A Practical Guide to Healing, Integration, and Rewriting Your Story
by Keith W. Fiveson (2026)
A guided workbook for people ready to understand their patterns, regulate their nervous system, and rewrite the stories that shape their lives.
This workbook is the practical companion to Return of the Exiled Child.
It is designed to be used slowly, honestly, and with care.
You will work through structured reflections, guided prompts, and embodied practices rooted in mindfulness, Internal Family Systems informed work, and narrative integration. Each section helps you identify protective patterns, reconnect with younger parts of self, and restore choice where automatic reactions once dominated.
This is not a journal and not a self help shortcut.
It is a process.
You will be invited to:
Track sensations, emotions, and beliefs as lived experience.
Identify the adaptations you developed to survive.
Differentiate protection from presence.
Practice grounding, breath, and self regulation.
Rewrite internal narratives with clarity and compassion.
This workbook supports individual use, therapeutic work, men’s groups, and guided circles. It assumes intelligence, courage, and willingness on the part of the reader.
Healing does not come from insight alone.
It comes from staying present long enough for integration to occur.
This book meets you there.
“Only when the heart is cracked wide open can our exiled parts fi nd their way back home. Return of the Exiled Child transforms trauma into treasure. This book cracks the heart wide open, alchemizing armor into compassion and exile into belonging. A guide for how unconditional presence can lead us back home to the long-lost, wounded child within. ”
— Dr. Miles Neale Author, Return with Elixir and Gradual Awakening
Mindfulness coach and contemplative therapist. U.S. Army veteran. Two time cancer survivor thriver. Author.
Keith W. Fiveson is a contemplative therapist, mindfulness based coach, and PATP certified psychedelic assisted therapy provider. He is a U.S. Army veteran, cancer survivor, and open heart surgery thriver. He is the author of Return of the Exiled Child and The Mindfulness Experience. For more than thirty years, Keith has worked with high performers, veterans, and individuals navigating trauma, burnout, and life transitions. His work integrates mindfulness, Internal Family Systems informed practice, breathwork, and embodied self regulation. His professional orientation is grounded in lived experience. Childhood trauma, military service, serious illness, and recovery inform his emphasis on presence, pacing, and nervous system safety. Keith’s work focuses on restoring contact and choice rather than fixing or optimizing. He supports clients in identifying adaptive patterns, reconnecting with younger parts of self, and integrating insight through embodied practice.
Written from lived experience, Return of the Exiled Child explores trauma, resilience, and healing through mindfulness, parts work, and lived truth.
8 Strategies to Find Balance in an Unbalanced World
by Keith W. Fiveson (2021)
A practical mindfulness framework for directing attention, regulating energy, and cultivating presence with purpose in daily life.