community emotional CPR
recovering connection, reducing isolation, & building community
ABOUT
Emotional CPR is a public health education program designed to teach people to assist others through emotional crisis or distress. It developed out of the peer-led mental health recovery movement by people with lived experience of their own mental health struggles. It is based on values of mutual support and interpersonal communication. Just as CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation) supports the physical heart, eCPR supports the emotional heart as a form of emotional resuscitation.
eCPR is based on principles central to a number of different support approaches: trauma-informed care, crisis counseling, counseling after disasters, suicide prevention, open dialogue, cultural and social attunement and peer support.
HISTORY
The approach was first carried out after Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, U.S. in 2005 where lay community members were trained to do outreach and offer mutual aid and peer-led support through eCPR to their wider community. The approach has been continued in regions around the world over the past two decades and has proved extremely supportive during the COVID-19 crisis helping to alleviate the impacts of social isolation and physical distancing and lay the foundation for community-based healing. eCPR is currently being used by clinicians, service users, first responders, administrators, veterinarians, education professionals, law enforcement, and the general public. visit www.emotional-cpr.org for more information.
COMMUNITY ECPR
Community eCPR uses the practice of Emotional CPR as a radical community care approach for recovering connection, providing emotional support and community building. This is an emancipatory technology for gathering, meeting and collective caring.
The approach relies on an experiential and unfolding process of expanded listening and dialogue where we share words and feelings as they arise, reclaiming our connection to self and others. This serves as a way to connect, empower each other and experience new life in the present moment as revitalization. The heart-driven dialogue is adapted with movement and somatic activism as a support structure for our communities and allies. We allow this approach to serve as a conduit for nurturing a kind of collaborative presence for bodies and people to become better able to feel their feelings and be in response with each other. This is about encouraging the formation of connections and reciprocating these to others in solidarity with a focus on collective action, access, kindness, radical acceptance and staying with what arises and not alone.
We are giving ourselves and each other tools to be empowered to have courageous interactions. We acknowledge that these kinds of interactions and practices of deep listening and mutual care challenge the logic of the current system. We recognize these interactions as required for the abolition of systems of harm and oppression and for pathways towards individual and collective liberation. These radical care practices require practice. We are here to practice this way of being with each other.