To HATE the phrase "lived experience"?

[ThisFluentBiscuit]

Pet peeve incoming:

By definition, experience is lived! You can hardly have an experience without living it, fgs! And what's the opposite of lived experience? An experience that you've had, yet haven't lived? It's complete nonsense. It's used to sound falsely clever when an argument is weak, like "In my personal experience." Well, of course your experience is personal! You would hardly say, "In my neighbour's experience, I find Florida too cold in December."

And it's officially wrong, because it's a tautology. Like "top-floor penthouse."

I don't know whether it's the innate stupidity of the phrase or the fact that it's a linguistic fad that annoys me the most.

"stamps off"

Experience and lived experience are different things.

No, they really are not. Please explain to me how it's possible to have an experience without living it?

yeah 2 different things, a quick Google will help you.

I agree!

OK, so you're saying that it's possible to have an experience that you haven't lived through?

How? Experience is something you've lived through and therefore have some anecdotal knowledge of. I think the phrase 'lived experience' is just a new fad.

For example: you may have “experienced” racism/ableism/homophobia/other form of oppression by witnessing it and perhaps having some understanding of it, albeit limited. Someone black/disabled/gay/other will have the lived experience of dealing with the every day pressures of a racist/ableist/homophobic/other oppressive society.

In my line of work, experience would relate to being a worker who supports people in need. Lived experience would relate to the person in need. For policy development, we'd want to consult both parties, for their different perspectives.

I think that's what I hate about it so much, that it's a stupid fad word which is also complete nonsense, seeing as you can't have an experience without living through it.

Isn't it used in contrast to professional experience? So things you've learned/studied/researched /worked with rather than living through it yourself.

Psychiatrist vs patient for example.

In health and social care, it has been a more respectful way to refer to those with what we used to call service user experience. Someone who has been through some, usually adverse, experience. Often but not always, someone who is now in a place where they are using that experience to help others.

it differentiates from work or professional experience or academic expertise, it is lived experience.

i wonder if you know someone who is using the word in a different way?

I work in immigration. My coworker has "experience" of immigration because she has worked in this area supporting immigrants for almost 10 years, but I have "lived experience" because despite only working in this aread for a couple of years I have actually been an immigrant. That's the difference. It's not hard.

We've coped without the phrase for centuries and now in the last couple of years it's apparently become essential. It's a stupid tautology. A bit like "job role".

It just sounds so very earnest.

No, witnessing those things is not the same as experiencing it. You would never witness racism and then say that you'd experienced it. You'd say you'd seen it. If you tell anyone that you've experienced racism, they would 100% think that you mean it was aimed at you.

I don't particularly like the phrase but I suppose it's used when people try to support their view by dating they've lived the experience of being a cancer patient, mugged, bullied at work or whatever, rather than just having a theoretical opinion. I don't like it when authors are told they can't write characters that are outside their "lived experience" as was happening a couple of years back or that someone's lived experience is always more qualified than, say, an academic who has studied for decades about a certain subject or has expert and deep knowledge. A lived experience can be subject to bias, memory lapses, selective recall. It's not infallible.

They are different. For example, you could do be a highly qualified and experienced teacher of autistic students however if you are not autistic then you don’t have ‘lived experience’ of being autistic. You have a lot of experience and knowledge though but these are different things.

So why not just say personal? "I have personal experience of racism" or whatever.

It is a clarifier to show someone has first hand experience.

This is correct. And @ThisFluentBiscuit, it’s ok that you didn’t understand this before, but now you do, I hope you will respect it.

it’s an inference that someone has first hand experience your ‘lived experience’. As opposed to having observed or perhaps learned of something which suggests ‘experience’

"Personal experience" is as redundant as "lived experience."

I've never heard it used outside of quite specific scenarios.

I have experience of schizophrenia because my brother has it, therefore i have some insight into how it manifests outwardly in one person which is more than some people will have. I don't have lived experience though, he does. Our perspectives are different but might both be useful, and the distinction is important. If the terminology itself annoys you then I guess could just expand and say I have experience of helping support someone with a mental illness and he could say he has expeirence of living with it; but lived experience also highlights this difference. I've only really heard it used in healthcare.

Also the "new" version is sometimes used as an alternate to have reasons to back up your argument.

Experience - going as a reporter to Ukraine and seeing the destruction, interviewing people
Lived Experience - experiencing it first hand and having family killed, your house destroyed etc
Hope that describes it for you OP