Emotional Growth

About the Book

“Emotional Growth” is a self-help workbook for people who want to enhance the quality of their emotional life by learning purposeful skills. It offers guidance so they can apply different skills to their particular issues. This workbook offers three additional features: 1. A common sense view that troubling feelings are an early warning system. They alert you to your unique way of interpreting difficult life experiences but only if you attend to them. 2. A realistic discussion of the long term benefits of sustained skill development, a topic not found in most self-help books. 3. Opportunities to respond to the many skill-development exercises found throughout the book. I have two goals for this book: 1. To empower readers by providing them with tools for preventing troubling feelings from growing 2. To show how understanding emotional growth offers hope, confidence and peace of mind.

About the Author

While mental health has become increasingly technical, relying on various medical models or esoteric accounts about the nature of the universe, Mr. Watkins hopes this practical account of emotional growth will encourage readers to rely on the resources they have at hand. My career as a social worker in foster care, community mental health and school-based services convinced me that most text book accounts of emotional struggles present obstacles for many clients and sometimes discourage them from making purposeful changes. I believe clients are more responsive when they take ownership of their issues and have realistic plans for change. With these considerations in mind, Mr. Watkins has put together an easy to follow outline whose purpose is to guide “ordinary” people in their struggles to with depressive, anxious and stressful feelings. Although this workbook is not for everyone, my hope is that many readers will find it useful.