Lived Experience Consultants

The Lighthouse Learning Series is back! ???? I’m so excited to be a part of this amazing project! Save the date for our opening session ???? Care as Movement: Reimagining Organizing through Harm Reduction & Collective Support Date & Time: Feb 14, 2025 @ 11:00am CST / 12:00pm EST Description: In many organizing spaces, we often focus on the outcomes of our movements, losing sight of the care, community-building, and rest needed to sustain our efforts. This session re-imagines movement organizing by integrating harm reduction principles, self-determination, and collective care. Participants will explore their personal relationships to movements through movement mapping exercises, orienting themselves to the subcultures and communities they engage with. Through breakout rooms, attendees will choose spaces for reflection, encouragement, and sharing challenges, while considering how to create organizing environments that nurture rather than exhaust. This dynamic, participatory session will provide tangible strategies for more sustainable and inclusive movement work, with opportunities for deep listening, sharing, and co-creation. *ASL & Spanish interpretation will be available* Facilitators: Nze Okoronta, Dana Fleetham & Jose Martinez Register below, link in the post!

We're very excited to announce our new website, https://lnkd.in/g5sS_sJG! We've been working on this for some time, and it's amazing to see it all come together. Huge thank you to Kano Shi, who put our design into practice. #livedexperience #livedexperienceconsultants #mentalhealth #selfcarematters

Please welcome a new consultant to LEC: Tim Saubers (he/him)! We couldn't be more excited to work together. Here's a bit about Tim in his own words: Tim Saubers (he / him) is a queer, Latino activist currently based in New Orleans, LA. He is focused primarily on creating and offering alternatives to existing behavioral healthcare systems and approaches. Additionally, his work centers on systemic translation. He offers training and educational spaces for movement and workforce members to learn about how governmental systems and legislative bodies function, and to translate and decode oftentimes dense, confusing, academic, and legal, documents, resources, and meeting summaries into easy-to-understand, plain language. Tim works as the Executive Director of the National Association of Peer Supporters, the leading national organization dedicated to advancing the growth and development of peer work. He has worked in peer support for almost 10 years in roles including direct service and supervisory positions, managing Wisconsin’s peer certification processes, leading the Workforce Development core team at the Peer Recovery Center of Excellence, and consulting on a variety of curriculum writing, research projects, speaking engagements, and more. He is deeply committed to maintaining fidelity to peer support as an alternative to existing behavioral healthcare systems and a community building tool rooted in social justice. He enjoys paleontology, volunteering, and baking in his free time.

My perspective...

Even if my visual impairment was cured tomorrow and I could see perfectly, I’d still be disabled. Why? Because I’ve been blind since birth. Sighted life isn’t just something I’ve never experienced – it’s something I don’t know how to navigate. I’ve built my life around blindness. It shapes how I understand the world, how I interact with people, and how I complete everyday tasks. Every skill I’ve developed, every habit I’ve formed, every bit of technology I’ve relied on is part of a system I’ve spent my entire life adapting to. Take that away and replace it with sight, and suddenly I’d be starting over in a world that’s still inaccessible in so many ways. I wouldn’t know how to read body language, make eye contact, or recognise visual cues that others take for granted. I wouldn’t know what colours go together, or even how to judge distances. Things most people learn instinctively from a young age would be brand new to me, and I’d have no foundation to build on. And then there’s my ADHD. The idea of suddenly having sight is overwhelming enough, but adding ADHD into the mix would likely make it even more challenging. Seeing so many new things at once – brighter colours, movement, unfamiliar objects – would probably leave me even more easily distracted. I’d be processing entirely new layers of information that I’d never had to deal with before, on top of everything else. This is why disability, for me, isn’t just about impairments. It’s about the way society is structured – the assumptions it makes about what’s “normal” and how people should function. Even with sight, the world would still be designed for people with years of visual experience. I’d still have to adapt to it, and it wouldn’t adapt to me. This perspective is why I’m so passionate about advocating for the social model of disability. We need to stop framing disability as something to “fix” in the person and start looking at how we can remove the barriers society creates. ID: a purple Robbie Crow graphic that reads “We need to stop framing disability as something to “fix” in the person and start looking at how we can remove the barriers society creates. Even if I could see properly, I’d still be disabled.” A QR code and my name are in the bottom right-hand corner. #DisabilityInclusion #Disability #DisabilityEmployment #Adjustments #DiversityAndInclusion #Content

Here's our newest consultant, Punky Dreyfus, in their own words: Punky?(any/all pronouns), is based in Boston, MA. They are 25 years old, a queer, gender non-conforming, white, anti-zionist, jewish, creative, sober, and enraged human being.??Punky?finds joy in connecting with and learning from other mad people in the area.?Punky?is a musician- she plays guitar and sings in her friends band, called InkBlot! Punky?continues to be one of the Youth Access Chairs for the Lived Experience Committee at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston along with Tyler Josma (he/him). Recently,?Punky?worked at MPATH (Massachusetts Psychosis Access and Triage Hub) as a young adult peer mentor. With MPATH,?Punky?worked closely with Dr. Emily?Gagen, and together they offered presentations regarding what most clinical spaces refer to as "psychosis" experiences.?Together they?presented to universities including: Bentley, MIT, Harvard, William James.?Punky?used their time in the presentations to share a handful of her experiences within the mental health system and challenge doctors, nurses, educators, school counselors, and teachers' biases regarding the ability and worth of people’s autonomy and life beyond the institutions that case them in.?

We had a wonderful community meeting today at Lived Experience Consultants, sharing our stories, strategies, and ideas for our collective. It was so engaging I forgot to take a picture! In the New Year, we're committed to building each other up, sharing knowledge and resources with our communities, prioritization of people with identities farthest from privilege, incorporating art into our transformative practices, and renewing focus on factors upstream of involvement in behavioral healthcare. Did I say I was proud? #LivedExperience #HealthEquity #LivedExperienceConsultants #MentalHealth

Take a look at our founder's most recent presentation.

Welcome to the team, M Foley (they/them)! Here's a bit about M in their own words: M is a queer, nonbinary person originally?from California,?relocating to Seattle to complete their undergrad program in 2018. M identifies as a person in recovery from mental?health issues including bipolar disorder and an eating disorder. For years, M struggled with their issues and trauma on their own and was isolated in their suffering. Once they found community, M was able to strengthen their recovery and find healing. They now work as a peer counselor using their own lived experience to support others in their recovery journeys. M strongly believes that community healing is one of the most important factors in people's recoveries and works to advocate for equitable resources to support people as they heal. They practice a harm-reduction recovery model, meeting people where they are at and letting each individual define their recovery. M has done work to create anti-racist and inclusive spaces in both professional and personal realms and is always striving to learn more and enact change. They are currently attending a graduate school program in Seattle with the goal of becoming a sex therapist to trans and queer couples to help create positive, healthy relationships for diverse relationship dynamics.

This week, I had the privilege of guest lecturing at William James College to Professor Madison Natarajan, PhD's Consulting course. I told my recovery story, the story of Lived Experience Consultants, the many problems with behavioral healthcare as an institution, and how we can act to change it. Some of the students said it was the best lecture of the year. It feels a little surreal to be valued enough to give a lecture to doctoral students, particularly after so few people cared about me when I was in the thick of psychosis. I've had trouble finding work at times because I disclosed my truth "too early." I've been in hospitals where human rights violations are committed daily. Now this. I left each lecture with a simple word: care. Care about the people in your community. Act on it. Listen, understand, and sit in discomfort when someone is hurting. Don't try to fix things or treat the "problem." Empathize, hold space, be present. Practice radical togetherness. Care.