Available for purchase at: Loving Healing Press & Amazon.com
Recover in Color is a gift to the mental health community. This workbook is a year’s worth of rehabilitation. It can be completed on your own, with a sponsor or therapist, or used in a group therapy setting. Recover in Color contains fifty-two lessons, a coloring page to reinforce each lesson, and a weekly journal page with four discussion questions.
Using a biblical worldview, Recover in Color contains thirteen lessons in four categories. Click on the link for a .pdf sample of each.
1. Develop a Sense of Self
2. Boundaries
3. Emotional Literacy
4. Spirituality
There is something here for everyone working a recovery program, whether you are new to recovery or have been traveling the long road for years. This workbook is also beneficial for family members of those in recovery programs.
Recover in Color is a fresh approach to rehabilitation that incorporates the classic principles that have passed the test of time. Each lesson is short, to the point, and contains a sound bite title to help reinforce the coping strategy for that week.
After completing this year-long recovery workbook, you will know yourself better, and you will have new coping strategies to help you deal with the difficult challenges faced in life. Why not recover in color?
When we are stressed, overwhelmed, and trying to find our way, we do not have the mental bandwidth to read recovery books. Our attention is impaired. Our concentration is short. We are exhausted to the point of near-collapse. Recover in Color is meant to simplify recovery principles and guide you into a clear mental state as you realign your thoughts, draw out your repressed feelings, and clarify your intention to be well. The lessons are bite-size word pictures and metaphors to help you understand yourself and others better. The coloring pages encourage you to slow down and let the material of the lesson take root in your mind and heart as you color. The title of each lesson is in itself a small “sound bite” reminder for you to memorize. Let it prompt you to use the strategy.
Each week, complete one lesson. Spend the time coloring the accompanying color page. Buy yourself a box of colored pencils, sit quietly, color the picture, and focus on the week’s lesson.
Each lesson in Recover in Color contains a summary called “Personalize This Lesson.” There are four prompts of “Think. Feel. Do. Memorize.” These prompts will simplify the truths of the week’s lesson. Daily review will take you from mystery to mastery.
At the end of each group of lessons, there is a section of journal activities. Track your progress by writing the date in the column provided. The journey of life is one of learning and growing and changing. Keep moving forward and upward. Remain hopeful for the good that will come out of the hard things you’ve gone through or perhaps are still going through. Pain is our great teacher. We must keep searching for what we are to do with the hard things in life. I know one thing for sure, we are to keep going – following that great upward call.
Time Takes Time.
You are investing time and energy into your recovery and you should celebrate your efforts. Stay the course. There are fifty-two lessons in this workbook – a year’s worth of learning, healing, and growing.
Why should I Color?
Coloring deepens your experience with the weekly lessons. Coloring takes time and slows down your brain while you concentrate on your work. Coloring is an active form of meditation.
Why should I Journal?
Journaling takes effort that becomes an investment which improves your recovery. As the experts have reminded us, more happens between pen and paper than between mind and mouth, so rather than just answering the questions in your head, write things down. Purchase a journal to record your responses or use the space provided.
Goals for participating in the journaling exercises of the workbook:
- Gain understanding of yourself and others
- Learn healthy coping strategies
- Memorize the sound bites of the lesson titles as emotional literacy prompts
Benefits of Improved Coping
Most of us use ineffective or unhealthy coping strategies that do not improve our circumstances and drive us farther away from wellness. Better coping allows us to relate to other people in our lives because we are less reactive and more responsive. We will learn to cope effectively.
Why should I work these lessons with another person?
Meet with a sponsor, therapist, or a friend and discuss your reflections. When we partner up and dialogue about our experiences, we discover that we are similar in countless ways; and yet we almost always learn something valuable from another person’s perspective. In the areas where we are similar, we find comfort and consolation, and in the areas where we differ, we find new insights. Comfort and consolation and insight are three worthy things to seek. There is comradery between people who have suffered in similar ways. There is also mutual respect for the perseverance needed to walk through the valleys of pain and heartache. We are in this together!
What about the suggested song?
Listen to the song throughout the week. Write down your reactions; focus on the message of the lyrics. Perhaps you will one day pen the words to a new song to capture the specifics of what you are going through. Most songs are the result of a songwriter’s personal experience, and oftentimes, the experiences are challenging.
Recover in Color Spotify Music Playlist
Reviews
Jennifer Humphries – March 18, 2022
Heartfelt, Compassionate, Smart!
This book is for anyone who would like to invest the time and energy into their recovery, emotional intelligence, social skills, and spiritual well-being. It is full of heartfelt wisdom, compassion, relatable analogies, and life lessons reinforced with activities and music recommendations.
Joe Castillo (SandStory.com) – January 28, 2022
You can’t tell a book by the cover, but you can if you know the Author.
Katie and Barry are personal friends for more than twenty years. The depth of their character and love for helping people has been a significant part of their lives since we first met. Katie’s involvement in restoring lives and her many years of hands on experience gives this book real, honest value and credibility. As an artist, I have seen the impact art can have, healing and restoring damaged and broken people. The art included in this book is wonderful and is a valuable therapeutic element. Do you need a hands-on help in working through trauma? Or could you use a fun walk through solutions to struggles in your life, GET THIS BOOK!
“Holistic and purposeful in design, Recover in Color creates a path to healing and personal rediscovery. When my son died, I became fully detached from this world. Body, soul and spirit – all shattered and scattered into the ether of a heavily weighted, dark, impenetrable haze. When suffering descends upon us from a variety of life experiences, we cannot recover alone; we need the hand of another to guide us. Dr. Yancosek has created a tool to pierce the impenetrable haze and reveals the possibility of God’s hand to intervene.”
— Charles D. Quick, OTD, CHT, Lieutenant Colonel (retired), United States Army
“Recover in Color is a fresh take on trusted principles of well-being. The unique style of writing combined with the coloring pages create an incredible workbook that can be completed individually or with the guidance of a therapist. I recommend this book to people who are pursuing personal growth through increased self-awareness and development.”
— Amelia Duran-Stanton, PhD, D.Sc., PA-C
“With Recover in Color, Dr. Yancosek has done something very rare, but desperately needed; she has made deep truths easily accessible. The human soul can only be nourished and healed with such truths and that is why this book will be a treasure to many. I recommend it to those who hunger to walk in greater freedom and emotional and spiritual health.”
— Matt Erbaugh, Pastor of Spiritual Formation at CrossBridge Community Church
About the Illustrator
Marta Martirosyan resides in Armenia. She studied graphic design at the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts. Marta is passionate about mental health and wellness. Her work in this book represents her contribution to all people who are investing in their own recovery. In her free time, Marta enjoys traveling, photography, reading and spending time at the beach. Marta has a very special cat named Rocky who lays on her lap while she does her art and design work. Marta’s current project is completing illustrations for a children’s book. For her, art is a lifeline, and beauty is a constant source of inspiration.
Coming Soon: Recover in Color Volume 2
About a month after Recover in Color went to press, I began to think of other ideas for healing. Part of me was disappointed that I had left ideas out of the book. For weeks, I listened with more intention to the questions my clients were asking and thought deeply about new topics and new themes of healing. I bought a new journal, wrote the words, “Volume 2” at the top, and created four new categories for more recovery lessons. In just a few weeks, I had the skeleton built for Recover in Color Volume 2. The topics in Volume 2 are Relationship Health, Anger Management, Emotional Regulation, and Spiritual Health. Here is a sample of a lesson in the Relationship Health category.