EMERGE Leeds: Complex Emotional Needs Service

Journey is a 12 week Occupational Therapy group for adults (aged 18 and over) who experience complex emotional needs.

We offer a supportive space to explore how you spend your time, understand your emotions, and reconnect with what matters to you. Together, we look at how past experiences, relationships, and everyday routines can shape how life feels now, and how small changes can make things feel more manageable and meaningful.

Journey includes group sessions and individual support, helping you explore activities that support your wellbeing and quality of life.

The group runs online and in person in Leeds city centre. You need to live in Leeds and be registered with a Leeds GP to take part.

If you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or wanting things to be different, Journey may be a place to start.

Learn more on the Journey Programme page.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) informed skills groups are designed to help people to learn skills to manage powerful and overwhelming emotions and distress effectively.

The programme offers two DBT based groups. Both groups cover mindfulness skills, interpersonal effectiveness skills, emotion regulation skills and distress tolerance skills:

• A shorter course DBT informed group called Skills for Life. This consists of 14 weekly sessions. The groups are facilitated in conjunction with colleagues from primary care services. Skills for Life focuses primarily on learning skills for dealing with emotions and coping in a crisis. Mindfulness skills are extremely important too, to help people to be more skillful in making sense of what they are thinking and feeling. Groups currently run online using video conferencing.
• A longer course DBT skills group. This is tailored to people whose experience of emotional distress has the most severe impact on their day to day lives, and who at times may turn to potentially life-threatening self-harm or suicidal behaviour in response to this. The group is clustered into 3 modules of 9 sessions. Treatment typically takes 7 months to complete. We have an online group using video conferencing and a group that meets in-person.

Each of the DBT based groups offers space for up to 12 group members and 2-3 members of staff.

Each session lasts for 2.5 hours, with a short comfort break in the middle.

We accept self-referrals or referrals made by health, social, housing or third sector professionals.

People can refer themselves to our Journey or DBT Skills groups, or referrals can come from a health, housing or third sector professional.

To make a referral, please complete our referral form EMERGE Leeds Groupwork referral form.