The Road to Calm Workbook

Emotional flooding—being overwhelmed by feelings—happens in response to stress, anxiety and life’s challenges. In this client-orientated accompaniment Affect Regulation Toolbox, Carolyn Daitch and Lissah Lorberbaum present skills and tools on how to dial down reactivity, practise mindfulness and focus positively on the future. Written to conquer a broad range of emotional challenges in easily accessibly language, this book is intended to help clients improve the quality of their everyday lives.

The workbook is split into two parts. Part I helps the reader understand when and why emotional flooding occurs. Using vivid stories and examples of others’ triggering situations helps the reader better understand their own triggers and how to cope with them. Part II provides instructions for “daily stress inoculations”, a daily practice for relaxing and lowering baseline levels of emotional reactivity. The STOP Solution is introduced as a way of learning how to stop or lessen feeling emotionally overwhelmed. STOP stands for Scanning thoughts, feelings and sensations, Taking a time-out, Overcoming Initial Flooding, and Putting tools into practise.

To reinforce the effectiveness of each tool, the workbook includes guided imagery exercises, opportunities to create positive self-statements and space for personal reflections after practising each tool. In addition, the workbook points readers to the matching audio recordings to facilitate their practice of the exercises as they go through the workbook. Both the tools and the written and audio exercises provide a gentle and reliable programme that leads to calm emotions, resilience and well-being.