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"

It's the difference between secondary source and primary source information put into more everyday / user friendly phrasing.

“And I don't believe there's not a better way to express the concept in its academic sense, anyway. Unless the relevant areas of academia are certain made-up subjects with made-up vocab to match, and that's a whole different thread...”

@ThisFluentBiscuit gosh, you really are an expert on many things this fine Monday morning. Pouring scorn on areas of “academia” because you personally don’t understand or agree with them shows you to be narrow minded and somewhat limited in critical thought.

Many things are not able to be “proven” by experimental research therefore other approaches are necessary to enable a full understanding of a phenomenon to be gained. And importantly, how things impact human beings not just statistical equations. Just because you don’t believe there are “better ways” to discuss and describe things doesn’t mean the current terms need changing. Your opinion is really not that important.

Experience of cancer - has had a diagnosis of cancer
Experience of working with people diagnosed with cancer - professionals
Experience of supporting/living with/caring for a person with cancer - carers and family
Experience of researching cancer - academic

It’s so easily explained by just properly describing what is meant. Who just says “I have experience of cancer” without qualifying it - “I was diagnosed/I cared for someone/I work at a cancer unit” etc?

If husband is and always has been depressed since I’ve known him and I have been his support and in some years his carer but I wasn’t depressed would I have experience of being depressed? Genuine question OP

YABU - Fixating on the term rather than why it exists make you part of the problem.

I’m not the OP but I’d say you have experience of living with someone who has depression. Doesn’t negate your experience and that you know a lot, but it still doesn’t mean you have experienced depression itself.

'@andyouwillknowusbythetrailofdead · Today 06:48

We've coped without the phrase for centuries and now in the last couple of years it's apparently become essential. '

Exactly!

I work in the charity sector and in the past few years I have been hearing all the time about the 'lived experience of service users'.

The term was not used at all when I first started working in the sector 20 years ago.

I don't need to hear that a homeless person has 'lived experience of homelessness'. The fact that they are homeless covers it...

Nobody needs to use 'lived experience' most of us use things like 'I have personal experience of'.

Amazing to see people lining up trying to claim the wording needs to make the distinction between experience in the workplace or similar when the wider context makes it obvious of what is being talked about.

I actually think the OP is the flip side of “it’s PC gone mad, can’t say anything these days” types - in that adding words/terms is unsettling as removing offensive ones. Some people really really struggle with language and social norms evolving to fit new situations.

Much easier to claim it’s other people being wrong and stupid.

Language evolves and changes, concepts and ideas and social norms change.

I am a lived experience ambassador for oliver mcgowan; all that I do/have done in life is through a neurodiverse lens, so I am able to share a depth of experience that those who support people with autism would not have.

I've only really come across it in the NHS in the context of patients / service users being described as having "lived experience" of their condition. To me it makes sense.

But, if my children started telling me they had "lived experience" of being a school child I'd tell them to stop talking nonsense. So I think it depends on context.

But don't get me started on "reaching out" as a term.

It could be argued you have lived experience of working with people going through homelessness, or lived experience of providing homelessness services, but not direct experience of homelessness.

I agree. It is a relatively new term and I don't think it means anything.
Either you have experienced something, you have supported someone while they have experienced something, you have witnessed someone experiencing something or you haven't experienced something.
They are all lived!

@Cattreesea - what term would you have used previously for someone who was homeless, isn’t now and is working in the sector, so has both professional and lived experience of homelessness.

“experience of homelessness” could just imply that they’ve worked with people who are homeless, wouldn’t specify their different circumstances of having lived through it too.

Can I just feed back to you that I did my Oliver McGowan training with lived experience ambassadors recently and I found it incredibly useful and helpful in reframing some of my thinking. Thank you for your time and input in doing this.

But you have lived experience of being a teacher of autistic children.

Like experience of being an immigrant Vs experience of working with immigrants.

In most cases lived experience just adds an emphasis, it shouldn't be necessary for meaning, but I think it's come about through taking views of people who use the services, experience the disabilities etc rather than just the paternalistic expert views of doctors, policy makers etc. in that sense it's a definite good thing as long as people realise that a single anecdote isn't necessarily representative of the wider population. There is sometimes a danger of that too. A single voice of someone with "lived experience" shouldn't be used to shut down debate

It's absolutely incorrect English. The midwife in your example has both experience of treating multiple births and experience of a multiple birth.

There's no need for the tautology of "lived experience," because there are ways to express what is meant here without implying that died experience is a thing, or that you can have an experience without living it.

She could say, "I've taken care of women who've had multiple births and I've experienced a multiple birth."

Or "I've nursed mothers of twins and I've been a mother of twins."

Or "Professionally, I've treated multiple births and I've also experienced multiple births."

If she said, "I have professional and personal experience of multiple births," she would mean that she was paid to be a surrogate to have twins and that she also had her own twins. Differentiating between personal and professional experience by using "lived experience" leads to inaccuracy and misunderstanding. You need the context that she is a midwife to understand the shorthand. As a stand-alone sentence, it sounds like surrogacy.

Hey, little songbird - lovely to hear its having some impact. I am a late diagnosed female (40) who has significant need; according to my report, but yet I've bumbled through life - I really want to help other girls/women be diagnosed/detected earlier.

I do agree with the op, that If someone says they have experienced something, the inference is that it has happened to them, but I think there may be a more nuanced difference?

I’ve experienced racism - I’ve been on the receiving end a few times.

I have a lived experience of racism - Racism permeates my life every single day.

@ExIssues But you have lived experience of being a teacher of autistic children.

What's the difference between saying the above and saying "I have experience of being a teacher of autistic children" though?

It's to do with redressing the balance between expertise gained through study/job and expertise gained through 'lived experience'. So as an oncologist one might be experienced in cancer treatment, and in fact and expert in the field; as a patient one might have 'lived experience' that adds nuance, perspective and new understanding that can't be gained through experience as a doctor. Similarly, you can be an expert in marxism/economic inequality, 'experienced in the field' without 'lived experience' of poverty.

@FancyBiscuitsLevel · Today 09:25

^ - what term would you have used previously for someone who was homeless, isn’t now and is working in the sector, so has both professional and lived experience of homelessness.^
“experience of homelessness” could just imply that they’ve worked with people who are homeless, wouldn’t specify their different circumstances of having lived through it too.'

-I am homeless
-I work with/I support homeless people.

That's all you need..

Well obviously, experience of being homeless Vs experience of working with homeless people.

Your comments about ‘getting frothy on Twitter’ betrays your dismissal of ‘lived experiences’ that don’t accord with your view - reflecting your activist led sector.

There's no difference hence no need for the term "lived".

I think the term is more to do with changes in thinking about how problems are addressed, centering the sufferers rather than the experts. It is not necessary from a language point of view

IME buzzwords/terms come in and out of fashion. People don’t tend to say ‘lean in’ quite so much these days, but it was all the rage a few years back, due to Sheryl Sandberg.

IMHO, language matters and doesn’t always evolve in a good way. For example, it’s now common for a mixed gender group, or indeed a group of all women, to be referred to as ‘guys’. So the male term is now commonly used to address women. If you looked at it the other way around, would men be happy being referred to as ‘gals’ as a collective term?