Healing Racial Stress Workbook for Black Teens: Skills to Help You Manage Emotions, Resist Racism, and Feel Empowered

by Jessica S. Henry, Farzana T. Saleem, Dana L. Cunningham

Powerful skills to help you heal from racial stress and trauma, resist racism in your day-to-day life, and thrive. If you’ve experienced or witnessed racism or discrimination, you may feel stressed, angry, sad, or anxious. You may have trouble focusing on school or enjoying time with friends. And you may even have moments when your heart races and you fear something bad will happen. You should know that you are not alone, and what happened to you isn’t your fault. Most importantly, there are tools you can use to work through these difficult emotions, regain your confidence, and move forward from your experience. This workbook can help guide you, step by step. Written by a team of experts in Black mental health and wellness and grounded in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), this workbook offers evidence-based strategies to help you manage emotions in the face of race-based stress due to microaggressions, implicit bias, overt racism, and vicarious racism. You’ll also learn to find strength in your racial and cultural identity, and gain the skills needed to resist racism and thrive. You’ll gain tools to help   With this workbook, you’ll see that you are not alone in your experience, and will find stress-relieving strategies you can draw on throughout your lifetime to stay well in body and mind. Finally, you’ll learn tips for navigating discussions about race and experiences of discrimination, so you can be empowered to stand up for what’s right and contribute to an antiracist society. In these increasingly challenging times, kids and teens need mental health resources more than ever. With more than 1.6 million copies sold worldwide, Instant Help Books are easy to use, proven-effective, and recommended by therapists.

Genres: Psychology

168 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2023

About the author

Jessica S. Henry, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Georgia. She is the co-founder and vice president of program development and evaluation for the Black Mental Wellness Corp., and founder and CEO of Community Impact: Consultation & Psychological Services—a trauma-informed organization whose mission is to provide trauma-informed services to individuals and organizations affected by traumatic events.

Henry is the current senior director of behavioral health for one of Washington, DC’s largest Federally Qualified Health Centers, and previous clinical director of a level-5 close security male prison and Georgia’s largest youth homeless shelter. Overall, Henry is passionate about the mental health of individuals in Black and under resourced communities and has specialized in increasing access to treatment and providing the highest quality of evidence-based mental health treatment services to underserved youth, families, and adults exposed to traumatic events (e.g., community violence, abuse, neglect). She received her B.S. from Howard University, M.A. from Columbia University, and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from The George Washington University. She is from the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area.

For more information about Henry, please visit BlackMentalWellness.com or ImpactTheCommunity.com. She can also be found on Instagram @BlackMentalWellness or @CommunityImpact_CP.

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this workbook. I have been looking for ways to integrate racial trauma into my work as a mental health counselor with concrete interventions beyond discussion of societal messages and experiences and more traditional trauma treatments. I have asked my practice to purchase copies of this workbook for each of our treatment sites. I think the workbook is a great guide for White clinicians specifically. We often struggle with how to initiate the conversation around race and work with this type of trauma so having tools like this will hopefully improve the knowledge and competency of those clinicians. I am comfortable discussing race with my clients but as a White person, I will always have some blind spots that I look to work through. I appreciate that there are authors doing the important work to assist in filling those gaps and getting the right care to those who need it. I look forward to purchasing the finished copy of this workbook!

[Breana Curry · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Healing Racial Stress workbook is an extremely useful tool for black teens as they navigate and deal with racial tension. The book supports teens in understanding racism, exploring the impact of racism, as well as building skills and a game plan for dealing with racism. It is a practical workbook that provides education ("For You to Know") as well as meaningful activities ("For You to Do"). The workbook challenges the reader to dig deep and reflect on experiences that have shaped one's perspectives; it then helps contextualize those thoughts and offers strategies to heal and better navigate racial experiences. I rate this workbook 5 stars (5/5).

[Shawberry Likes To Read · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and New Harbinger Publications for this ARC.


I think this is a self guided workbook to use for group session or independently. The prompts are great and thought provoking. All content is relative to current issues. As a social worker, I think this a useful workbook for unpacking race related emotions. I highly encourage others to purchase.

There are also free guided meditations, worksheets and additional tools available for download.