17 Feet of Feelings

So…while I was in residential treatment, we had Art Therapy, and one of the projects I was assigned was called The Coping Wheel of Emotions. You can read more about the project here. I finally had some time to take pictures, and I wanted to share the finished book with you.

17 feet of Emotions.

The pages are made from watercolor paper, while the covers are constructed from cardboard and construction paper. Because of safety restrictions in residential treatment, I wasn't allowed to use an X-Acto knife, so I had to cut everything with scissors. As a result, some of the pages aren't perfectly square or exactly the same height.

I'll admit that bothered me a little. But it also gave me an opportunity to practice radical acceptance. The book isn't perfect, but it is the best I could make with the tools and materials I had available at the time.

When fully unfolded, the book stretches an impressive 17 feet long.

I used two color systems throughout the book. At the top of each page, you'll see a gradient that moves from dark to light. At the bottom of each page, I used red and blue to categorize the emotions. Red represents a distressing emotion, while blue represents a goal emotion.

Pages from the Emotions Book.

For each distressing emotion, I included DBT skills that can help reduce or manage that feeling. For each goal emotion, I listed activities or actions that may help evoke that emotional state. Every page also contains a definition of the emotion and a small "Little People" illustration to accompany it.

Pages from the Emotions Book

Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out. It was a challenging project, but it taught me a lot about emotions, coping skills, and accepting imperfections. I think it came together beautifully.