Change can be tiring and lonely
Workplaces, faith communities, non-profits, community groups - well, let’s be honest, humans in general - are all experiencing constant change, often quickly, often often.
Some of the changes are planned. Some come out of nowhere. Some are welcome. Some are disorienting.
When there are too many changes—especially without enough time or space to process the losses and our emotions and then adjust—we can start to experience something called change fatigue.
What is Change Fatigue?
Change fatigue isn’t just about feeling “tired.” It’s a layered kind of exhaustion—mental, emotional, and physical—that builds up over time. I think of it as a flavor of burnout that we experience specifically related to change. It can show up as:
Apathy or emotional numbness
Trouble concentrating or staying motivated
Resentment, irritability, or dread
Feeling stuck or disengaged
A sense that nothing is going to get better
This can happen in lots of different places: work, faith communities, nonprofits, caregiving communities—anywhere people are trying to do good work while adapting to difficult shifts. You can learn more about change fatigue in general here.
Why Peer Support Can Be Helpful
Therapy is an excellent strategy to help process and figure out if you’d like to adapt to change. And, it can also be helpful to be with other people who struggle with the specific changes or pace of change that you have—people who’ve been through similar transitions, disruptions, or disappointments.
Peer support groups are a way to receive this kind of help. When facilitated well, they offer space to share honestly, feel seen, and stay connected through change, and can help in these specific ways:
1. Reducing stress and isolation
When change is constant, it’s easy to feel like you’re the only one struggling. Peer groups can remind you that you’re not alone or uniquely bad in how you’re coping.
They can offer a judgment-free space to name what you’re carrying—without needing to justify or sugarcoat it. They can provide a space for emotional honesty that can sometimes ease anxiety and help us think with a little more kindness towards ourselves.
2. Building (or rebuilding) trust
When there’s been so much change, it’s often easier for our brains to just stop trusting or certainly to trust less people less often. Meeting consistently with a group of people who are going through something similar can help to build or rebuild our willingness to trust other people.
3. Help with problem-solving and venting
Peer groups are about sharing feelings, frustrations, disappointments or criticisms of the changes people are going through, and they are also about sharing strategies for processing, coping, or adjusting to changes. It can be so helpful to hear how others are navigating changes, what’s helped them, and what they might do differently.
This can be especially valuable in spaces where communication is unclear or where decisions are being made without your input. Meeting with others in a peer support group can help people get their thinking brains online to start to regain a sense of agency and empowerment as they hear from others and share their own wisdom.
4. Support resilience and long-term adaptability
When we’re alone, navigating a lot of change, and feeling change fatigue, it’s hard to stay resilient and hopeful. Again, groups can be really helpful in rebuilding our sense of resilience through changes. Hearing “me too” from someone is sometimes just what is needed to shift out of frustration and despair and into being more present and curious. Other times, hearing from other people about how they are finding and practicing resilience can give us hope.
When facilitated well, peer groups can help people reconnect with their values, reflect on what matters, and build small routines that make change more manageable over time.
5. Strengthen community and culture
Whether in a workplace or a volunteer setting, morale can drop really quickly when change is handled poorly or a lot of it is occurring. Meeting with other people and receiving peer support can sometimes help rebuild the emotional infrastructure of a community. It can make space for people to process emotions while also enacting the reality that: “We’re still in this together.” It’s a kind of mutual presence and helpfulness that feels good and can help people show up more fully, more kindly, and more sustainably.
What is a support group like?
Support groups are structured places for people with shared experiences to talk honestly, reflect, and support each other. Each group has a facilitator (it could be me!) who helps set the structure and tone, guide the conversation, and making sure everyone has the space to share (or not to share) at their own pace. When they are facilitated well, they have a set of “agreements” that everyone is committed to following to ensure the group is a helpful space.
And, if those agreements are forgotten in the group, the facilitator steps in to redirect and remind with clarity and kindness.
Groups can often begin with the same “ritual” of opening and closing the time together, whether it’s taking a deep breath together, sharing a helpful quote, or a round of all participants sharing their highs and lows. And, they can have structured sharing “we each get 10 minutes” or it can be more of a popcorn-style sharing where people offer their thoughts spontaneously.
The goal of support groups aren’t for people to reduce their symptoms (that would be group therapy) but for people to speak, be heard, receive feedback if they’d like, and reflect together on the wisdom of the group that day. Even though it would be great to “fix” what is hard, support groups aren’t really about that either - they’re more about being witnessed, feeling less alone, and realizing that you might not have to carry it all by yourself.
Hosting a Peer Support Group in Your Organization or Community
Support groups don’t need to be complicated to be powerful. And they can benefit from good structure and skilled facilitation—especially when people are going through something tender, overwhelming, hard to name, or constant.
I can help with that!
I offer customized support groups for communities, congregations, workplaces, and volunteer-led organizations who want to care for their people in a thoughtful and sustainable way.
Each group is built around your community’s needs and grounded in emotional effectiveness, trauma-informed practices, and kindness. I try to facilitate in a way that creates space for people to feel validated in their experience, start to gain insight into how they might feel more empowered, and sometimes even feel like they can either make realistic movement forward or live with where they’re at.
If your group, team, or organization could benefit from some extra support through change, I’d love to talk.
You can learn more here or get in touch at rootwisementalwellness.com
