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"

You’re just one of those people who has an opinion on everything without any real knowledge or understanding of underlying contexts which shape our lives and yes, our lived experiences. It is pointless trying to debate with people like you, as your retorts to @Katbum ’s informed posts show.

You’re like Donald Trump - your way or the highway. You’ve closed down any post which disagrees with you and resorted to demeaning jibes about “faux” and “made up” roles/disciplines that you clearly have no insight into.

And on the issue of “vocations” - as soon as something is labelled a “vocation”, history tells us that it is devalued financially and personal development in the roles hindered because “it’s vocational” therefore people should instinctively know how to do the work. And it is almost always predominantly female roles (nursing being a prime example) - so yet again, women are shafted.

And no, you don’t understand what editing is.

Why would someone with schizophrenia have experience of neurodiversity?

'@ExIssues
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.'

It is not new in the charity sector.

We already involved clients/service users in shaping services and support 20 years ago...

This is staggeringly ill informed statement. If that was the case, knowledge would be static rather than dynamic, as more becomes known.

In my own discipline for example, what was “the truth” about “familial” breast cancer changed massively once the BrCa gene mutations were discovered and people were able to be tested for it. Nearly all “truths” in medicine change as we learn more about illness and disease.

OP this is wearisome. Tautology is a common way of doubling intensification in English to create greater emphatic meaning. It has been used for many hundreds of years. Pleonastic idioms. Reduplications. Emphatic reflexive pronouns.

Grammar is fucking descriptive not fucking prescriptive.

Would you go above and beyond to remove tautologies from your work as an editor, OP? How about if we gave you a free gift of some naan bread? Or threatened to burn down your house? I can quote you verbatim in a way that you yourself would agree with. Your argument is null and void. Before the global pandemic did you ever visit the Mississipi River? Why would you call it that, Mississipi means Big River? It's not the Big River River. Except it is.

@ThisFluentBiscuit you have made me laugh so much. I dated an editor once and he was similarly infuriated by poor language skills. I learnt a lot about writing so that meaning is clear from him though. It's a particular skill. Less is more and clarity is a lovely thing.

I work in academia. Some written work from colleagues would give you an aneurysm. 😂

....and don't get me started on the undergrads.... 🫣

If you are referring people using it to describe mental health, experience refers to having experience of something that might give you knowledge of something, lived experience refers to having direct knowledge of living through something. So a nurse would have experience of depression through working with people with depression, but a person who has had it has lived experience. It is just a way of separating the two.

Is this really the time or place to be pedantic? You will find most of the reasons people use 'lived' is when someone has experienced something pretty terrible. It's their way of saying I really fucking understand how terrible it is to people. It does minimalise their tragedies. Bit out of order really.

You made the case that a book about social work was 'too academic'. My point was that's a stupid thing to say because modern social work is based in academic research and theories. You might think 'well that's pointless people could have just done social work without these theories' - but they didn't/don't, hence you didn't/don't understand the point of a specialist textbook...that you were editing???? What??

Bored and on a wind up I suspect.

Quite a number of us would choose to die on a hill that stopped people saying STFU because my 'lived experience' tells me you are wrong.

I'm with you OP. (Former sub-editor.) The phrase is tautologous.

Diversity is a group measure. No one person can be ‘diverse’. Schizophrenia is genetic condition that affects how people think. If you mean ‘neurodivergent’ how would you define it such that it does not include schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder while neurodivergence is variation in the way your brain processes.

Now I know you’re here for a laugh and have not a merry clue about health and social care. Social work is a job, not an academic subject. Tell that to the universities.

Try a google, it’ll give you something like “Social Work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people”.

Schizophrenia causes variation in the way the brain processes so….

Experience Ambassador
Ambassador of Autism Experience
Ambassador of the Autism Experience

It makes sense now. I can hear you sniffing from here. Keep marching...

Does it?
Who would you rather have treating your broken leg? Me who has " lived experience " of breaking their leg three times or an orthopaedic surgeon wh has been to university and studied the treatment of bones?

Id I was looking for a therapist or Sen provision for my children I’d 100X want one who had lived experience of their autism or MH struggles in addition to qualifications.

And the huge benefits have been shown hence the focus these days on lived experience and peer support.

@ThisFluentBiscuit if you really think social work is all about social care, you know very little about what social work actually is so probably shouldn’t be commenting on whether it’s an academic discipline with a complex theory base.

My school had a trainer with ‘lived experience’ of autism come in and do a training day. Took us ages to undo the damage in the school’s understanding and convince them that not all autism was like that individual’s autism and the adaptations she suggested, whilst might have been perfect for her, were an absolute nightmare for my child.

Said school should have educated themselves on the training materials before the visit. Really poor they didn’t.

Sweet Summer child. If you think that was bad you had better not look at what happens with companies PHSE resources….

But when told ‘lived experience is king’ why would the school doubt what they were told? It was the ‘lived experience’ of an autistic adult (diagnosed 18 months earlier)

Schools should and do check resources before purchasing.