This author, illustrator and art therapist created an interactive workbook to help improve mental health
Get to know Alyse Ruriani, author and illustrator of The Big Feelings Survival Guide: A Creative Workbook for Mental Health.
Video Transcript
ALYSE RURIANI: When I was a teenager, I really wanted a book that was creative and art-based but also was clinical and had this therapeutic approach to it, that it wasn't just to draw, just to draw. Hi. My name is Alyse Ruriani, and I am an art therapist, a licensed professional counselor, and the author and Illustrator of "The Big Feelings Survival Guide." "The Big Feelings Survival Guide" is a creative workbook for mental health so kind of is intended to give people skills to deal with really big feelings.
So it's organized by emotion, sadness, fear, anger. And then there's also a section that's figuring out what you're feeling because I think a lot of people don't know what emotion they're feeling. And so I wanted to include a section that can help people figure that out first. The prompts in the book have a lot of different ways of engaging with emotion.
So some of them just share tips and things that you can try to deal with that emotion. Some are interactive, where you might be writing or drawing in the book itself. They are giving you ways to think more about the emotion, to cope with the really big feelings that you're having, and explore them maybe in a way that you haven't before, as well as giving you skills about how to manage them in your day-to-day life.
An example of one of the pages in the book is the Create a Character exercise, where first you will visualize what that emotion feels like for you and then write about what that experience is like for you. I used the idea of a trading card, where you can draw what that feeling looks like and then on the back put its traits its description, strengths, weaknesses, things like that. And the goal is to help people get to know that feeling in their body.
Think about what it does for you. Think about how it feels, what it looks like because a lot of us might not be really familiar with what those emotions actually feel like and look like to us. So it's kind of hoping that people sit down with that feeling a little more.
The inspiration behind the Make a Chill Pill page is sort of a play on when people might tell you to take a chill pill when you're feeling a really intense emotion. And usually that feels really dismissive, and so I kind of wanted to be cheeky with it and think about what actually would a chill pill look like for you, if you could kind of take in things that help you relax. For example, for me, a chill pill might look like going to the lake and getting in the water to swim or float or listening to my favorite music.
I experienced a lot of benefit from art therapy when I was an adolescent, and it really made me want to be able to offer that to other people. Art therapy can look a lot of different ways. You can use a variety of media. There's not just one type of art that you're making.
But, essentially, it's using the art-making process that in and of itself is helpful as well as the final product that you create to learn more about yourself and the things that you're dealing with. It's important for people who are struggling with their mental health to express themselves because when we're struggling, we can feel really alone and feel really misunderstood. And so art making gives us a chance to communicate with people and be able to kind of externalize that internal experience.
And that's helpful for ourselves just to kind of see it out on paper, out of our mind, out of our body. And we can show it to people and have a conversation about it. I hope to change the world by being part of a bigger movement to destigmatize mental health. And part of that is sharing my own story, encouraging others to share theirs, and helping people learn the skills and tools they need to feel big feelings.
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