WORKBOOK

Our emotional fluency curriculum has a two-fold approach. The foundational building block is our Emotional Fluency Workbook, which outlines simple methodology for the reader to expand their mental health tool kit. This includes practices from a wide variety of behavioral specialists and trained experts. 

We draw heavily from Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, which is a non-pathologizing psychotherapy practice. The goal of IFS is manifold, but the central tenet of understanding personal and intimate relationships is the focus of our interest. But our goal is not to make psychologists of us all – it’s just to bring the tools so carefully constructed by psychologists to the everyday student. Our goal is not to overwhelm, it’s to bring as many people in as possible.

By reading and engaging with the workbook, students will be able to harness the power of these concepts to better improve their emotional well-being at the base level. Once they have that understanding, they can start to put it into practice.

We love the word fluency because it evokes the balance of how much work it takes to speak easily in a language while maintaining the endgame of having it feel second nature. The undertaking of the workbook is to make the transition between those two modes as uncomplicated as possible.

This is achieved in large part by its aesthetic. None of the concepts illuminated within our curriculum were discovered by us – we left that to the experts. Our goal was to make these ideas digestible. Part of that is with words, but an extremely important part is the way in which those words are portrayed. We don’t want this to feel like a textbook in the traditional sense: no dense blocks of text, built to be bounced off of. The bright color and playful design are built to bring you in, not keep you out.

The look of our workbook is in line with our overall philosophy. The experience of learning emotional fluency should not feel like toiling away on homework. We are handing over the tools to be unbound by technical limitations and allow for pure expression. 

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JOURNAL

The second aspect of our curriculum is the Emotional Fluency Journal. Whenever I think about journaling, I think about this diary excerpt:

“I went to arts centre (by myself!) in yellow cords and blouse. Ian was there but he didn’t speak to me. Got rhyme put in my handbag from someone who’s apparently got a crush on me. It’s Nicholas I think. UGH. Man landed on moon.”

From the personal journal of Dinah Hall, July 20th, 1969

Importance is a very subjective thing -- what we may think back on with detached nostalgia as being a red letter day for the world might have had a completely different significance for an individual living through such times.

But what stands out to you about any given day or situation *is* the point. Something that may seem mundane on the surface often has a core of importance -- why else would we mention it? Back in 1969, Dinah clearly had more important things to think about than the moon landing. I don’t mean that facetiously; if the journal is a tool of self-understanding, I think it’s quite easy to understand what was actually relevant to Dinah at that point in her life.

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REMOVING SOME PRESSURE

It’s easy to become self conscious when sitting down to journal. It’s hard to not put pressure on the word-smithing of it all. In a world that’s more self-conscious than ever, the struggle to remove expectation from the rote activity that journaling is more present than ever.

Fundamentally, our workbook and journal prompts aim to remove the pressure of knowing *what* to write about. It nudges in the right direction, allowing for self expression to bloom from the seed of a question.

Rather than worrying about *what* to write about, our journal should act as a guide to help people access those inner thoughts without the potential embarrassment that comes with vulnerability. None of this is ever easy, but it’s often much less difficult to respond to a question of how one is feeling than to simply bring up that feeling in a vacuum. Ultimately this curriculum will give students the vocabulary and empowerment they need to do so in the future -- but the first steps should be gentle ones.