One of the most powerful and unique facets of being a peer specialist is having lived experience. Our lived experience is one of our primary modalities of connecting to and working with others and there are many utilizations for sharing it. There are also many nuances to knowing when and how to share lived experience and how to be effective in doing so.
One important part of sharing lived experience is creating hopefulness. Research states out of all the factors that may determine someone’s outcome with mental illness, levels of hopefulness were the primary predictor in how well someone does. This means the extent to which someone is struggling and the severity of their symptoms really does not make a difference in how well they might do afterwards. Knowing this has made it incredibly important for me to share my lived experience and to create awareness that recovery does happen and I am living proof of it. Usually while introducing myself to new patients on our in-patient units, I like to mention that I have had lived experience and I was in-patient 10 years ago. I also like sharing I have had lived experience with similar issues that everyone in the group is going through. I sometimes feel if I present well visually and verbally that there is a disconnect between how much I was struggling years ago compared to where I am at now. It can be painful but I want people to have a sense of the severity of what I have been through so that it inspires them to work hard in therapy and do well. I would worry someone might see how well I am doing now and feel like I had not gone through similar things as they have therefore my recovery is different than theirs or that the things I am saying about how I fully recovered might not be valid or applicable to their mental health journey. One of the most major components in my mental health recovery was hopefulness, which fueled me to work hard every day to restore my mental and emotional health and my life to where I wanted it to be. In the beginning of my journey, I thought I was a messiah, I had a lot of referential thinking, I was nonverbal the first 3 months out of the hospital, I had anxiety, depression, suicidal thinking, and mania. However, I am now living a full life where I work full-time, I have a good social life, I live independently, my symptoms are much less severe, and I feel good about myself.
It is also important to have awareness that lived experience can be triggering and to know how specific I will or will not be in sharing. The level of generalization or specificity will usually directly correlate to how safe or dangerous and also how healing or painful sharing can be for the person I am sharing with. This can be especially important in a group setting because as a facilitator the ways in which I share my lived experience many times are going to be copied by the rest of the group. This means if I am being explicit and oversharing that many people may interpret this as a green light to do so as well. However, this is also a good way to shape the group dynamic to the extent of which we will share trauma and also in the detail that will or will not be expressed while doing so. Many times in groups people tend to mimic the way I share experiences, reflect upon others experiences, and in how I respond as well. When people hear the ways in which I share lived experience it can also help with the skill-building of sharing their own lived experience in safe ways. This may transcend care settings and be utilized in people’s everyday lives where they need safe ways to talk about their mental health.
Sharing lived experience can also create safety for others to do so and it can decrease vulnerability. Having a feeling of safety can be really important especially on an in-patient unit. Many people have had adverse experiences with the psychiatric system so when they are with someone who is also sharing they have had lived experience who is a staff member it can increase feelings of safety. A number of people have told me how it makes them feel safer to have a peer specialist on the unit with them. Many times people feel more compelled to talk about their mental health issues when they are with people who have been through some of the same things and who also have a similar vantage point. The fear of judgment can shut down conversations, especially in groups. In groups, there are many times where people will share an experience and I will wait to respond as a facilitator to see if anyone else wants to add to the conversation. Many times after doing so there is silence that follows, so this is usually a time where I will share some of my own lived experience or at least share that I have been through something similar and how I can relate. If I do not have the same lived experience that is being shared I will make sure to resonate and connect to the emotions or the overall experience of what has happened through my own lived experience. Doing both these things makes people feel validated and I think it also creates a safe response. Having this validation is powerful as it helps people to continue sharing and also know that they are not alone and there are others who have been through the same experiences they have. Validating someones experience with more lived experience is one way to show that you care for someone and you want them to get healthier. This feeling of validation normalizes what someone has been through and also implicitly states that it is okay to have had these experiences because I have had them to. Having mental illness can feel incredibly marginalizing for a number of reasons so hearing lived experience can be really humanizing. There is the realization that “What I’ve been through has happened to others therefore I’m not the only one and I’m more human.”
This being said there is also a notion in Dialogic Practice that many mental health experiences have unspeakable dilemmas and it is the inability to speak about these things that can make them damaging. One of the key components to me sharing detailed information and being vulnerable with trauma is creating a space that makes it safe for other people to share their trauma in as much detail as they want to. Sometimes sharing the details of trauma is painful and emotional but it is really cathartic to experience those emotions and it can be an important component to someone moving forward in their recovery. When people hear about specific things I have been through it sometimes makes their own unspeakable dilemmas more speakable and it draws them out which can be really powerful.
Another component to having lived experience can be sharing tools and resources. There are many times clinicians who try to share coping skills and ideas around mental illness that are somewhat helpful but just are not as powerful coming from someone who has not been through it on their own. There is an element of speculation that happens when you have not had mental illness and you are trying to figure out ways for people to work through it. However, as someone with lived experience there are years of life experience to draw from when providing ideas on how to navigate different elements of living life with mental illness. When my doctor told me over the years that I would have a full life it was somewhat believable but I felt it was easy to invalidate what he was saying because he did not have mental illness. When I eventually met peer specialists and they would tell me things like they were married and working full time that was far more powerful because they were living proof of those things. When clinicians generalized that I could get married or have a full life this was far different from talking to someone who had been through my same mental health challenges who currently was doing so. Also, hearing how peers made those things happen in their life was even more powerful because they had specific insights that were powerful as well as anecdotes of what actually worked and did not work. Their stories and insights were backed by logic and experience that was grounded in reality and practicality and this has been something that only someone with lived experience could provide. To read more, please visit SteveColori.com.