Healing Emotional Pain Workbook: Process-Based CBT Tools for Moving Beyond Sadness, Fear, Worry, and Shame to Discover Peace and Resilience

Powerful and customizable tools grounded in process-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to help you heal emotional pain and live a vital, values-based life

Do you struggle with overwhelming emotions, such as anger, anxiety, sadness, shame, or self-blame? Emotions—even intensely distressing ones—are a natural part of life. But if your emotions are so intense that they’re hurting your relationships or getting in the way of your happiness, it’s time for a change.

Written by a team of mental health experts, Healing Emotional Pain Workbook is a step-by-step guide to understanding your emotions and enhancing your overall well-being. Rather than a one-size-fits-all treatment, this workbook takes a tailored approach to help you treat the root cause of your emotional pain—whether it’s avoidance, internalization, or rumination. As a result, you’ll create a personalized plan to help you overcome intense emotions and live the life you want.

With this workbook, you’ll learn to:

• Stop avoiding and start showing up to your life
• Replace self-blame with self-compassion
• Make decisions based on your values, not your emotions
• Break free from repetitive negative thinking
• Increase psychological flexibility
• Accept your thoughts and emotions—rather than trying to outrun them!

When our emotions spiral out of control, they can result in chronic mental suffering. This workbook can help you change the way you react to emotions, before they negatively impact your life.

Matthew McKay, PhD, is a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. He has authored and coauthored numerous books, including The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook, Self-Esteem, and Couple Skills, which have sold more than four million copies combined. He received his PhD in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology, and specializes in the cognitive behavioral treatment of anxiety and depression.

Patrick Fanning is a professional writer in the mental health field, and founder of a men’s support group in Northern California. He has authored and coauthored twelve self-help books, including Self-Esteem, Thoughts and Feelings, Couple Skills, and Mind and Emotions.

Erica Pool, PsyD, earned her doctorate at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA; and has clinical and research experience at the University of California, Berkeley, and the VA Northern California Health Care System; and has consulted with mental health start-ups. The goal of her work is to understand processes at the core of human suffering to help craft individualized and culturally responsive treatments.

Patricia E. Zurita Ona, PsyD, “Dr. Z,” is a psychologist specializing in working with and creating compassionate, research-based, and actionable resources for overachievers and overthinkers to get them unstuck from worries, fears, anxieties, perfectionism, procrastination, obsessions, and ineffective “playing it safe” actions. She is founder of the East Bay Behavior Therapy Center—a boutique practice where she offers therapy and coaching services based on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and contextual behavioral science. She has been nominated as a fellow of the Association of Contextual Behavioral Science for her contributions to the applications of ACT to specific fear-based struggles.