EMERGE Leeds: Complex Emotional Needs Service

Who are we

Journey is an 11-week psychologically informed occupational therapy group. We work with people over 18 with complex emotional needs and understand that how we spend our time and experience ourselves and others directly impacts our health and well-being.

Journey aims to support you in engaging in an activity that can increase your ability to manage complex thoughts and feelings and help improve your quality of life.

What do we offer

The group is split into two phases. In the first phase, we meet as a group and explore the following themes:

• how you spend your time
• how you regulate and manage your emotions
• how past experiences impact the present
• your values
• your environments

In the second phase, we will work with you 1:1 to devise a plan to engage in an activity based on what we found out together in phase one. We will then have two sessions to test the plan and do the activity together. The program will end with a final group session.

We use a relational, strengths-based approach to make our group a safe space for everyone to engage authentically.

We run the group both online and in person in Leeds city centre.

To access Journey, you need to reside in Leeds and have a Leeds GP whilst accessing Journey.

Journey may be a good fit for you if:

You struggle with the following

• Difficult and overwhelming emotions such as abandonment, rejection, guilt, or shame
• Difficulty trusting others and maintaining relationships
• Overthinking and misinterpreting social interactions so much that you stop doing things that you enjoy.
• Uncertainty about personal identity, ‘I don’t really know who I am, and I often feel no one understands me’

You may notice everyday challenges that can look like:

• Fixation on activities to quiet the mind or distract from distress
• Imbalance between work, personal life, and self-care
• Difficulty identifying personal wants versus obligations
• Engagement in activities that feel like they are focused on ‘survival’ or just ‘getting through the day

You want to

• See things in a different way, and explore what doing something different might feel like
• To understand your experiences
• Explore what you want to do and what you enjoy doing
• Try something new or different, although this feels scary, you know you want things to be different / you want to react to things differently.
• Take part in a group, including listening to others, joining in respectfully, and working together.

Journey may not be the best fit right now if you:

• Are in crisis or at very high risk of suicide or self-harm – immediate crisis support would be more helpful.
• Are experiencing active psychosis or mania, which would make group participation difficult.
• Are using substances in a way that makes safe and regular group attendance and the ability to engage in group activities difficult.
• Have severe cognitive or developmental difficulties that mean the group would not be accessible without major adaptations.
• Your current difficulties are focused on managing an eating disorder
• Want a space to talk through personal history or trauma in depth – this group is about exploring what you do and how this links to how you think and feel about yourself.
• Are unable to commit to attending regularly.
• If you have a history of violent behaviour, or convictions for violence or sexual offences.

What will happen after referral?

A Journey Team member will call you, explain what the group is, discuss your goals for engaging in group work, and answer any concerns or questions you have. We will also let you know the predicted waiting times and when we can expect to offer you an assessment.

People can refer themselves to the Journey Programme, or referrals can come from a health, housing or third sector professional.

To make a referral, please download and complete our Journey Programme referral form and send to emergereferrals.lypft@nhs.net

 

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 program offers two different DBT based groups:

• A shorter course DBT informed group called Skills for Life. This consists of 12 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 resort to patterns of potentially life threatening deliberate self-harm or suicidal behaviour in response to this. The group is clustered into 3 modules of 9 sessions, the modules are repeated to help embed the skills. The groups cover mindfulness skills, interpersonal effectiveness skills, emotion regulation skills and distress tolerance skills. Treatment can take up to 14 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.

Referral is made via the DBT referral form which is available here. Once completed it need to be emailed to Emerge Referrals.

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

 

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

To make a referral, please download and complete our DBT Skills groups referral form and send to emergereferrals.lypft@nhs.net