplied they become corrosive. There is great potential in having an assertive or even confrontational personality, but the work lies in choosing how to respond to situations, rather than having your feelings make the choice for you — often to highly unpredictable results.
Over these 8 weeks, you will gain the tools to respond to injustice and protect yourself without losing control, express your feelings clearly and respectfully, build healthier, calmer relationships with friends and family, and ultimately feel more in control. We greatly enjoy working with this issue and helping people take mastery of themselves and their lives. We hope to see you soon.
This group is designed for adults (18+) who find that anger, frustration, or irritability is getting in the way of their relationships, work, or daily life. You might experience frequent outbursts, struggle to calm down once you’re activated, or find yourself saying or doing things you later regret.
This group is best suited for those who are personally motivated to work on this — whether that’s through self-referral or a referral from a doctor, therapist, or EAP. It’s not designed to meet requirements for court-mandated or legally-referred anger management.
Each 90-minute session combines practical education about anger, ACT-based exercises and skills practice, and facilitated group discussion. This is an active, supportive group where you’ll have opportunities to learn, practice new approaches, and reflect on your own experiences.
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