Healing In Community: Why Queer Therapy Circles Are Growing As A Wellness Practice

Therapy isn’t always as simple or easily accessible as it is portrayed. For alot of people, specially Queer folks, it feels threatening, scary, or inaccessible. That can be for various reasons, including fear of getting outed, not being understood, or the therapist being cis-heteronormative. 

To solve those problems (or atleast attempt to) we are seeing a rise in Queer therapy circles. A place where you come together with people of similar backgrounds, interests, and/or fears. These are small, affirming, peer/professionally-led spaces where people gather to unpack trauma, share lived experiences, and heal together.

Why Group Healing Works? 

If there’s anything I’ve learnt from ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’, it’s that everyone needs a safe space. We function better when we have a place to truly and freely be ourselves. Queer therapy circles are just that. They provide everyone with a place where they can be truly themselves and talk about their issues in a way that others can relate to or sympathise with. 

When you're in a therapy circle and you hear other people going through the things you went through, it gives you more power to deal with those things. You feel mirrored by people who share your trauma, may it be family rejection, gender-based violence, internalised shame, or religious trauma. You feel seen. You feel heard. Shared vulnerability helps people unlearn internalised shame.  

In a circle, something powerful happens: you’re witnessed. You say the thing you’ve never said aloud—“I hate my body,” “I miss my old name,” “I’m scared of being loved”—and someone nods. Someone understands. Shame starts to dissolve.

Community Is the Opposite of Shame

The Queer community often grows up next to shame. Many Queer people carry invisible wounds from growing up unseen or unaccepted. Shame teaches us to stay small, stay silent, stay hidden. Queer therapy circles do the opposite. They make space for the messy, raw, joyful parts of us to be spoken, screamed, or laughed out. There's space for every version of you. They remind us that we are not broken—we are just unheard.

These circles are not a replacement for therapy. But they’re a missing emotional safety net, especially for those without access to formal care.

Healing with Joy, Not Just Trauma

Being a part of a Queer therapy circle, one also gets to share their happiness and joy. Someday, someone will discuss how their long-distance girlfriend came to give them a surprise, someone will celebrate wearing a binder for the first time. For another to share how they changed their name on their ID. For a couple to say “we moved in together,” and be met with applause instead of judgment.

And you'll feel the joy in your heart, too. 

Healing Together Is How We Win

I spoke to Nishtha Berry, a Queer creator who had organised an online Queer therapy group. When asked about the outcome of the group, Berry replied, “It was really amazing! It was a safe space for everyone who had joined. People came out for the first time, and they felt so good (someone even cried) because they were finally able to say it out loud. People discussed so many things like mental health, Queer culture, the dating scene, safe spaces etcetera. People found some genuine online friends, and that ultimately was the purpose of the group: to help people meet like-minded people.” 

These circles remind us that softness is strength, that holding someone else’s truth is a gift, and that there’s no such thing as too much feeling.

Sometimes healing looks like a breakthrough. Sometimes it looks like sitting in a room where no one flinches when you say, “I miss the version of me I haven’t become yet.”

In that room, in that circle, you are finally seen. And that, in itself, is therapy.