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This is Week 10 of our 12-week Workbook Wednesday series. Whether this is your first post or your tenth, you're right on time.
We are not meant to heal alone.
That might seem obvious, and yet many of us have internalized the message — sometimes very deeply — that needing people is a weakness. That asking for help is a burden. That healing is a private project we're supposed to figure out on our own.
Those messages often come from somewhere. From cultures that prize individualism over community. From families where vulnerability wasn't safe. From experiences of reaching out and not being met. And for those of us whose ancestors survived conditions where community was simultaneously essential and fragile — the complexity of trust runs even deeper.
This week, the Keys to Felicity workbook offers a gentle, structural tool for thinking about the relationships that support your healing: the Circle of Trust.
What Is the Circle of Trust?
The Circle of Trust is a mapping framework that helps you visualize the different layers of support in your life. Imagine three concentric circles:
The innermost circle holds the people you trust most deeply — those you can call in the middle of the night, those who know your history, those with whom you can be most fully yourself.
The middle circle holds people who are genuinely supportive but with whom you share a more boundaried kind of openness — good friends, mentors, selected family members, perhaps your therapist.
The outer circle holds acquaintances, colleagues, community members, and online connections who contribute to your sense of belonging and support even if the relationship stays at a surface level.
None of these circles are ranked by importance. Each layer provides something different. And healthy support systems usually include all three.
A Practice to Try This Week
Draw or imagine your three circles. Then begin to place people in them — not who you think should be there, but who actually is.
Notice:
Is your inner circle as full as you'd like it to be?
Are there relationships in your outer circle that might have room to grow closer?
Are there people you've placed in inner circles who perhaps belong further out — for now?
This mapping exercise isn't about judging your relationships. It's about seeing them more clearly, so you can tend to them more intentionally.
Healing in Community
There is a reason that so many healing traditions — including many within Black and African diasporic cultures — center community as the primary context for healing. The Ubuntu philosophy, "I am because we are," reflects a truth that Western individualism often forgets: we come into being through relationship. We heal through relationship too.
If your Circle of Trust feels sparse right now, that is information, not failure. Building trust takes time, especially when trust has been broken. The workbook creates space to reflect on what you need in your relationships and how to begin asking for it.
The Keys to Felicity workbook is available on Amazon for those who want to do this mapping exercise — and the eleven other weeks of guided self-discovery — in a structured, beautiful format. It makes a meaningful gift too, for anyone in your life who is on their own healing journey.
📚 Resources That Complement This Week's Work
This week's relational work is some of the most meaningful in the whole series — these books can deepen your understanding of how we heal through connection:
My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem — A powerful, body-centered exploration of racialized trauma and how healing it requires us to engage our communities and relationships, not just our individual inner worlds; it speaks directly to the kind of collective healing this week explores.
The Art of Connection by Michael Gelb — A warm, practical guide to the principles of genuine human connection — offering tools for building the kind of relationships that belong in your inner circle.
We'll see you next Wednesday for Week 11, where we turn to one of the most nuanced skills in healing: communication — with others, and with yourself.
This is the foundation of what we will be building together in the Keys to Felicity Founding Cohort—a 12-week therapist-led community experience centered on emotional understanding, reflection, and connection.
If you’d like to be the first to receive registration details when enrollment opens, you can join the interest list here:
👉 https://forms.gle/12AZZRdMpqPD5uzR9
Felicity Counseling is a trauma-informed, LGBTQIA+-affirming counseling practice in Saint Louis, Missouri. We believe healing happens in community, and we'd be honored to be part of yours. Visit felicitycounseling.com.
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