By the end of this module, participants will be able to:
- Define the concept of “lived experience” as something that we experience that is so impactful that it becomes part of our identity
- Apply the concept of lived experience to their own lives
- Recognize how lived experience is individualized, so every person has their own understanding of their lived experience
- Discuss how the combination of first-hand experience, lasting, impact, and identity is what makes lived experience meaningful
Summary of Main Ideas
- “Lived experience” is something that we experience that is so impactful that it becomes part of our identity
- Lived experience is the combination of first-hand experience, strong impact, and identity
- Lived experience is not limited to mental health and substance use, even though this is how it is often defined in behavioral health systems
Concept of Lived Experience
Lived experience is a concept at the heart of peer support because our own experience of navigating certain life events gives us a unique perspective and wisdom that we can use to support others who are navigating something similar.
Definition of Lived Experience
Lived experience is something that we experience that is so impactful that it becomes part of our identity.
three main components of lived experience
(1) first-hand experience
(2) strong impact
(3) identity
First-Hand Experience
Things we experience directly (versus things we witness other people experience). In the behavioral health system, “lived experience” is often used as a shorthand to talk about experience with mental health challenges.
Lived experience more vast than just mental health or substance use — it can be any impactful experience in life that people have, including:
- Criminal justice involvement;
- Surviving trauma (e.g., natural disasters, child abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, war, mass violence, etc.);
- Participation in the military (including identity as a Veteran);
- Mental health challenges;
- Substance use challenges;
- Homelessness;
- And many more.
Strong Impact
Lived experience requires that the first-hand experience has a strong impact on us. In other words, lived experience is not so broad that it refers to any kind of human experience (like being right-handed). Lived experience is something that has a strong impact and lasting importance for us.
Lasting impact can come from the intensity of the thing that we experienced. Examples
maybe we had an experience that caused significant upheaval and destablization in our life. But strong and lasting impact can also come from the messages we received from society.
Ways that we receive messages from society include:
- The words that people use to talk about an experience or identity (e.g., calling people with mental health challenges “crazy,” “insane,” or “dangerous” );
- The ways that an experience or identity are represented in popular culture, like music, television, and film (e.g., people with substance use challenges represented as dangerous or a threat);
- The amount of investment (or lack of investment) in services to support people who have this experience or identity (e.g., investment in services for people experiencing homelessness);
- The messages we receive about how desirable (or undesirable) a certain characteristic, identity, or experience is (e.g., the underlying assumption that having a disability is a “bad” thing, instead of disability being seen as a part of the ways that humanity is diverse);
- And many more.
What we can see from the examples above
is that lasting impact can often come from the experience of stigma, discrimination, and mistreatment.
Identity
The last component of lived experience is that it becomes part of our identity. Because of the experience and the impact it had on us, we may view the world or ourselves in a different light.
First, we can internalize the experience as part of our identity (as
who we are) — in both positive and negative ways. For example:
*
“lama person in recovery” (positive)
* “lam broken” (negative)
Like the concept of “strong impact,” we can see that the integration of lived experience into our identity as a negative (“| am broken”) is not because the experience we had made us less worthy, but because
we can internalize messages that are rooted in stigma and discrimination.
Second, lived experience can also impact our identity by changing the way we view the world.
We may realize that the world is a kinder (or less kind) place than we thought it was. We may also see the ways that our society does not adequately care for people who have certain experiences because we did not receive adequate care and support when we experienced that same experience. One example of how lived experience can impact our identity and worldview is: “l am treated differently because of my experience with mental health challenges because the world does not embrace people who experience the world differently.”