Around an experience
- Anxiety
- Low mood and depression
- OCD
- Panic
- Grief and loss
- Burnout
- Living with a diagnosis
Social Circles
Some things are easier to say to people who already understand.
A mental health condition is an odd kind of difficulty: everyone around you can tell something is wrong, and nobody can see what it is. Explaining it is tiring. Being misunderstood after explaining it is worse.
Social Circles are small, private gatherings of people who do not need it explained. Somebody says the thing they have been carefully not saying, and three people in the room nod — because they have been carrying the same thing.
That is the whole idea. Not advice, not a programme, not a cure. A room where the hardest part of the week can be said plainly and land somewhere.
What is said in a circle stays in the circle. We do not share who attends, or anything they said, with anyone outside it — and everyone agrees to the same before a circle begins.
What they are about
Every circle is built around one thing.
Some around an experience, some around a situation. If the one you need is not here, it is worth asking — circles usually start because somebody asked.
Around a situation
- Caring for a parent
- Parenting a struggling teenager
- A relationship under strain
- Studying away from home
- Work that has stopped being survivable
- A family that does not discuss this
How a circle works
Three things are true of every one.
Beyond that they differ — who is in the room, what it is about, whether it meets in Gurugram or online.
Fifteen people, at most
Small enough that everyone who wants to speak gets to, and small enough that nobody has to. Circles run in person in Gurugram, or online where getting to a room is the obstacle.
Each one has a subject
Some are built around an experience — anxiety, low mood, OCD. Others around a situation: caring for a parent, a marriage under strain, a family that does not discuss this sort of thing.
Someone is holding it
Every circle is facilitated. The facilitator keeps it safe and keeps it fair, and makes sure the quietest person in the room is not the one who leaves unheard.
Upcoming
Circles running near you.
Dates, subjects and how to register. Places are limited by design — fifteen is the ceiling, not the target.
The next dates are being set
Circles are scheduled a few weeks out, once we know which subjects people are waiting on. Put your name down and you will hear before they are announced anywhere else.
Why sit in one
What people actually take from it.
To be believed
Saying something out loud to people who recognise it does something reassurance from outside cannot. It settles the question of whether you are making too much of this.
To be useful
The sentence you are most reluctant to say is often the one somebody else in the room needed to hear. People leave circles having helped without setting out to.
To learn what actually helps
What worked, what did not, what the first appointment was like, which questions are worth asking. Knowledge that lives with people who have been through it rather than in a leaflet.
Get involved
Circles only exist because people make room for them.
Four ways to help, none of which require you to be a clinician.
Spread the word
Lend us your time or your platform. Most people find a circle because somebody told them it existed.
Host a circle
Register your interest and we will talk it through — what hosting asks of you, and whether it is the right fit.
Offer a space
A studio, a café after hours, a quiet room. If you have somewhere private that could hold fifteen people, we would like to hear about it.
Bring circles to work
For organisations that would rather do something real about wellbeing than circulate another number nobody rings.
Tell us where you are
One form, whichever of those you are here for.
Whether you want a seat in a circle, want to host one, have a space to offer, or want to bring circles to your workplace — say which in the message and we will take it from there.
- No obligation. Joining the guest list is not registering for anything.
- A short conversation first. For a seat in a circle, we talk before you sit in one — so you land somewhere that fits.
- Nothing shared onward. What you write here stays inside the practice.
A circle is not treatment. Nothing said in one is medical advice or a diagnosis, and none of it replaces seeing a clinician. If you are in crisis, the helplines can respond in a way a circle cannot. See the helplines.