The Book of You (2024): a social-emotional workbook for adults

SEL workbook- 19 exercises designed to take you from "what's a feeling?" to "I may not like this feeling, but I know what to do!" When it is over, it is not just a workbook, it's The Book of You!Seven years ago, at the age of 31, I accomplished the “big dream” of my life by getting a Ph.D. I thought, finally, “I should be happy”, and I was- at work. At work, I was a walking success, but when I went home to my apartment I didn’t feel so good. I had to move to a new town for work. I knew nobody. I finally had money for a nice TV and wine, and also I had to admit I just felt empty.That was the beginning of my healing journey, or what is called reparenting: the difficult process of teaching yourself how to feel your emotions and reflect on your childhood. I, like so many other people, can say I had an “ok childhood”. But somehow, despite years of education, I can’t recall one lesson ever where I was taught how to process a feeling, what is the connection between my thoughts and my feelings, or what is love/self-love- things we today call Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). We acknowledge that feelings are central to having a happy life yet only recently has SEL come into focus, meaning that many adults today continue to struggle with all sorts of unhealthy childhood coping mechanisms.My reparenting journey was/is indeed a journey. I have been through a lot of life experiences and done a lot of crying and questioning what I was thinking. However, this process took 7 years, largely due to being unable to afford a therapist (and unwilling to seek help). There are so many stories of abuse survivors taking decades to heal, if ever. I had to dig for resources here and there as I went along. I am blessed to be both an academic and to live in a world of YouTube, but for most humans all that work is just not practical. There is no resource that puts all of the material one needs to address one’s inner life in one place.So I decided to put those resources together. Using my education in childhood sociology (PhD, MA) and psychology (MA), as well as my lifelong practice of Buddhism and mindfulness meditation techniques (zen, mahayana, vipassana), I began compiling these resources together into worksheets in order to facilitate SEL for both myself and my students. This is now known as my Social/Emotional Workbook. It is a collection of self-help material that synthesizes Buddhist thought and developmental psychology from a trauma-informed perspective- one that acknowledges the complex after effects of childhood abuse, Complex-PTSD, and unhealthy boundaries. Each worksheet contains basic, easy to understand explanations of SEL material, and then offers a guided meditation, visualization, or inquiry-based reflective writing exercise. I wanted this project to be a workbook precisely because feelings need to be experienced in order to learn from them. This guide gives a very simple way for adults to learn about themselves and then offer help to others.The workbook is organized into two sections: Part 1: Discovering Emotions, Questioning Thoughts, and Part 2: Inner Child Work, Relationship Work (See Table of Contents). Part 1 takes the reader from the basics of “what is meditation” and “what is a feeling” and builds an inner vocabulary of experiences in a step wise or “baby steps” fashion through exercises that start simple (an emotions list, self-love validations) then lead to more advanced/complex forms (emotional vipassana, body scan meditation). Part 2 extends this emotional depth by connecting it to our relationships with our childhood self and with others. It begins with my original concept of “Inner Baby Work” or self-soothing exercises, as well as Inner Child Work and Childhood Abuse. Following this is are worksheets on grieving, examining our deeply held beliefs, and questioning the stories we tell ourselves. Finally I end the series with a large inventory about our past relationships. Read more