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"

I have lived experience of working with copy editors who think their opinions trump everything and make corrections that change the meaning because they don’t understand the subject matter 😉

For me the problem is when 'lived experience' becomes part of the discourse of opression olympics, used in everyday speech ('my lived experience trumps your (presumably unlived) experience'). As a phrease that indicates a category of knowledge, in for example a research project, differentiating between professional experience, academic experience and lived experience can be useful. As in I am studying poverty but also have lived experience of poverty. The adoption of the phrase as a means to symbolise 'therefore your experiences of X are lessser', is dumb. It is not what the phrase was designed to indicate, and is a reflection of the mad culture wars idiots have created by having a little bit of critical language, but no critical mind.

If you were called an Experience Ambassador your role would sound stronger and clearer.

Experience Ambassador
Ambassador of Autism Experience
Ambassador of the Autism Experience

All of the above sound stronger and more authoritative than Lived Experience Ambassador.

"Lived experience" is a tautology and tautologies are wrong because they are redundancies. These are facts, not opinions.

Unless you can explain to me what the difference is between experience of copy editors and lived experience of copy editors? I'll wait. Don't take pot shots at good editing if you can't defend your reasons for bad English!

Now, I'm waiting to hear what the difference is between experience of copy editors and lived experience of copy editors. Are you a ghost who worked with copy editors when you were alive but haven't done so since you died?

See how utterly stupid that phrase is?

Interesting debate as I'm interested in language and it's allegedly one if my strengths.

I think the term "lived experience" is useful as it offers a shorthand insight into the potential impact of any experience, and most often it seems to be applied to traumatic experiences. The devil is indeed in the detail as every individuals experience is unique, however there will be commonalities that, for example, support services can identify, then build on and adapt to individuals.

I personally find it useful to know that someone I'm talking to has been identified as having "lived experience " of x, y or z because it means I can hopefully avoid sticking my foot in my mouth by waxing lyrical about things that I don't have experience of but can perhaps theorise about, and be miles off the mark. I think it helps inform sensitivity.

The arguments regarding the professional approach based on say, diagnosis and research are interesting, as I have "lived experience" of being dismissed and belittled by doctors and other professionals because my direct experience of events and situations doesn't fit their academic model and leads to conflict. We see it all the time on threads about trauma and extreme situations, the rush to tell people how they "should" think, feel or behave, rather than accepting that people react differently depending on a whole host of factors and need to work through and process things in a way that works for them to hopefully achieve a beneficial outcome.

There is a tendency to want life with all it's experiences to be formulaic, a tick box mentality if you will, but we're not robots or computers, there is constant adaptation and evolution, it's an almost fractal process in my mind.

Getting fixated on this phrase is a bit pointless, as it does serve a purpose. If you don't like it, fair enough, but the snippy comments about playing "top trumps" and "bending over backwards to avoid othering" in services are pretty petty and suggest some sort of ego wound.

Live (your experience) and let live (their experience) I say.

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.

But you are not able to do this. You are able to share your personal experience, you have no idea that it is the same as other autistic people without relying on what they say - in which case you are passing on secondhand evidence too.

i presume as you mention autism, you have autism, so why presume there is a common ‘neurodiverse lens’ that gives you the same view as someone with learning disabilities, dyslexia, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, very high IQ….?

I think in these examples you have given, the person would have used the phrase incorrectly. A bit like if a person said "I literally did that". Pointless.
However, in a Healthcare setting, considering and including people with 'lived experience ' is important when setting up a service for people who have a particular condition. As they have lived experience of that condition.

I am LOLing @ThisFluentBiscuit at how almost everyone is telling you that 'lived experience' is different to just 'experience,' and you're constantly stamping your feet and telling everyone that they're wrong! 😆

The 50 something percent who agree with you are very likely agreeing with you because they think the phrase is annoying. YANBU to think it's annoying.

But yeah YABU to say that people are saying it 'wrong.' They are 2 different things. Why won't you accept that? You're making yourself look rather petulant, and stubborn, and you're embarrassing yourself more and more with every post you submit! 😬

Probably because 20 years ago the thinking was very different.

I'm in social science research and the idea of starting to plan interventions by asking service users what they need, rather than doing what appears to be a good idea to professionals with no lived experience, is relatively new.

See there the use of the word lived. It could be rephrased to avoid use of that word but in the context it's a helpful word

Even in situations where there is a distinction to be made, as others have said it doesn't necessitate the use of that particularly smug phrase "lived experience".

I particularly object to the implication that "lived experience" is supposed to trump all academic knowledge and professional expertise. I.e. Helen Joyce knows nothing about trans-identifying people because she has only researched and written a best-selling book about it, whereas Joanna Bloggs who has been trans for five minutes is immediately an expert.

That's just a straw man example

I'm in social science research and the idea of starting to plan interventions by asking service users what they need

This shows the problem though - you plan interventions by asking a few people who are already engaging with an intervention what they need. Not those who are falling through the cracks, for whom the intervention is so far removed from what is needed that they will never be service users.

I dont and we spend our sessions explaining this is "our personal lived experience" the discussions you will hear from all of the living ambassadors are all completely different and if you meet 1person with autism youve met 1 person with autism, BUT it gives a tiny look into challenges we may experience not from a clinical handbook but by telling you about day to day life and experiences.

I think this is the danger, the idea that one person's lived experience carries any particular relevance. In that sense it's no different to someone who smokes 20 a day and lives to 100. It could be representative but you just don't know.

To do research you need to select several people with the relevant experience, ask them the things you want to know, then you keep going until you aren't getting any new ideas . (Called saturation). Obviously you need to ensure that the people you ask are representative of the group you're interested in - if neuro diversity you would need a selection of people with different conditions. If autism only you would need a smaller number of participants.

However it depends on the aim - if it's to support a single person or advise on a specific situation in a workplace, then the opinion or experience of one person could still be very useful

Yes, there is value in scientific research - but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

For example, a lot of research into mental health treatment uses measures that are not meaningful to patients.

And some research simply doesn’t exist because it’s not been funded or isn’t of interest. So research doesn’t trump everything else.

Yes you're quite right. A lot of my time is taken up by thinking of ways to include "hard to reach" people in my studies. They absolutely need to be included. I'm not actually working with service users as it's a different field but I have used the wrong term, it should be homeless people or drug users or whatever.

The fact that lots of people are telling me that "lived experience" is correct does not mean that they are right and I am wrong. Sheer volume of numbers does not change the facts. It just means that on this topic, lots of people are wrong.

"Lived experience" is a tautology, and that is a fact.
Tautologies are bad English, and that is a fact.
The reason that tautologies are bad English is because they are redundancies. That is a fact.
Redundancies are bad English because they are repetitive and express the same thing which is already expressed in one word.

Here are examples of tautologies. All of the below are bad English.
Top-floor penthouse. (A penthouse is, by definition, on the top floor or it wouldn't be a penthouse.)
Three-sided triangle. (A triangle has three sides otherwise it wouldn't be a triangle.)
A perfect utopia. (A utopia is perfect or it wouldn't be a utopia.)
A lived experience. (You wouldn't have the experience if you didn't live it.)

I know that people are saying that "lived experience" IS used in this or that way. I'm saying that it SHOULDN'T be, because it's bad English and because there are many other ways to express the same thing that don't involve using bad English.

How so?

But why can't they just say that X person has experience of that condition?

But this person surely wouldn’t say “in my experience of being a person with autism”? They would refer to their experience of working with children with autism?

Exactly - the phrase "lived experience" automatically demeans experience as dead experience. Not as good, not as valid.

In your example, why can't you say "I am studying poverty but have also experienced poverty" or "I am studying poverty but I also have experience of living in poverty or "I am studying poverty but also have experience of poverty."

You can see how we have the language to express exactly what you mean, and how well we can do without the tautology "lived experience."

I actually think that you're confusing what type of object the verb "experience" can take.

Consider as an example the verb know.

We say: I know Anna. I know karate. I know Prague. I know that penguins eat fish. I know how to fish. I know that racism in the US is a major cause of conflict. I know how to ride a bike.

In the same way, to experience [object] need not imply that one has had a direct, unmediated and personal experience of the object. It could be a second hand experience.

But the point there is the range of views YOU gather by speaking to a wide range of service users/homeless people/drug users, including the views of hard to reach populations, is what should be considered. Not one or two individuals’ ‘lived experience’. The focus on ‘lived experience’ means that too often that hard work of gathering inputs from wide range of individuals is not done, or the conclusions draw from that research dismissed (as many have done on this thread) as not as important as the experience of a single person.

It is not that the personal experiences should not be listened too, it is that the personal experiences of a single or very small number should not be given weight over those of others just because it is expensive, hard word, or may give results at odds with those of outspoken advocates or those with political conflicts of interest.

No, if it's second-hand experience, you would say just that.

@MistressoftheDarkSide the snippy comments about playing "top trumps" and "bending over backwards to avoid othering" in services

I have not said either of these things. In fact, I said that trying to avoid othering people is "a good thing."