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Heartfelt
Feelings Coloring Card Strategies Kit
Tools to Pursue the Heart of Therapy
As of June 1st, 2007, the Coloring
Card Company, LLC in Flemington, New Jersey (www.coloringcardcompany.com)
will make available for sale the Heartfelt Feelings Coloring Cards
Strategies (HFCCS) Kit.
Dr. Paul Marciano, the CEO of the
Coloring Card Company, explains that the Kit will consist of a printed
and bound Clinical Manual and a set of 20 Expressive Cards and a
set of 20 Relational Cards. We are very excited about this collaborative
project to make the Heartfelt Feelings Coloring Card Strategies readily
available to clinicians with the Clinical Manual and Card Sets combined
in one ready to use package.
Dr. Marciano enjoys not only the
distinction of earning his Ph.D. in Child Clinical Psychology under the
mentorship of Dr. Alan Kazdin, a nationally renowned psychologist who
has been elected President of the American Psychological Association,
but is also the grandson of Ludwig Bemelmans, the author and creator of
the Madeline books for children.
Ten percent of the sales are
generously donated by the Coloring Card Company to the Astor Home for
Children with which Dr. Crenshaw has proudly enjoyed a long-term
affiliation and presently serves on the Board of Directors. The Astor Home for Children’s motto
is “Every Child Deserves a Childhood.”
A note from Dr. Crenshaw:
The company that
publishes and distributes my Heartfelt Feelings Coloring Card Therapy
Strategies as a fund raiser for the Children's Foundation of the Astor
Home was recently written up in the Wall Street Journal for its
generosity to charity. It is the only company in the United States that
donates 10% of sales, not just profits, to charities that serve
children. Keep them in mind as you shop for holiday and other gifts for
children because they have a wide range of "Color-Me" products that
children love include T-shirts, pillow cases etc. You can access them at
www.coloringcardcompany.com
The “Heartfelt Feelings Coloring Card
Strategies” (HFCCS) are a series of strategies that can be used in play
therapy, child therapy, family therapy, group therapy, and art therapy
to facilitate the expression and sharing of heartfelt emotions. Many
clinicians have used some variation of the heart shape in child, play,
art therapy and other creative arts therapies. A comprehensive review
of these creative contributions can be found in the HFCCS Clinical
Manual. The Manual contained in the HFCCS Kit describes, gives
directions, and offers clinical examples for both the HFS and the HFCCS.
Perhaps the part of the “Heartfelt Feelings Strategies” (HFS) and the
HFCCS that most distinguishes it from all the similar strategies using
the heart shape in art, child and family therapy is that in both the HFS
and HFCC, Dr. Crenshaw focuses on two core domains: Expressive
and Relational. The Expressive component offers structured
therapeutic practice in identifying, labeling, and expressing feelings.
These are key skills in affect regulation and for developing social
competence. Allan Schore (2003a; 2003b) at UCLA, in his groundbreaking
work on affect regulation has demonstrated that affect dysregulation is
central to almost all forms of psychopathology so therapeutic
interventions that address this crucial deficit will have wide
application across the psychodiagnostic spectrum.
The Relational component consists of
systematic exploration of the heartfelt feelings in connection with key
attachment figures and with important persons in the child’s
interpersonal world. Obviously our most heartfelt emotions do not
develop in a vacuum. They develop in an interpersonal context. Our most
strongly experienced emotions tend to be elicited in relation to the key
attachment figures in our lives. Witness the outpouring of some of the
most intense emotions human beings are capable of when an attachment
bond is broken. In the HFS Strategy, the relational is accomplished in
two ways. Typically, Dr. Crenshaw asks the children to color the heart
in relation to a very specific relational issue, such as, “Color in the
heart according to how you felt, when Daddy got mad and left the house
last night.” The second way the Relational component is emphasized in
the HFS is in the list of follow-up questions. Some of the questions are
related to the Expressive (E) component such as, “Which feeling was the
strongest?” or “What feeling is the hardest for you to express?” Another
group of follow-up questions however are specifically focused on
Relational (R) issues such as, “Who in the family would agree with your
choice of the emotion that is expressed the least in the family?” or
“What emotion is most uncomfortable for you to express and who else in
the family is uncomfortable expressing that same emotion?”
The social context is critical. Some
children get angry at school but not at home, others get angry at home
but rarely at school. In the HFCCS the cards are also divided into two
succinct sets, the Expressive and the Relational, to once
again emphasize these two key components. In the HFS, thirty-five sample
follow-up questions are offered in the Clinical Manual to address both
the Expressive and the Relational domains of the HFS. In the HFCCS, the
Expressive component takes the form of practice in expressing in context
over forty emotions arranged in sequential fashion to cover the
developmental landscape from preschool to adolescence. The Relational
component consists of forty specific directives to the child in using
the HFCCS cards, such as, “Draw in the heart on the front of the card, a
person who once was in your heart but no longer is.” The Clinical Manual
also contains a number of variations of both the HFS and HFCCS for use
in bereavement work, supervision, examining countertransference
feelings, highlighting strengths, and focusing on resources within the
community.
References
Schore, A. N. (2003a). Affect
dysregulation and disorders of the self. New York: Norton.
Schore, A. N. (2003b). Affect
regulation and the repair of the self. New York: Norton.
The price of the Kit is $24.95 plus shipping and
handling (and for New Jersey residents 7% sales tax).
To order the
Heartfelt Feelings Coloring Cards Strategies (HFCCS) Kit
click here.
The
Coloring Card Company, LLC can be reached by phone at (908) 237-2500 or
by email:
sales@coloringcardcompany.com
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