A safe place for trans individuals to talk to each other about anything.
Support group leadership advice?
My wife and I went to our local support group on Saturday and were stunned to see that other than the therapist who's in charge, we were the only ones to show. We already knew one person dropped out; he was a co-leader and told us he was stepping away from the group for awhile, but didn't elaborate on why.
The session ended up being the three of us discussing what's been happening. There was some Facebook drama that stemmed from an earlier incident during the very first sessions of the group (I wasn't there for this, and the group has only been active since October). The clinic that hosts the group threw this Transition Day thing deal whatever, where several speakers talked about local advocacy groups, legal needs, and a number of other topics. This was kind of a mixed bag of stuff, but had the potential to put some members off. The owner of the clinic (it's a general therapy center that is trying to get trans services into out community), is a scincere ally, but sadly has his foot in his mouth and is over-excited about getting things rolling. The fact that the group - including the therapist who runs it and works for the owner - were never really consulted about what we would like for that event speaks to that. It's great that he's wanting to help, but it hurts when we weren't even considered in the decision to do it in the first place.
So, the discussion ended with me taking a leadership role and trying to figure out what people need to come back and running the Facebook page for the group.
Does anyone have any advice? The FB stuff is old hat; being a mod on Reddit helps (for once). But for the other part, getting people to open up about why they're not coming back and definitely how to get new people to come is where I need some advice.
Thanks!




I'm looking at setting up a sub group of a larger trans group for younger people, so any advice could be useful for me as well.
I think providing people with a private, maybe even anonymous way of talking about things could be useful. Lets people bring up issues from the past in a way that they feel won't put them at risk of backlash.
Ask people what sort of stuff they'd like to happen in the group. What sort of stuff they can benefit from.
Good luck.
Thanks! The anon part might be tricky, but I think it's worth investigating.