Workbook
What Your Family Needs to Hear
A Workbook for the People Who Love Someone Through Crisis
This workbook produces a written record of what your family member needs — in their words, not your assumptions.
For the family member who wants to support someone they love through something difficult and does not know how to ask what that looks like.
The Name It First Experience
The best support starts with asking — this workbook is where you prepare to ask and remember what you heard. What Your Family Needs to Hear walks the person who loves someone through crisis through the questions they have been afraid to ask — what does support actually look like to you, what do you need me to say, what do you need me to stop saying — and gives them a place to record the answers. It is for the family member who wants to help and has been guessing what that means — who loves someone well but has been assuming rather than asking. You finish with a written record of what your family member told you they need — and the agreements you made.
You can opt into 30-, 60-, and 90-day check-ins from your account. We recommend you do — the point is to see what changed.
Sample questions
- What have you been trying to give this person — and how do you know that is what they need?
- What makes you want to support them through this — and what does showing up well look like for you?
- What would you want someone to ask you if you were in their situation?
Research basis
Grounded in Pennebaker (1997) research on expressive disclosure and its psychological benefits / family systems theory (Bowen, 1978) on differentiation and the transmission of unspoken family narratives / legacy letter research on the role of explicit value transmission in family identity continuity across generations.
Choose your format.
Every format asks the same questions and produces the same document.
Print Paperbackpersonalize
A real book and a pen. Write in the margins. The most permanent version of you on a page.
$22.99
eBook + journal
The full guide on any screen, with a companion journal to write your answers by hand.
Not available
Audiobook
We read every question and every scenario aloud. For the commute, the walk, the dishes.
Not available
Hardcoverpersonalize
The keepsake edition — sewn, ribboned, made to sit on a shelf and be returned to.
Not available
Digital Fill + membership+membership
Answer on screen. Your responses save as you go and assemble into your finished document.
$12.99
Hands-Free Interactive + membership+membership
Listen to each question and speak your answer. We capture it. You never touch a keyboard.
Not available
Everything packages
The Paperback Everything Package
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The Hardcover Everything Package
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The Premium Hardcover Everything Package
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Choose your pace.
The Essential path takes you to your finished document by the questions that matter most. The Full-depth path walks every question, every scenario, every angle. Both produce the same signed document — one just goes deeper on the way there.
Essential path
Shorter sessions. The questions that go directly to the document.
Full depth
Every question. Every scenario, every angle.
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