How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life

Discover the power of how K-Dramas can improve your wellbeing and provide a sense of belonging Love K-Dramas and want more permission to binge watch them? In How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life: Powerful Lessons on Belongingness, Healing, and Mental Health, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Jeanie Y. Chang explores what K-Dramas can teach us about our own well-being and how we can use the lessons they teach us to live better and more meaningful lives. She also touches upon the powerful interrelationship between K-dramas, mental health, and belongingness. Topics covered include: Using K-Dramas as a roadmap to life, showing you how to navigate speed bumps, roadblocks, twists, turns, and dead ends Building cross-cultural relationships that you otherwise may not have without being a K-Drama fan Processing grief from the loss of a loved one to a loss of anything—a job, your physical safety, a relationship, or something else Harnessing the idea of Jeong, which is innate in Korean society and refers to the emotional sentiment of affinity, affection, kinship, and connection which is the thread throughout Jeanie's community Working the author’s trademarked mental health framework, Cultural Confidence®, to build up your mental health, identity, mindfulness, and resilience For K-Drama fans and enthusiasts and anyone curious about the influence of pop culture, How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life is an entertaining and educational must-read on how this enormously popular global phenomenon can help us become the best versions of ourselves.

Foreword ix Introduction xi Part I The Powerful Intersectionality of K-Dramas and Mental Health 1 Chapter 1 The Global Appeal of K-Dramas 3 Chapter 2 K-Dramas Are for Self-Care 15 Chapter 3 K-Dramas and Processing Grief 35 Chapter 4 K-Dramas and Korean Han 47 Chapter 5 K-Dramas and Healing Our Traumas 57 Chapter 6 K-Dramas and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 71 Chapter 7 K-Dramas and Suicide Awareness 81 Chapter 8 K-Dramas and Coping with Depression 91 Chapter 9 K-Dramas and Managing Anxiety 105 Part II The Powerful Intersectionality of K-Dramas and Identity 117 Chapter 10 K-Dramas and Life Stages 119 Chapter 11 K-Dramas and Cultural Identity 133 Chapter 12 K-Dramas and Neurodiversity 151 Part III The Powerful Intersectionality of K-Dramas and Resilience 159 Chapter 13 K-Dramas and the Workplace 161 Chapter 14 K-Dramas = Belongingness + Jeong 169 Resource List 181 References 183 Acknowledgments 187 About the Author 189 Index 191