Take a moment and notice what stands out.
Flourish Core Skills
🔵 Self-awareness — noticing emotions, body cues, energy shifts, needs, and patterns without judgment.
🔵 Self-compassion — responding to yourself with care, especially when things feel painful, messy, confusing, or hard.
🔵 Self-accommodation — adjusting your environment, expectations, routines, and systems to support how your brain works.
🔵 Self-advocacy — naming needs clearly, asking for support, and setting boundaries that protect your wellbeing.
🔵 Self-care — tending to rest, movement, nourishment, hydration, connection, sensory needs, and recovery in sustainable ways.
These are the core Flourish skills introduced as part of the group’s foundation. The Introduction workbook frames Flourish as a skills-based space focused on self-compassion, self-care, self-awareness, self-accommodation, self-advocacy, and rebuilding self-trust.
Beginning Flourish Skills
🔵 Moving at your own pace.
🔵 Taking breaks when needed.
🔵 Showing up without performing.
🔵 Keeping your camera off if that supports you.
🔵 Listening without pressure to speak.
🔵 Stimming, doodling, fidgeting, knitting, moving, or resting while learning.
🔵 Practicing trauma-sensitive sharing.
🔵 Noticing what feels safe enough.
🔵 Beginning to rebuild self-trust through choice, pacing, and permission.
🔵 Learning that growth does not have to look the same for everyone.
Neurodivergent-Affirming Skills
🔵 Understanding ADHD as a valid neurotype.
🔵 Learning the language of neurodivergence.
🔵 Separating ADHD traits from personal failure.
🔵 Recognizing executive functioning differences.
🔵 Naming stigma and self-stigma.
🔵 Recognizing masking as a survival strategy.
🔵 Naming the “Gold Standard Woman” expectation.
🔵 Reframing old labels.
🔵 Recognizing discrimination and ableist expectations.
🔵 Asking, “What support does my brain need?” instead of “What is wrong with me?”
🔵 Working with your brain instead of against it.
Workbook 2 teaches that neurodiversity means human brains vary naturally and that ADHD is not a defect or personal failure. It also teaches the shift from “What is wrong with me?” to “What support does my brain need?”
Emotion Skills
🔵 Understanding emotions as body-based signals.
🔵 Distinguishing emotions from feelings.
🔵 Recognizing that the body reacts before the thinking brain catches up.
🔵 Noticing body signals connected to emotion.
🔵 Naming emotions.
🔵 Building emotional vocabulary.
🔵 Recognizing that more than one emotion can be present.
🔵 Connecting emotions to needs, safety, connection, boundaries, and values.
🔵 Understanding how core beliefs shape emotional reactions.
🔵 Recognizing how family, culture, gender messages, and past experiences affect emotional trust.
🔵 Beginning to ask, “What is this emotion trying to tell me?”
🔵 Treating emotions as information instead of flaws.
Workbook 3 teaches that emotions are biological, fast, protective signals, and that emotions begin in the body before the brain translates them into feelings.
Emotional Regulation Skills
🔵 Recognizing emotional dysregulation.
🔵 Identifying quick emotional activation.
🔵 Recognizing emotional loops.
🔵 Understanding slow downshifting.
🔵 Recognizing stress-conditioned alertness.
🔵 Noticing activation patterns.
🔵 Noticing shutdown patterns.
🔵 Recognizing when thinking, focus, and problem-solving become harder.
🔵 Understanding that judgment increases stress.
🔵 Using regulation tools to create a pause.
🔵 Shifting out of emotional loops through movement, grounding, sensory input, or structured focus.
🔵 Giving the nervous system time to recover.
🔵 Understanding that regulation is not suppression.
🔵 Practicing the shift from “I need to control this” to “I need to support my nervous system.”
The Emotional Regulation workbook teaches that ADHD emotions may activate quickly, feel intense, and take longer to settle, and that support, earlier detection, and recovery time matter more than judgment.
Stress State and Body Awareness Skills
🔵 Recognizing Rest.
🔵 Recognizing Engagement.
🔵 Recognizing Stretched.
🔵 Recognizing Overwhelm.
🔵 Identifying nervous system landmarks.
🔵 Tracking body clues.
🔵 Tracking thought clues.
🔵 Tracking emotional clues.
🔵 Tracking urges.
🔵 Tracking sensory responses.
🔵 Recognizing environmental cues.
🔵 Noticing when the body is beginning to strain.
🔵 Listening to body signals earlier.
🔵 Responding before stress becomes overwhelm.
🔵 Asking, “Where am I right now?”
🔵 Asking, “What does my body need next?”
🔵 Using body scans.
🔵 Using timer check-ins.
🔵 Naming sensations.
🔵 Locating sensations in the body.
🔵 Responding to the body with kindness.
🔵 Practicing self-protection before overwhelm.
Workbook 5 teaches stress states as nervous system landmarks: Rest, Engagement, Stretched, and Overwhelm. The activities workbook teaches body scans, timer check-ins, emotion naming, and self-protection as body awareness tools.
Self-Compassion Skills
🔵 Noticing that you are struggling.
🔵 Asking, “How am I feeling?”
🔵 Asking, “What do I need?”
🔵 Asking, “What might help right now?”
🔵 Pausing before pushing through.
🔵 Naming what is happening.
🔵 Practicing mindfulness.
🔵 Practicing common humanity.
🔵 Practicing self-kindness.
🔵 Recognizing self-compassion myths.
🔵 Comparing self-compassion with self-criticism.
🔵 Identifying moments when self-compassion is needed.
🔵 Recognizing self-critical beliefs.
🔵 Noticing when self-criticism increases stress, shame, avoidance, or burnout.
🔵 Lowering the demand.
🔵 Taking a break before total collapse.
🔵 Speaking to yourself with less harshness.
🔵 Using comforting touch.
🔵 Recognizing backdraft when kindness brings up discomfort.
🔵 Naming backdraft.
🔵 Noticing backdraft in the body.
🔵 Redirecting gently when self-compassion feels overwhelming.
🔵 Practicing care after mistakes, shame, procrastination, overwhelm, or emotional spirals.
🔵 Replacing punishment with support.
The Self-Compassion workbook teaches the sequence: notice, name and validate, and offer kindness. It also names mindfulness, common humanity, and self-kindness as the three core parts of self-compassion.
Self-Validation Skills
🔵 Validating your experience before trying to fix it.
🔵 Saying, “Of course I feel this way.”
🔵 Saying, “This reaction makes sense.”
🔵 Saying, “It makes sense that I am confused about how I feel.”
🔵 Saying, “Of course I feel overwhelmed. This is a lot.”
🔵 Saying, “That really hurt.”
🔵 Saying, “This is a hard moment.”
🔵 Saying, “I do not know what I need, but I know I am struggling.”
🔵 Letting your emotions be real before trying to regulate them.
🔵 Recognizing that validation helps soften shame.
🔵 Using validation as a bridge between self-awareness and self-compassion.
The self-compassion workbook teaches validation as part of the “Pause and Name” practice, including phrases such as “Of course I feel this way” and “This reaction makes sense.”
Self-Compassion Phrases
🔵 “This is hard. I am doing the best I can.”
🔵 “It is okay to feel tired.”
🔵 “My worth is not based on productivity.”
🔵 “I deserve support.”
🔵 “I do not need to be perfect.”
🔵 “Everyone makes mistakes.”
🔵 “I want to be kinder to myself.”
🔵 “I hope I can learn to be gentle with myself.”
🔵 “May I learn to give myself a little grace.”
🔵 “May I feel safe and supported.”
🔵 “May I learn to believe that I am doing enough.”
🔵 “I am noticing that I am being hard on myself, and that hurts.”
🔵 “This is hard, but I am not alone.”
The self-compassion workbook teaches that kind phrases should feel possible and believable. They do not need to feel perfect.
Backdraft Skills
🔵 Recognizing that self-compassion may feel uncomfortable at first.
🔵 Naming the reaction as backdraft.
🔵 Naming the feeling if possible: shame, sadness, fear, grief, guilt, discomfort.
🔵 Noticing backdraft in the body.
🔵 Noticing tightness, heat, pressure, lump in the throat, or shutdown.
🔵 Using comforting touch.
🔵 Placing a hand on the chest.
🔵 Hugging a pillow.
🔵 Pressing palms together.
🔵 Redirecting gently.
🔵 Folding laundry.
🔵 Taking a walk.
🔵 Holding something textured.
🔵 Sitting with a sensory support item.
The Self-Compassion workbook teaches that backdraft can happen when kindness brings up discomfort, fear, grief, shame, or distress, especially after years of self-criticism or pushing through.
RSD Skills
🔵 Naming RSD activation.
🔵 Recognizing RSD triggers.
🔵 Mapping body signals during RSD.
🔵 Identifying thoughts that flood in during an RSD spiral.
🔵 Recognizing panic, shame, dread, anger, numbness, shutdown, or urgency.
🔵 Identifying fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses.
🔵 Recognizing people-pleasing as protection.
🔵 Recognizing perfectionism as protection.
🔵 Recognizing over-apologizing as protection.
🔵 Recognizing overexplaining as protection.
🔵 Recognizing withdrawal as protection.
🔵 Recognizing silence, avoidance, or hiding as protection.
🔵 Understanding old coping strategies as adaptations.
🔵 Recognizing people who spike RSD.
🔵 Recognizing situations that spike RSD.
🔵 Creating safety before solving.
🔵 Regulating before reflecting.
🔵 Validating the RSD response before analyzing it.
🔵 Using the SOOTHE Protocol.
🔵 Using regulation tools before trying to process.
🔵 Using distraction as a nervous system support strategy.
🔵 Checking whether the body is ready to reflect.
🔵 Reviewing the story when calmer.
🔵 Separating facts from interpretations.
🔵 Asking, “What might also be true?”
🔵 Asking, “What helps me respond now?”
🔵 Caring for yourself after making a mistake.
🔵 Caring for yourself after real rejection.
🔵 Asking loved ones for support.
🔵 Using self-advocacy scripts around feedback, tone, check-ins, and repair.
The RSD workbook teaches that RSD can show up in the mind, body, and behavior at the same time, and that the first step is creating safety before trying to analyze or reflect.
RSD Tools
🔵 SOOTHE Protocol — See, Own, Offer, Tend, Hold, Explore.
🔵 My RSD Map — identifying triggers, body signals, coping patterns, people, and situations that spike RSD.
🔵 Regulation Tools Menu — grounding the body, soothing the senses, shifting energy, comfort, and connection.
🔵 Distraction Tools Menu — visual tools, thinking tools, rhythm and sound, play and puzzles, and future anchors.
🔵 Am I Ready to Reflect? — checking whether the body is steady enough to process what happened.
🔵 Reviewing the Story — separating what happened, what you told yourself, what might also be true, and what helps you respond now.
🔵 Caring for Myself After Making a Mistake — separating responsibility from shame.
🔵 Caring for Myself After Real Rejection — responding to actual rejection, harm, loss, or boundary violations with care and support.
The RSD workbook includes these tools across the SOOTHE protocol, regulation tools menu, distraction tools menu, RSD map, reflection-readiness check, story review, and rejection or mistake care worksheets.
Regulation Tools
🔵 Feeling feet pressing into the floor.
🔵 Placing a hand on the chest and breathing slowly.
🔵 Naming three textures you can feel.
🔵 Doing a mini body scan.
🔵 Holding something warm or soft.
🔵 Smelling a comforting scent.
🔵 Sipping cold water.
🔵 Chewing gum.
🔵 Listening to calming music or nature sounds.
🔵 Butterfly taps.
🔵 Shaking out hands.
🔵 Bouncing gently.
🔵 Walking slowly.
🔵 Stretching with intention.
🔵 Tapping feet or marching in place.
🔵 Wrapping in a hoodie or blanket.
🔵 Texting someone safe.
🔵 Asking for reflection instead of fixing.
These regulation tools come from the RSD Regulation Tools Menu, which organizes supports into grounding the body, soothing the senses, shifting energy, and comfort and connection.
Distraction Tools
🔵 Looking for all green objects in the room.
🔵 Naming three things you can see in one color.
🔵 Noticing textures around you.
🔵 Counting up and down.
🔵 Saying the alphabet backward.
🔵 Spelling words out loud.
🔵 Repeating a quote, lyric, or phrase.
🔵 Singing or humming a familiar song.
🔵 Tapping rhythmically.
🔵 Naming categories, such as five fruits, five animals, or five green things.
🔵 Playing a memory, matching, or puzzle game.
🔵 Thinking of something you are looking forward to.
🔵 Picturing yourself in a safe future moment.
The RSD workbook frames distraction as a nervous system support strategy, not as ignoring pain. It helps create a pause when thoughts are loud or emotions feel overwhelming.
Self-Advocacy and Relationship Skills
🔵 Explaining RSD to someone close to you.
🔵 Asking for feedback to be given gently.
🔵 Asking someone to check in before giving feedback.
🔵 Requesting collaborative phrasing.
🔵 Asking for reflection instead of fixing.
🔵 Asking for more positive feedback, not only correction.
🔵 Naming how tone and facial expressions affect your nervous system.
🔵 Asking for clarification instead of assuming.
🔵 Taking space before responding.
🔵 Repairing without abandoning yourself.
🔵 Naming needs.
🔵 Setting boundaries.
🔵 Asking for support in specific language.
The RSD workbook includes scripts for teaching loved ones about RSD, asking for supportive feedback, requesting check-ins before difficult conversations, and asking others to reflect instead of fix.
You might ask yourself:
Which skill have I already started using?
Which tool helped me more than I expected?
Which survival pattern am I beginning to notice?
Which stress state do I recognize most often?
What does my body usually tell me before I reach overwhelm?
Where am I still using self-criticism when I need support?
What RSD trigger do I understand more clearly now?
What is one small accommodation I could practice this week?
You do not need to use every tool.
You do not need to master every skill.
The work is to begin noticing sooner, responding with less shame, and building supports that fit your actual nervous system.
Flourish is not asking you to become someone else.
It is helping you understand yourself more clearly, support yourself more honestly, and rebuild trust in your own body, needs, emotions, and voice.