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 experience gained first hand as opposed to learning about it from a book. For example professionals advising drug users are often ex-addicts who know the pain they clients are experiencing rather than just knowing 'about' it. Ditto domestic violence, bereavement, child SA etc.

You can't see that having an oncologist who has had cancer themselves, can be even more beneficial than having one who has been taught about cancer and worked with many patients?

You really can't see the difference?

But is that your lived experience or just your experience?

No it isn’t?
Second hand and first hand experience exists OP. Why are you trying to force your opinion that they are the same thing?
You asked a question. You’ve been shown to be wrong. Maybe take this as ‘lived experience’ of being corrected.

Yes!

I don’t think you know what an oxymoron is.

I get what you are saying, linguistically

But I think the idea is to distinguish between someone who actually has the condition and someone who (for instance) just has experience of treating the condition.

This is such a good point.
Consultation with those who have experienced the subject only provides one perspective.

Advocates and those working in the field often have a much richer picture

It sounds like it means "personal experience" but lived experience is the buzz phrase

This is also my (lived) experience of people who have such objections! It’s also the reason words like “woke” are repackaged and thrown back in our faces.

This thread has allowed me to experience wilful ignorance. OP, on the other hand, has lived experience of it.

The problem is that you still have to specify what you have lived experience of - do you have lived experience of having bipolar disorder, lived experience of living with or caring for someone with bipolar disorder or lived experience of being a mental health nurse working with inpatients with bipolar or an outpatient nurse or a consultant psychiatrist... They are all different lived experiences- simpler to just state what experience you have.

I also dislike the assumption that one person's 'lived experience' is the same as another's - this is a major problem with PPI (Patient & Public Involvement) is academia - a researcher gets a group of 10 people with 'lived experience' of X and somehow that's representative of everyone with X!
It's totally false, particularly as we know that people who join PPI groups tend to be better off & better educated and anyone with high levels of disability or carer responsibilities will struggle to join. Plus there are some conditions where people are clearly misdiagnosed and don't have the condition - dementia is particularly problematic here.

Nope. Most doctors and specialists can’t possibly have had all the diseases etc that they treat and cure. Doesn’t mean they’re not perfectly capable of doing their jobs and helping their patients.

"If you're talking to someone it's very very easy indeed to say something is your personal or professional experience, without resorting to a phrase like lived experience."

Historically the personal experience of people with mental health onditions has been ignored. The use of lived experience is to show that people are now going to be listened to.

I guess op is never going to acknowledge that there are some specific areas in which the distinction is relevant.

Nobody needs to define their experience of being on a cruise as lived. It's implied. It's a daft example to use tbh.

Anyway, this is one of those pointless threads where op doesn't want to know if she's being unreasonable. She only wants people to agree with her and has no interest in the possibility that there might be times that the phrase is relevant. So I'm out.

Its a way of describing knowledge, awareness and insight into something gained through the process of having lived through it, as oppose to merely having studied it, observed it or worked in a a field connected to it. Its a way to indicate that you have a different, direct level of experience of the thing. Many people will have both experience of AND lived experience of something, such as a disability support worker who is also disabled. Some will have one or the other. It's a helpful way for people to convey that, for example in recruitment or to give context to their opinion in discussion.

It is part of an ongoing campaign to delegitimise expertise. To say ‘my experience makes me more of an expert than your years of study based on the years of study of researchers and the listening to hundreds of others’

OP has lived experience of being deliberately obtuse.

Are people saying that? I see it as recognising that lived experience is also important, which it is, not that expertise and training is not important.

The professionals mean that they work with a given population, not that they experience what said population is experiencing. It's shorthand.

The homelessness outreach worker has experience of supporting people who are homeless.

The homeless person has experience of being homeless.

The outreach worker does not have experience of being homeless. They only have experience of supporting the homeless. They might accurately say that they have second-hand experience of being homeless.

It's possible that the worker also has experience of being homeless, but saying "I have lived experience of being homeless" conveys no extra information beyond "I have experience of being homeless." The "lived" part is meaningless.

I hear it often at work.

I work in a mental health NHS Trust. We have various roles, such as ‘peer support workers’ (you can Google for more info) who have lived experience of psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar, have been sectioned etc.

People's lived experience obviously differs, but the research is aimed at identifying commonalities so services can be designed around patterns of need and opinion.

How would you put simply on a job advert that you want people with lived experience of say mental health issues to apply for the job and not just people with experience of working in the field with someone with mental health issues?

OK. Explain to me how I can go on a cruise without experiencing it. Because that's what you imply when you say that you have lived experience of being on a cruise.

As opposed to the other passengers who must have been dead when they experienced it.

Still interested to hear how I can experience a cruise without living the experience. I'll wait.

As above. How would you say ina job advert that you want somebody with lived experience, not just experience of working in the field etc.
When I see lived experience I know exactly what they mean. So tell me how else it could be said as simply.

I think it's actually a degradation of language.
It makes it unclear to the person reading or listening.

The words we should use exist already-

Personal experience
Professional experience

Or both.

'Lived' could be either because you have to be alive to have either experience (personal or professional)