Calm the chaos to create better relationships with your emotions & the people in your life.

This subscription is for you if:



  • 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 getting jerked around by emotional urges or thoughts and want to have more choice about how you behave.


If you're a quirky queer or cultural renegade the chances are you've had a hard time finding support to create the relationships you want


It can be really hard to know whether a particular therapist or skills group will be appropriate for us, especially when we live queer lives. These skills help everyone to regulate their emotions and relationships more effectively, but this subscription will center quirky queers and cultural renegades and their closest people. This means it is 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

This subscription is all about learning skills to help you build your relationships with your emotions and the people in your life. We will teach skills primarily from Dialectal Behavior Therapy, but also Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Emotional Efficacy Therapy, to help you create more ways to thrive. We understand that out of control emotions and conflict filled relationships are often the result of a mix of biological, psychological and social factors (find out more here). We teach skills that can, with practice, change your brain, your relationship to your emotions and increase the choices you have available. You'll get insight into patterns that create conflict in your relationships and communication tools to help you get what you want more often & build your relationship. Many people experience these skills as increasing their freedom, self trust and connection to their closest people.



Twice a month you will get access to a new lesson which will include a workbook to take you through the skill as well as videos, MP3s or other resources to help you learn. You'll be invited to join the live class too! You will be welcomed into our Slack community & invited to ask questions & support others working on the same things that you are. 

“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

This subscription 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 subscription 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.
"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 Dr Sophia Graham who is a sex and relationship geek trained in counselling, DBT & teaching. Sophia works with other peer educators, coaches and therapists to provide courses on emotion regulation, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness and self consent.


Most of Love Uncommon's courses are intensive 2-hour a week commitments for 7-10 weeks. These include lots of time for assigning practice exercises and reviewing them. The subscription service is for folks wanting a longer term commitment to help keep up practice without weekly follow up for the homework. 


At Love Uncommon our courses center quirky queers and cultural renegades. This means we often work with folks outside of the sexuality, gender and relationship mainstream. We take a rights not rescue approach to sex work; believe trans women are women, trans men are men and that non binary people aren't (men or women that is). We think platonic, romantic and sexual relationships all matter & that folks can have healthy relationships with or without them being monogamous (or vanilla for that matter). 

This is what we will be covering!



October - Wise mind and conflict

This month we are going to talk about how easy it is to get stuck in feeling intense emotions when we are having conflict, and what we can do to bring ourselves back to wise mind. We will think about how we want to behave in conflict and what beliefs we hold most of the time that we let go of in moments of emotional intensity. 


November - Effective check in's

This month we will talk about what makes a good check in and how to make them work more effectively in your relationship. We will touch on the difference between your typical check in and the 'state of the union' which happens once or twice a year. 

December – Surviving the festive season

We are going to brush up on our crisis survival and grounding skills so we can survive the trials and tribulations of family time (or lack of family time) over the festive season. Whether or not this is a difficult time of year for you, these skills can help you to get through emotionally difficult moments without making anything worse. 

January – Planning for pleasure and connection

This month is all about creating time for learning and pleasure in your relationships. We will dive into why it matters and what you can do to bring more pleasure and connection into your important relationships. 

February – Understanding our moment of choice

The moment of choice is a critical concept when we want to make changes in our lives. We will learn all about the moment of choice & how to have more of them! We will develop skills to notice and cope with intrusive thoughts and ineffective urges. We will work on expanding the space for growth between stimulus and response to give us more flexibility & choice.
March – Alternatives to rumination

Rumination is very correlated with poor mental health outcomes, so this month we are working on alternatives to ruminating. We will spend a lot of time on the cope ahead skill, and also talk again about some of the crisis survival skills we talked about in January.


April – Making space for each other

One of the things that can be a challenge in relationships is making time and space for our partners. This session will talk about how to notice the emotional balance in your relationship and working out how to shift that if you'd like to. You may notice that one of you rarely asks for help or speaks about their day. You may notice that one of you is usually the person that initiates conversation or does emotional planning. That might work just fine between you, but it might not. This month is about noticing what the balance is in the relationship and offering some skills to shift things if thats what you want to do.  


May – Mindful moments

No one wants a mindless relationship, so this month we are talking about how to intentionally create mindful moments with your partner. Perhaps you will decide an evening ritual is what you want, or a moment that happens at the end of each date night. Maybe it is something to add to your check in, or to your daily texting. Whatever it is, we will talk about the myriad ways to bring mindfulness into interpersonal connections. 

June – Sexual permission slips

This month we will talk about sex, and what we do and don't give ourselves permission for when it comes to sexuality. As someone raised within a sex negative religion its hard not to notice the many ways in which my sexuality was shaped by my upbringing and the ideas about sex that were surrounding me. We will talk about the ways in which our individual relationship to our sexuality is usually complicated long before we involve our partner/s. We will talk about what kinds of things we might want to give ourselves permission for, and what gets in the way. 
This is for US based folks - but you can head over to here for the UK and here if you're in the Eurozone. 

Join us!

€60 a month

  • Live classes on the first and third Wednesday of the month at 7.30pm UK/EIRE time; 8.30pm CET.
  • Workbooks, videos, and podcasts to support your learning.
  • A group of other quirky queers and cultural renegades & their closest people to learn alongside you.
  • A slack community where you can ask questions between sessions.
  • Skills that give you more choices and control in your life

Sign up now!