The Big Feelings Survival Guide: An Art Therapy Workbook

Find peace and stability with this friendly, full-color, illustrated workbook guide filled with practical and creative exercises designed to improve your mental health and encourage healthy coping mechanisms.

Dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT, is a revolutionary treatment that helps people identify, cope with, and move through emotions. Art therapy uses creativity and techniques like drawing to help a person further explore their feelings and express them. What happens when you link them together? You get The Big Feelings Survival Guide, a unique and powerful workbook designed to yield insight and understanding.

Covering the three classic ＂parent emotions＂--Anger, Fear, Sadness--the exercises are deceptively simple yet richly thought out, and each has a clinical underpinning. Draw a safe space for yourself. Scribble out angry impulses. Explore the mind-body connection by matching emotions with somatic sensations. Embrace confusion by working through a maze with different paths. Act out rebellious urges by painting a messy rainbow. Plus tips, games, and other practical help.

There is no wrong way to use this book. No art skills required. Just work through it with honesty and discover practical skills to help you engage in self-care, cope with life, and take care of your mental health.

Alyse Ruriani (she/they) is a queer femme art therapist, licensed professional counselor, illustrator, and person with lived experience. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design and a Masters in Art Therapy and Counseling. Alyse’s work aims to communicate information, provide tangible tools, and validate the human experience through engaging illustrations and designs. They live in a colorful apartment in Chicago with their black cat/co-therapist Boo. When Alyse is not working, you can likely find her swimming in some body of water, making art with friends, or hyper fixating on some new ideas.