All Feelings Are Lava: Emotional Regulation Skills Group EOI

A 10-week DBT skills group offering practical tools to understand, ride, and respond to intense emotions in a supportive, affirming space.

Do your emotions feel like they go from zero to eruption with very little warning?Do you feel things deeply, intensely, all at once - and then get told you’re “too much”?

All Feelings Are Lava is a 10-week Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) skills group focused on emotional regulation, designed for people who want practical tools to better understand, ride, and respond to their emotions without trying to suppress, pathologise, or “fix” themselves. This group is run in a neurodivergent-affirming, queer-affirming space, where your feelings make sense and your nervous system is welcome exactly as it is.

You don’t need a diagnosis. You don’t need to be “good at groups.” You don’t need to calm down before you come. Just bring yourself (lava and all).

🌈 This group is for all genders aged 16+ who:

• Experiences intense emotions
• Feels overwhelmed, reactive, shut down, or emotionally exhausted
• Wants concrete skills (not just “take a deep breath”)
• Are neurodivergent, questioning, queer, allied, or just tired of masking
• Wants a respectful, non-judgemental space to learn and practise emotional regulation.

This is a skills-based group, not a processing or crisis group. Sharing is always optional.🧠

What we’ll cover (Week by Week)

Week 1 – Orientation, Vibes & Guidelines + Wise Mind
Getting grounded, setting group agreements, and learning how emotion mind and reason mind interact (and how to access wise mind).

Week 2 – Mindfulness: What & How Skills
Learning how to notice what’s happening without judging yourself for it (yes, even when it’s messy).

Week 3 – Understanding Emotions
Why emotions exist, what they do, and why your nervous system reacts the way it does.

Week 4 – Labelling Emotions
Expanding emotional language so feelings become clearer, less overwhelming, and more workable.

Week 5 – Checking the Facts
Learning how to pause, reality-check, and reduce emotional intensity when feelings don’t match the situation.

Week 6 – Opposite Action
What to do when emotions are running the show and how to gently shift patterns without invalidating yourself.

Week 7 – Problem Solving
Practical, step-by-step tools for situations that actually need changing.

Week 8 – Reducing Vulnerability to Emotion Mind
Sleep, nourishment, routines, pleasure, rest, and why “self-care” is not a moral failing or aesthetic.

Week 9 – Values & Priorities
Clarifying what matters to you and how values can guide choices when emotions are loud.

Week 10 – Cope Ahead & Taking Care of Your Mind
Preparing for future challenges and building a personalised emotional regulation plan.

✨ What this group is (and isn’t)

✔ Skills-based
✔ Structured and predictable
✔ Neurodivergent-affirming
✔ Queer-affirming
✔ Gentle, practical, and realistic

🚫 Not about “controlling” or suppressing emotions
🚫 Not about toxic positivity
🚫 Not about being calm all the time

Accessibility & safety

• Breaks included
• Participation is always a choice
• Masking not required
• Breaks included
• Participation is always a choice
• Respectful, consent-based group culture
• If emotions feel like lava right now, you’re not broken - you’re human.

This group is about learning how to work with your emotions, not against them.

🔥All feelings are allowed. Not all behaviours have to be. 🔥

Details:

Dates: 10 week commitment, (participants are expected to attend all sessions)
every Wednesday from 04/02/2026

Time: 10:00am - 12:30pm

Cost: Sliding scale fees and payment options available, must be paid in full 1 week prior to the program start date.

Location: New Leaf Social Work, Suite 2B, Level 1/158 Margaret St, Toowoomba

To join the program, please complete the Expression of Interest form.

Sliding Scale Fee Structure:

This group exists on a sliding scale fee structure to increase accessibility. If you are paying on behalf of a young person under 18 and have shared parental responsibility, please use the average of both parents wages when calculating your income.

Under $35k p.a - $50 per week × 10 weeks = $500 total

$35k–$54k p.a - $62.50 per week × 10 weeks = $625 total

$55k–$74k p.a - $75 per week × 10 weeks = $750 total

$75k–$94k p.a - $87.50 per week × 10 weeks = $875 total

$95k–$120k p.a - $100 per week × 10 weeks = $1,000 total

Third-party insurers, organisations, and income over $120k p.a (e..g. NDIS, WorkCover, organisational brokerage) - $112.50 per week × 10 weeks = $1,125 total

Emotional Containment & Group Safety

This group is focused on learning emotional regulation skills, not on sharing detailed personal histories or processing trauma narratives.

While there may be space to briefly name how emotions show up or how they impact your life, the group is not the right place to go into detailed or graphic personal experiences. This helps keep the space emotionally safe, accessible, and supportive for everyone.

We know that some people feel hesitant about joining groups because they worry they’ll be expected to “tell their whole story,” relive painful experiences, or become overwhelmed - either by their own emotions or by hearing others’ experiences. This group is intentionally designed to reduce that pressure.

All Feelings Are Lava is a structured, skills-based group. The focus is on:

• understanding emotions,

• learning practical DBT tools,

• and building capacity to respond to emotions more effectively in daily life.

You are never required to disclose personal details. Sharing is always optional, and participation can look like listening, reflecting, or practising skills in ways that feel manageable for you.

The facilitators support emotional containment by guiding each session, keeping to the agenda, and maintaining clear group boundaries. We also ask participants to practise containing themselves where possible, and to allow facilitators to step in if emotions become overwhelming, so that safety and regulation can be supported in the moment.

The aim of this group is to help people feel supported, grounded, and resourced while learning how to work with emotions - not to re-live or process past experiences in detail.