What is Color Mending®?
Color Mending is a neuroscience-based emotional regulation methodology that uses intuitive coloring and proprietary interpretation charts to help you decode what you’re feeling and why you’re feeling that way.
No talking. No revisiting your past. No artistic skills required.
It is not talk therapy. It is not art therapy. It is not journaling.
It is a structured two-step practice, grounded in neuroscience, that teaches you to read your body’s emotional signals more accurately and understand what they are trying to get you to see.
Here is exactly what it is, how it works, and who it was built for.
Where Color Mending came from
I spent six years developing Color Mending before I released it to the public.
The journey began in 2018 when I graduated a year-long certification program that taught me how to use guided visualizations to move through trauma (called the Integrative Processing Technique, or IPT).
That year, I spent thousands of hours not only working through my own trauma, but helping others work through theirs. The people I was working with and I were experiencing bigger breakthroughs and better results than we had using any other form of therapy.
But I noticed three things that felt off.
I was still living in the future or the past. I couldn’t feel settled in the present moment.
I was playing the victim. The reason I wasn’t as far ahead in my career as I wanted to be? It was because of the decisions my great-grandmother made. I couldn’t see the part I played in how my life was playing out.
I was still relying on other people to make sense of what I was feeling and why I was feeling that way. If you would have asked me directly, my honest answer was, “I don’t know.”
These observations were bizarre to me.
Did I not just spend thousands of dollars and hours working on myself? Why did I feel disconnected from my body? And why did it still feel like I couldn’t understand or regulate my own emotions?
So, I began looking for the answer.
I started working with more and more people, testing out the effectiveness of guided visualizations vs. coloring.
I surveyed thousands of people about their relationship to their emotions.
I interviewed hundreds of licensed professionals — therapists, social workers, occupational therapists, life coaches, speech-language pathologists, and counselors.
I read so much neuroscience research.
The answer that kept emerging was the same:
Most emotional tools skip the first step. They work at the level of thought, language, and interpretation. They assume you can already receive and read the signals your body is sending.
But for most adults, the foundational skill of receiving and accurately reading the signals your body is sending (the scientific word is interoception) is underdeveloped.
Not because something is wrong with them. Because no one ever taught it.
I built Color Mending to develop this skill.
The science it is built on
Color Mending is grounded in two bodies of research.
The first is Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s Theory of Constructed Emotions. Barrett’s research establishes that emotions are not pre-programmed reactions that happen to you. They are your brain’s best interpretation of physical signals coming from your body, filtered through your past experience and current context. Your body sends the signal. Your brain constructs the meaning.
The second is the interoception research. The majority of the research I used is from Kelly Mahler, OTD, OTR/L. Her research is not only accessible, she also has an incredible library of resources for people of all ages. Mahler’s work establishes that interoception, the internal sensory system that carries body signals to the brain, is a trainable skill. It can be developed at any age. And developing it improves emotional clarity, emotional regulation, and the ability to accurately understand what the body is communicating.
Color Mending is the applied coloring practice built on both.
The two-step Color Mending process
Color Mending is a simple two-step process. Done consistently, it builds interoceptive awareness and emotional literacy from the inside out.
Step 1: Select a topic and color it out intuitively
The first step begins by selecting what you want to color about. Most people choose a feeling they can’t name, a pattern they keep noticing in themselves, or a question that has been on their mind.
Once you have selected a topic, you do a body scan. As you think about what you selected, you move your attention through the body to find the noisiest spot, meaning the place where sensation is strongest or most present right now. Not an emotion label. The physical sensation itself. Where it is. What it feels like. How loud it is.
Once you locate it, you color out the sensation onto the page using any shape and any color that feels right.
This is called intuitive coloring. You are not drawing a picture of your emotion. You are not making art. You are externalizing a physical body sensation, getting it out of the body and onto the page.
There are no rigid art rules to follow, just your intuition.
Step 2: Decode your coloring with the proprietary Color and Shapes Charts
The second step uses the proprietary Color Mending Color and Shapes Charts.
Once you have colored out the sensation, you look at what you created. Each color and each shape that appeared is a clue. The Charts are your translation guides. Using the charts, you begin gathering clues, drawing meaning, and making connections to gain a clearer picture of what your body is trying to communicate to you.
Specifically, the Charts help you identify what emotion is present, understand why it is there, and identify what mental model — the story or belief your brain has been running — may be underneath it. When you can see that mental model clearly, you can decide if it still serves you or if it is ready to be updated.
The result is that you understand what you are feeling, why you are feeling it, and you can articulate this to others.
All of this empowers you to become your own best advocate.
Do you want to do anything with the information you uncovered? Did you identify a skill gap that you can work with a licensed professional on? Is there a small action you can take to move through the emotion(s) you uncovered?
Why Color Mending works
Color Mending bypasses your thinking brain and lets your body speak first.
Most of us are used to intellectualizing our emotions. We analyze, explain, and try to think our way through feelings, which means we often miss what the body is actually communicating before the brain has had a chance to build a story around it.
Color Mending creates space to feel and be with the emotion. No judgment. No forcing. Not trying to fix it immediately.
There are four things that make it work:
Somatically-based: Your body holds emotional information that your mind does not have access to yet. Intuitive coloring gives your body permission to express what is happening without words.
Rooted in play and curiosity: You are becoming a detective of your inner world, discovering patterns and mental models you were not aware of, but are ready to take responsibility for and change.
Based in the present: You are not verbally processing painful experiences or forcing yourself to talk about things you are not ready to discuss. You are coloring and learning about the current moment.
Accessible: Sessions take 15–20 minutes once you are familiar with the process. You do not need to be an artist. You do not need any prior experience.
Emotional regulation is a practice, not a destination. It is something you will return to over and over throughout your life. Not because you are broken or behind, but because you are alive.
Color Mending is built to be that consistent, accessible practice.
What Color Mending is not
Because Color Mending involves coloring, it is easy to confuse it with other things. Here is what it is not.
It is not art therapy
Art therapy is a clinical modality delivered by licensed art therapists within a professional therapeutic relationship. Color Mending is an educational tool. It does not require a licensed therapist to deliver, does not diagnose or treat anything, and the coloring is not the therapeutic element; it is the vehicle for interoceptive training. The output is a clue, not a piece of art.
It is not talk therapy or CBT
Talk therapy and cognitive-behavioral approaches work primarily through language, analysis, and cognitive reframing, responding to the emotional experience after it has arrived. Color Mending works at the layer beneath that, building the body-brain signal pathway that feeds all other approaches.
Regulation tools work on the emotion. Interoception works on what created it. One is responding to the fire. The other is watching for smoke.
Color Mending is not a replacement for therapy. For many people, it is the foundation that makes therapy more effective. Almost everyone who uses Color Mending takes their insights from sessions into their work with a licensed professional to process and work through.
It is not journaling
Journaling works at the level of language and thought. You write about what you are feeling and why. Color Mending works at the level of physical sensation, before language is involved. The body scan comes before the interpretation. The coloring externalizes the sensation before it has been named.
It is not a relaxation practice
Coloring is relaxing for many people, and there is research supporting that effect. But relaxation is not the goal of Color Mending. The goal is interoceptive training. The goal is building the skill of reading body signals accurately and using them to understand what emotions are communicating. The regulated state coloring can produce is useful as a window for that work. It is not the work itself.
Who Color Mending is for
Color Mending is for adults who want to understand their emotions from the inside out.
It tends to work especially well for people who recognize one or more of these patterns, just as I did:
You feel emotionally numb or disconnected from what is happening inside you
You feel things intensely but cannot name or locate them
You have tried talk therapy and felt stuck or like something was still missing
You understand your emotional patterns intellectually, but still feel controlled by them
The regulation tools you have tried work sometimes, but not reliably, or not when you need them most
You are neurodivergent and experience emotions intensely or have difficulty identifying what you are feeling
You are rebuilding self-trust after being part of a high-control religious, cultural, or family environments
Color Mending is not a clinical intervention and is not designed for people in acute mental health crisis. For those experiences, a licensed mental health professional is the right support.
Color Mending works best as a regular body literacy practice, either used on its own or alongside other professional care.
What consistent practice builds
Practiced consistently, Color Mending builds three connected skills.
The first is interoceptive awareness: the ability to notice body signals earlier, more accurately, and with greater differentiation. The alarm gets clearer. You have more lead time before emotions arrive at full volume.
The second is emotional accuracy: the ability to translate body signals into accurate emotional labels. Not what you think you should feel, not what you felt last time, but what is actually present right now.
The third is emotional literacy: the ability to understand what an emotion is pointing toward, what mental model, belief, or unmet need is underneath it, and use that information to respond intentionally rather than react automatically.
Emotions as clues. Not rules.
How to start
There are two ways to begin, depending on where you are.
1. If you want to understand the science and the methodology first, this free Color Mending guide walks you through the neuroscience of how emotions are constructed, introduces the mental models framework, and shows you exactly what the Color Mending process looks like in practice.
2. If you are ready to learn how to guide yourself through Color Mending sessions, The Coloring Bet is a 21-day program where you practice the Color Mending process from start to finish, until reading your body’s signals starts to feel like second nature.
→ Join The Coloring Bet and start putting the science into practice
Frequently asked questions about Color Mending
Do I need to be good at drawing or coloring?
No. The quality of the coloring is irrelevant. You are not making art. You are externalizing a body sensation using shapes and colors. The coloring does not need to be recognizable or beautiful. It only needs to be honest to what you felt in your body when you created it.
How long does a Color Mending session take?
When you are first learning how to guide yourself through Color Mending sessions, plan on 30–45 minutes. As you become more familiar with the process and how to interpret your colorings, sessions typically take 15–20 minutes.
What if I want to try Color Mending before committing to The Coloring Bet?
The best way to experience Color Mending before purchasing is to book a 1:1 session with Chelsea directly. These sessions are called Color Me Psychic. They are a live, personalized Color Mending experience where you color and Chelsea interprets your results with you in real time. It is a low-commitment way to experience the methodology before investing in The Coloring Bet.
Can I use Color Mending alongside therapy?
Absolutely. Color Mending is designed to complement professional support, not replace it. Many people find that consistent Color Mending practice deepens their therapy work by giving them clearer, earlier access to their body’s signals. You can bring the insights from your coloring sessions directly into sessions with your licensed professional to process and work through together.
Can therapists and coaches use Color Mending with clients?
Yes! Color Mending offers a Professional Certification Course for licensed therapists, counselors, and coaches who want to integrate interoception-based, non-verbal emotional regulation tools into their practice. Graduates are legally certified to use the methodology within their scope of practice.
Is Color Mending based on real science?
Yes. Color Mending is grounded in Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett’s Theory of Constructed Emotions and Kelly Mahler’s interoception research — both supported by peer-reviewed evidence. The methodology has been developed and refined over six years. You can read more about Color Mending’s research foundation here.
What do I need to get started?
Your favorite coloring tools: crayons, colored pencils, markers, pens, or watercolors. Use what you have.
Paper. Any size or type. Use what you have. Even junk mail works!
Access to the Color Mending proprietary charts through The Coloring Bet.
