"lived experience"

[rampagingrobot]

I keep reading the phrase and it's winding me up!

When did "experience" become "lived experience". Does it actually mean anything different or is it just people trying to be wanky? Is there an "unlived" experience?

YANBU it's a wanky way of saying the same thing.
YABU it means something diffferent. (In which case, what??!!)

I have lived experience of bipolar disorder, which is a subset of personal experience. My DP has personal experience of bipolar disorder (mine) but not lived experience, as he doesn't have it himself, and certainly not professional experience. So while we both have personal experience, only I have the lived experience. My doctor may not have either lived experience or personal experience with bipolar disorder (or they may happen to), but they will have professional experience.

It's not my favourite phrase, but it has a purpose when it comes to distinguishing types of experience in this kind of context, where traditionally professional experience was privileged to the exclusion of all other kinds of experience.

In my field it's an important phrase which acknowledges that while someone can be academically an 'expert' in something, e.g. a medical condition, a person who lives with that condition has a different knowledge of it, which needs to be valued.

I think the term 'lived experience' is sometimes used by people to support or add weight to their individual interpretation of events in a similar way to when they 'speak their truth', sort of like, 'I've lived it, so the way I see things must be correct'.

Yes @JarByTheDoor - I think you are right, it’s a subset of “personal experience”.

I got asked about my " case history" when in the epu unit about my multiple miscarriages. One time the student doctor was looking up a text from his mate. Told him to fuck off twat. Before I was ok to talk. But I kept getting asked ....

That was my loved experience to a doctor on rotation in that department

Experience of the care system: has worked with care leavers or looked after children, has completed academic studies on the subject, has written policies/procedures in relation to the care system, has been involved with the funding, maintenance or administration of care placements.

Lived experience of the care system: grew up in a foster home.

You can experience something by witnessing it. Your lived experience is specific to things you have actually been through.

A doctor treating a broken arm has no lived experience of a broken arm. A childless midwife has no lived experience of giving birth. A criminal defence lawyer has no lived experience of being on trial for murder. A witness of a car crash has no lived experience of a car crash. A funeral director has no lived experience of losing a child.

Lived experience is a first-hand experience of actually going through the topic at hand. Not viewing it from the outside.

It may be something that a person has experience of daily, I have just heard ot in context to insulin dependant diabetes.

I am presuming lived experience must be a knowledge of a topic which a person is aware of in graphic detail.

Still think it's wanky on MN though! I keep reading stuff like "I have lived experience of a child waking lots in the night". I mean fucks sake we've all got that

I didn't until DC4 so until that point I had experience of infant sleep patterns because I'd had three infants of my own and I could empathise with parents of poor sleepers but I had no lived/direct experience of that situation so while I could offer advice or support I didn't know exactly what it was like. When DC4 came along I gained that lived experience.

I'm a trustee of a charity. Until recently, the board and our staff were all white British. Our charity supports people who are mostly brown and have gone through something that none of us have. Our experience of it is only from the outside.

So we have spent the last few years advertising vacancies on the board and on our staff, encouraging people with lived experience of this, to apply. So people who have been through what our service users have. Have properly experienced it and who understand exactly what our service users are going through. And probably identify with their culture too.

I'm not sure what language would have been in place of it until recently, but I think lived experience is clearly putting across something very different from 'experience'. And it worked for us and we have some fantastic more recent hires who fit the bill.

How about someone's lived experience as an abused spouse

That clarifies it a lot for me, thank you! :)

It's one of those academic-type phrases that others on this thread have explained has specific meaning within certain contexts.

Sadly outside those contexts such phrases get incorporated into everyday language and are usually horrendously misused. In this case most of the times I've seen it used in this way is to try and deny factual evidence and data in favour of personal anecdote.

This exactly.

If you grew up in care then you have lived experience of the care system. If you’ve worked in it as a social worker you have experience of it.

I think it can be useful as above
. Saw a job recently for working with children in care. Lived experience was mentioned, ie people who have been in care themselves

Yabu.

People use lived experience Vs experience for the numerous examples you've been given.

It's only wanky when someone uses it incorrectly, thinking they sound impressive.

Lived in experience usually applies to people who want to tell ‘their truth’.

Quite an important distinction imo - ‘experience’ can be direct or indirect, for example you may have experience of a certain condition for example if you have come across it in your work/in your family. Although if you have direct experience of having a certain condition because you have it, then you have lived experience. Similarly, we all have lived experience of a pandemic because we have lived through one. At least that’s the way I understand it!

I hate the phrase 'lived experience'. As @CrunchyCarrot says it just used to be called 'personal experience' and I would still use that.

I don't think so, not in my experience. Usually they want to share their 'story' or their experience in order to improve things for the next set of people / patients, or to support others.

It is woke baby. But yeah... annoying.... especially if one is an old fart ones self.

It has already been pointed out that lived experience clarifies what kind of personal experience someone has had.

@JarByTheDoor put it well:
I have lived experience of bipolar disorder, which is a subset of personal experience. My DP has personal experience of bipolar disorder (mine) but not lived experience, as he doesn't have it himself, and certainly not professional experience. So while we both have personal experience, only I have the lived experience. My doctor may not have either lived experience or personal experience with bipolar disorder (or they may happen to), but they will have professional experience.

My DH had a breakdown. So I have personal experience of a breakdown, but I still don't know how it actually feels to have one. His was lived experience. Mine was personal experience.

Yeah exactly that saraclara.

I think, though, that for the most part "lived experience" is a phrase that should probably remain reserved for those circumstances it was developed for e.g. within services, to both define and also give legitimacy to the different kinds of experience that people within or interacting with the service may have.

Professional, clinical, personal, lived, etc. as experience labels are useful in those circumstances, where you're looking to generically describe a group of people who have experience within a certain category (perhaps you're advertising for peer workers, or want to set up a staff forum for mental health workers who have mental illness), but in everyday discussion I think it's usually better to just say "I've recovered from PTSD" or "I'm supporting a close family member with schizophrenia" or "I have a child who wakes six times a night" or "I work on a psychiatric ward as an HCA" or "I have a longstanding mental illness" or "I'm a psychotherapist for bereaved children".

"Lived experience" is deliberately generic to cover a wide range of people (like "clinical experience" is), and is liable to be misunderstood by people who haven't come across the jargon.

Lived experience means you got the experience by living through it. So someone might have experience of EUPD by working with people with it, but I have lived experience as I have EUPD.