Resilience

If Emotional First Aid Were a Dress It Would Look Like This

Sometimes artists and psychologists think alike.

Posted February 11, 2016

I get a lot of emails from readers suggesting applications for the concept of Emotional First Aid (the title of my recent book and TED Talk). Here are a few of them.

Emotional First Aid Card Game for Children (in Swedish) in box of bandaids:

Source: Stefan Brockman

Coffee Cups with Emotional First Aid Quotes:

Source: Lima Abedin

And even Emotional First Aid ice-cream flavors:

Source: Raquel D'Apice

But the most stunning of those was a garment called Downcoat that was constructed years before my book was even written. Its creator, the artist Cat Chow, realized we share a focus in our work—the interplay between emotional vulnerability and resilience, and decided to send me the image. I was stunned by it.

Source: Cat Chow

“Downcoat is a human sized coat constructed from quilted Kleenex tissues. I can envision the wearer wiping away a tear with its sleeve. It serves as a visual metaphor for strength offering comfort and protection against one's emotional vulnerability.” Cat Chow.

You can see more of her work here:

Don’t forget to check out the non-wearable, non-playable, non-edible, version: Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure and Other Everyday Hurts (Plume, 2014).

Watch my TED Talk and improve your emotional health.

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