Online Emotional Support Group

This is a monthly group safe space that takes place on Saturday from 10am to 12 noon.

The cost is £45 for the 2-hour session .

The number of attendees at each session will be capped to allow time and space for meaningful and therapeutic engagement within the group.

The sessions will be held online via Zoom.

A move to the UK from Africa is often viewed very positively, as an opportunity of a lifetime, filled with hope and a promise of a ‘better life’!

Although there may be truth in this, it is often more complicated than that. It is often fraught with many difficulties, challenges and puzzling experiences not fully considered or appreciated at first. 

For many, this transition period can be very stressful, evoking overwhelming negative emotions. It can feel like there is no one to talk to, as people back home may not fully understand what you are going through. To them you’ve found your golden ticket, so how can you complain!?

Yet adjusting to the new environment, the weather, the culture, complex work relationships, whether with visa sponsorship or not, banter/humour that can be laced with undertones of racism, can leave one very confused, physically exhausted and emotionally drained. All this can be unsettling, slowly chip away at one’s confidence and leave one feeling less sure about fully occupying the promise of a ‘better life’.

Masithethe aims to provide attendees with a safe space and an opportunity to speak openly and honestly about the reality of this period of transition –  the move from home, family, the familiar, the support network and community with all its joys and challenges – to a strange land, an unfamiliar territory in their new host country with ­- yes, new opportunities – but also many challenges that can often leave one feeling drained, isolated and alone.

In my work as an Integrative Psychotherapist living and working across cultures, both in my own private practice and for NHS Talking Therapies, I spend hundreds of hours year after year, listening to and coming alongside my clients as they seek to make sense of their life experiences. In the last few years my paths, and that of my fellow Black South Africans and wider Black African diaspora, have increasingly been crossing. I have been supporting this client group, whether based here in the UK or in other parts of the world. As I journey with my clients, I’m increasingly hearing similar themes, speaking of unique and yet shared experience of transitioning from home to the new world and the many challenges it presents. 

It is when I reflected on the shared experience of this lonely and confusing transition that an idea of Masithethe was conceived within me. I was convinced that I needed to create a community, a safe space for my fellow Black African diaspora to gather, talk and support each other in this transition period to break the cycle of isolation and loneliness.