Emotions are a main part of us. They often drag us and prevent us from carrying out our goals or hamper our relationships with those around us. Throughout our lives, we are encouraged to learn many things: technical knowledge, behavioral norms, social abilities, etc. But it remains strange to be educated in our own emotional functioning: traditionally, emotions have been something that might be repressed or just hided and the consequences are of course negative. The need to learn how to handle our emotions becomes more obvious in people who have suffered any type of episode of mental ill health in their lives. Normally, these episodes are accompanied by a deficit in the management of one's feelings and a loss of social skills when interacting with other people. Here arises the need for an initiative such as LIVING e-MOTIONS, a training program in emotional education specifically designed for people with mental illness that uses an innovative methodology: visual storyliving. It is proven that putting feelings into words has therapeutic effects, indeed storytelling has revealed as a powerful recovery tool, especially for the people with psychic discomfort. But LIVING e-MOTIONS goes a step further: we are just not going to tell a story but make others FEEL our own story. Storyliving means putting into other’s shoes, feel what the other feels but… how to do it? That is the challenge. We are doing it with stunning and deep short videos told in first person where people with psychic discomfort tell us about their feelings and their recovery stories from a positive perspective. Feel, as close as possible, what a person with mental health troubles feels. LIVING e-MOTIONS is a training course on emotional education especially thought for the needs of people with mental illness. The teaching methodology is based on visual storyliving, which means that the learners reflect about their own emotions and recovery experiences in front of a camera. They are the protagonist of their own story. Moreover, some of these learners tell about their recovery story during live events, following the style of the TED talks, being at the same time a peerless dissemination action to fight against the social stigma attached to mental illness and a great exercise for the learners to empower them and practice all the knowledge and competences acquired during the training course. We want to increase the basic competences (social and digital) of the people with mental health challenges, increase their wellbeing and improve their quality of life. We want to make their voice be heard and give their emotions the place they deserve. In fact, this is the aim of any kind of learning: to know more about ourselves, improve our competences and thus achieve a better society. The training course will be piloted in Spain and Estonia during eight months, and as a result of those experiences, we will identify success stories that will be reflected in the TELL IT OUT! portfolio: an inspiring collection of real stories to show that the recovery from mental illness does exist and to highlight the efforts made by the people living with it to overcome. Moreover, the competences acquired/improved by the participants will be recognized with the "competences' passport", a way to certificate the progress made and thus continue the empowerment process. All the teaching materials, results, success stories, blogs about the training course, guidelines to certificate the competences, videos, etc. are available in the free e-learning platform LIVING e-MOTIONS, so anybody could benefit from this innovative training course. Indeed, one of the activities of the LIVING e-MOTIONS project is to transfer the initiative to other vulnerable target groups, as emotion regulation and mental health are something that any person in vulnerable situation must reinforce. The training methodology is conceived to improve the learning process and to empower the target group, but also as a strong visibility action to inform the general society about mental illness: what it is, how to recognize it, what "recovery" means, etc. The short videos (available in the platform but also distributed by social media) and the live events are key for a useful dissemination campaign. We want to educate the general society in mental health to promote the reintegration of this target group and, at the same time, facilitate early detection. LIVING e-MOTIONS is an accessible resource aiming to help people with psychic discomfort to lead their own recovery process, support others in this journey and show their reality to the society, always from a creative, positive and didactic perspective.
Emotions are a main part of us. They often drag us and prevent us from carrying out our goals or hamper our relationships with those around us. Throughout our lives, we are encouraged to learn many things: technical knowledge, behavioral norms, social abilities, etc. But it remains strange to be educated in our own emotional functioning: traditionally, emotions have been something that might be repressed or just hided and the consequences are of course negative. The need to learn how to handle our emotions becomes more obvious in people who have suffered any type of mental health challenges in their lives. Normally, these episodes are accompanied by a deficit in the management of one's feelings and a loss of social skills when interacting with other people. Here arises the need for an initiative such as LIVING e-MOTIONS, a training program in emotional education specifically designed for people with mental health challenges that uses an innovative methodology: visual story-living. It is proven that putting feelings into words has therapeutic effects, indeed storytelling has revealed as a powerful recovery tool, especially for the people with mental health troubles. But LIVING e-MOTIONS goes a step further: we want you not just tell you a story but make you FEEL our own story. Story-living means putting into other’s shoes, feel what the other feels but… how to do it? We have used visual narrative, that is to say, short videos told in first person where people with mental health challenges tell us about their feelings and their recovery stories from a positive perspective. Feel, as close as possible, what a person with mental health troubles feels. LIVING e-MOTIONS is a training course on emotional education composed by eight sessions especially thought for the needs of people with mental illness. The teaching methodology is based on visual story-living, which means that the learners reflect about their own emotions and recovery experiences in front of a camera after the training period. They are the protagonist of their own story. It was planned that some of the learners told about their recovery story during live events, following the style of the TED talks but unfortunately, due to COVID-19 pandemic, it was not possible to implement this dissemination action to fight against the social stigma that still persists attached to mental illness. One of the objectives of this training course was to increase the basic competences of the people with mental health challenges, increase their wellbeing and improve their quality of life. We think that, despite the unforeseen difficulties we had to face, we managed to achived it. Their voices have been heard and we gave their emotions the place they deserve. The training course was piloted in Spain and Estonia during 2020, involving 21 adults and young adults with mental health challenges. As a result of those experiences, we created the Living e-Motions TELL IT OUT! portfolio: an inspiring collection of real stories showing that the recovery from mental illness does exist and to highlight the efforts made by the people living with it to overcome. The competences acquired or improved by the participants have been recognized with the "Learning passport", a reflecting document that certificates the progress made and thus helping to continue with the empowerment process. All the teaching materials, results, success stories, blogs about the training course, guidelines to certificate the competences, videos, etc. are available in the free e-learning platform LIVING e-MOTIONS WWW.LIVING-EMOTIONS.ORG, so anybody can benefit from this innovative training course. Indeed, one of the activities of the LIVING e-MOTIONS project was to transfer the initiative to other vulnerable target groups during a mentoring program in October-November 2020, as emotion regulation and mental health are something that any person in vulnerable situation must reinforce. We managed to train 12 organizations replicating the Living e-Motions course with their clients. The training methodology (visual story-living) has been conceived to improve the learning process and to empower the target group, but also as a strong visibility action to inform the general society about mental illness: what it is, how to recognize it, what "recovery" means, etc. The short videos available in the platform are key for a useful dissemination campaign. We want to educate the general society in mental health to promote the reintegration of this target group and, at the same time, facilitate early detection. LIVING e-MOTIONS is an accessible resource aiming to help people with mental health challenges to lead their own recovery process, support others in this journey and show their reality to the society, always from a creative, fresh, positive and didactic perspective.