Welcome to Recovery Tapping - Tap Out of Fear and Into Choices -

 Ok, I think I've got it!

This week's Depression Wellness class was GREAT!!

I'm so psyched to have such an AWESOME assistant who is helping me put my booklet together, with cool, interactive hand outs.

And Adult Doodle boarders and pages inbetween... to let it sink in... as they learn a new way of looking at depression recovery.

What we accomplished this week was we put together the 1st Draft of the Depression Wellness Protocol.

We took the pile of "all the ideas and materials I could find" and took out all the pages that were not directly on topic. So we weeded it down to the best stuff and took the other fluff out.

I'm basing the booklet on several sources:
 - the Wellness model in recovery (self-help recovery)
- the book "The Upward Spiral" - using neuro-science to light up the brain, one pleasurable activity at a time.
- EFT/Tapping for stress managment and transforming negative thinking into more empowering choices
- Energy Moves by Donna Eden and Qi Gong - AKA 'The Lazy Man's Way To Exercise" or "How to get your Energy up with a few easy moves"

- And basic rehab behavior activation from the old days of behavioral psychology
- Theory from 'Positive Psychology"
- And much, much more

Throw in some interactive hand outs so the learning sinks in and becomes personanlized
and toss in some cool adult coloring book themes like paths and journey's and growth
add in some doodles to color so the brain can get lost in the coloring and mull over the content

And 'Wha-La" we got our first draft for the wellness booklet for our class.

It's not easy to put together something that's going to motivate people to do soemthing their depression is dead set against.

Most depressed clients are resistant at best.

It's got to capture their interest... its got to call to their creative, interested spirit that may have been long forgotten and in a corner of their mind somewhere collecting dust.

And I think we nailed the concept down pretty good. 

Because it's interesting, its new and its all about them in a hopeful, empoweing, non judgemental way.

We're seeing results already.

MIA clients are starting to pop in and inquire more and 'wake up' from their walking dead state.

This thrills me to no end.

It's my mission in life; my calling. To finally put together all of the BEST stuff that has been helping heal and transform depression into a wellness journey that is fruitful and different and "just might work" because its something they've never tried before.

No one talks to them about their depression like that.

We embrace it.

We work with it. Not against it.

We focus on increasing positive activities, not just focus on trying to 'fix the problem'.

We focus on strengthening strengths and empowering resources and stimulating interest in things they lost interest in and thought were over, dead and gone.

They realize, its not gone, its just a new chapter and a new path just opened up to access them again.

We give them science and proof of how these things heal and wake up the brain which in turn produces more feel-good neurotransmitters and neural connections.

We give them alternative healing tools that actually work to help them change their negative self-talk.

Everything has to be fun, interesting and easy.

So for EFT Tapping, I came up with "Learn EFT in 5 Easy Steps" and so forth.

We take dense, convoluted reading material and distill it down to the bare basics, and try to find doodle scenes to help them visualize it. Like the 9 Human Needs, we have a funny cartoon to represent the essence of each one from an article we found online.

It's an exciting feeling to have your 1st Draft. You just know its "done" in spirit, it just takes some work to fix it up one page at a time until its complete. The editing process is a labor of love, its so hard and yet so satisfying to see it come together and say "Yeah, that's it" when you look through it.


That's where we're at. I'm very pleased with the progress and just wanted to report on it.

I can't wait until we can start scanning in the pages and posting them here for you to join us.

To Your Recovery - Happy Mother-Yourself Day

 J.P.Bailey, MA, MHRS
Author of "EFT for Codependency"

Welcome to Recovery Tapping - Tap Out of Fear and Into Choices - 

Yeah, so I got my weekly Depression Wellness Recovery Art Class started up and going.

I've had a few people show up, a few regulars and one drop-in.

Plus I've been spreading the word to people every day so I expect a steady growth in members.


Anywhoo.  it worked out well to start with the Symptoms of Depression first, and then put them into 1 of 3 categories (body, mind, emotion), which serves to justify the use of daily GRAPES.

Then we jump into GRAPES with the handouts I already described last blog post, and then go into negative thinking and reframing negative, critical, depressed thinking into wellness affirmations.

Along with that we put in coloring or doodle pages in-between and just also decided to add a doodle border to each worksheet moving forward.

I got the bones of it, but the members of the class also help create this thing by adding in their two cents as we go and their feedback on what I've put together as well.

Everyone leave happy. They smile more. They are glad they came. They got their social support goal met for the week and they like it.

This gives me great personal pleasure and satisfaction.

Now.., how do I bring my 3 recovery binders full of energy psychology and recovery with positive psychology "stuff" into the picture?

Answer: I don't know, just one step at a time.

It's ok if one step at a time feels like a slow crawl.

Like I'm behind and gotta catch up and get all this stuff out there...

But I have to be in the moment today and go with the crawl.

Embrace the crawl.

I've learned to just embrace all the shit that happens, because shit it suppose to happen.

Embrace it, feel it, mindfulness it, and clear it up in time too.


And that's what the next part of the class is all about:  how to deal with the shit that happens.

That's where EFT Tapping come in. We will learn EFT in 5 Easy Steps and start applying that to our negative thinking and feeling and get some movement there.

And also, this is where MINDFULNESS come in too. We will practice it together in several ways, not just the healing way.  We will mindfully color and doodle without realizing it half the time. We will learn SOMATIC MINDFULNESS so we will get used to going within and feeling somatic markers and beyond for those interested, into communicating with them.

Then there is the whole Energy Moves thing, from Donna Eden and some basic Qi Gong moves to teach the class so they can get their ENERGY EXERCISE in their day. To get their Energy up and activated the lazy man's way - by sitting there in your chair and doing Energy Tapping and Energy Moves and FEEL BETTER

Of course from there we will move into physical exercise brainstorming of what each one likes to do ad aim for 15-30 minutes a day. Daily movement. Daily eating healthy as you can. Daily recvery plan actions.

That's the point. Create a daily recovery plan that is easy and fun to do and easily do-able. That's the point, because in depression everything is HARD.

Which reminds me, we're going to also talk about the Upward Spiral, a book I found that explains the theory and neural-science perfectly.

GRAPES is a planned path for stopping the downward spiral of depression and starting to slowly increase the positive things in life (rather than try to just 'fix' the problems and negatives).

GRAPES is your way up the spiral out of depression for relief and recovery.

 So that's it. It's going and growing and where we want to go each week.



NEW:  I've decided to upload the hand-outs to this blog so everyone else can learn it too.

I have various handouts for mental health recovery.
I have all the handouts in draft for this new depression wellness class I'm talking about above.

I plan to put the class handouts into a booklet for everyone who shows up for the class.


 I'll scan those in to my computer as pdfs that I hope I can easily load onto this blog. I may have to email them to myself first or put them in G-Docs first, IDK, but I'll get to that bridge.

Until next week... Take Good Care and eat your Daily GRAPES.

Thanks for reading.

Love & Hugs
Jeanette










by J.P.Bailey, MA
Mental Health Recovery Specialist
Author of  "EFT for Codependency"
(Look for it on Amazon)