The Safe Harbor Statement
What it is
The frame-setting opening read at every EPI meeting. It does two things at once: it establishes the legal and ethical boundary (this is peer practice, not clinical treatment), and it sets the frame for what the room is. It is EPI’s version of AA’s opening statement — load-bearing, repeated, and treated as relatively fixed.
How it works
The Safe Harbor statement is read aloud at the opening of every meeting, before any other content. It is followed by reference to the agreements, the body-based arrival, and the core practice (see meeting-script when it is exported).
The text (v5 wording — load-bearing)
Welcome. Before we begin, I need to share our Safe Harbor statement:
We are peers, not clinicians. This is a space for practice, not medical treatment. I am not a professional therapist, and this group is not therapy. You are here at your own choice and participate at your own risk. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please seek professional support. Everything shared here stays here. We hold what we witness with care and respect.
Why it is load-bearing (from v5)
It protects facilitators from liability exposure, it protects newcomers by naming what the room is and isn’t, and it repeats enough that it becomes part of the culture. We should treat this text as relatively fixed — refine it once, then don’t keep tinkering. AA has barely changed its opening statements in 85 years, and that stability is a feature.
Related principles
- principle-11 — No Professional Class. The Safe Harbor statement enacts this Principle in plain language at the start of every meeting: “We are peers, not clinicians.”
- principle-19 — The Group is Not Therapy. Same enactment: “This is a space for practice, not medical treatment … If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please seek professional support.”
Status notes
active — currently being read in the existing Men’s Group; v5 names
the text as load-bearing and asks that it be treated as relatively fixed.
Not held as a framing candidate because v5 explicitly says “refine it
once, then don’t keep tinkering.” If the team revisits the wording
later, it should move through a deliberate event (analogous to how a
canonical Tool changes — see CLAUDE.md §3), not casual edits.
Note on terminology
The Safe Harbor text uses “professional therapist” rather than “host” or “clinician” specifically. This is intentional — the statement is speaking to legal and medical framing, where “therapist” is the term newcomers will pattern-match. Internally we say host, not facilitator (per principle-11 and the resolved facilitator-pathway-vs-no-professional-class fork).