Tuned In
A guide to reconnecting with yourself
Founder of Rooted Rhythm Therapy & Creator of the Tuned In Institute
Your inbox fills before you've had coffee. You snap at the people you love the moment you walk through the door. Some days it's a flatness you can't shake, or a body that won't let you sleep.
You are not broken.
You are not dramatic.
You are not too much.
These are signs of a nervous system asking for attention. Not character flaws, and not a life sentence.
This isn't a book about a label. It's a book about how you're wired, and the skills no one taught you.
You don't need to be in therapy to use it. You don't need a diagnosis, and you don't need to fit any particular profile of a "sensitive person." We live in a world that asks more of our nervous systems than they were built to give, and treats ordinary human reactions as problems to fix. If you've ever held yourself together by a thread in a room full of people who looked effortless, that private experience is far more common than it feels.
Here's the part worth holding onto: self-regulation, the capacity to notice what's happening inside you and bring yourself back toward steady, is a learnable skill. The research on neuroplasticity is real, and so is the lived experience of the people who do this work. Your nervous system is responsive, and remarkably willing to relearn old patterns at any age.
What you'll build
Grounded in attachment research and neuroscience, and drawn from more than a decade of clinical work. Reflection questions and small practices run throughout, because reading gives you information and practice is what changes the response in your body.
- Understand the wiring behind your reactions, so the question shifts from what's wrong with me? to what just happened to my system?
- Recognize your nervous system states and find the window of tolerance where you can actually cope and grow
- Build a toolkit for the moments you're triggered or shut down, matched to whatever state you're in
- Tell guilt from shame, and meet yourself with compassion instead of the shame spiral
- Set loving boundaries that hold without hardening you
- Notice who steadies you and who spikes you, and repair the ruptures that come with every real relationship
- Design daily rhythms and a life that hold you up rather than wear you down
Eight chapters, three movements
Written to be read in order the first time, then returned to in whatever order serves you. Each chapter asks you toward the same three things: more presence, more clarity, and more compassion for yourself.
Understand
how you're wiredUnderstanding How You're Wired
Why your reactions have always made sense, and the five Tuned In principles turned toward your own life.
Your Brain & Nervous System on Your Side
The green, red, and blue states, the window of tolerance, and the early signs of dysregulation.
Your Emotions Are Signals
What feelings are actually for, where they live in the body, and how naming one helps it settle.
Reconnect
the deeper workComing Back to Center
A set of practices matched to each state, so returning to steady becomes something you can do on purpose.
Shame & Self-Worth
Telling guilt from shame, catching the too-much and not-enough stories, and stepping out of the shame-anger spiral.
Loving Boundaries
Holding a limit warmly, once, without taking on everyone else's feelings as your job.
Design a life that holds you
carrying it forwardWired for Connection
You don't regulate alone. Who settles you, who spikes you, and how every real relationship is rupture and repair.
Who You're Becoming
Rewriting the old story, claiming the gifts that come with feeling deeply, and finding the thread of purpose that steadies you.
Honoring How Far You've Come
A practice you return to for the rest of your life, not a finish line you cross once.
You can read it in a week, or take all the time you need.
The five Tuned In principles, turned toward you
Five ideas run through everything taught at the Tuned In Institute, with children, with teens, and now with you. Turned toward your own life, they read a little differently.
Relax into the present moment
Anxiety lives in a future you're bracing against. The present, the actual chair and the actual breath, is usually the most survivable place to stand.
Trust the process
Staying with discomfort on purpose, in doses you can tolerate, is how your tolerance for it grows. The learning often lives right at the edge of resistance.
Prioritize connection, starting with yourself
When you're on steadier terms with your own inner world, connection with the people around you stops costing so much.
Loving boundaries
You have limits, and naming them is a form of care for everyone involved, yourself included. A limit held with warmth is not a door slammed shut.
Show up authentically
When you're honest from a settled place rather than a reactive one, you feel more like yourself and less like a performance you're holding up.
Written by a clinician who does this work every day
Sophie Schauermann, LCSW, is the founder of Rooted Rhythm Therapy, a multi-state mental health organization, and the Tuned In Institute. Over more than a decade of clinical work with children, teens, and adults, she kept meeting people carrying the same private heaviness, taught somewhere along the way that the way their nervous system worked was a problem to solve.
Much of what's in these pages was first developed in therapy rooms, then refined into a course library that supports the work happening alongside it. This book takes the heart of that work and puts it directly in your hands. Sophie lives in Colorado with her husband and children.
Sophie
The book, brought to life in Tuned In Tools for Adults
When you're ready to practice alongside the reading, the companion course walks through the same eight-chapter arc with:
- Video lessons and audio versions for every module
- Downloadable worksheets and practices
- Full written transcripts and lifetime access
Rooted Rhythm client families receive the full course library at no cost, along with Remi, our concierge trained on the Tuned In approach.
Find your way back to steady
Order your copy of Tuned In: A guide to reconnecting with yourself.