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I don’t think lived experience is the issue- I think things can go wrong when people are left to figure out how to use it alone.

My view on this comes from more than one part of my life: recovery, family mental illness, caregiving, advocacy, psychosocial recovery work, and years of trying to understand what actually helps people feel safer in support.

I’ve got this wrong before too. Taking on too much. Feeling responsible for too much. Staying too close because something felt familiar. Thinking I understood what someone needed without slowing down enough to ask properly.

I did not arrive at this neatly.

A lot of Heart Worx systems exist because I know care can get messy when people are left to wing it. Matching, supervision, role clarity, reflection - boring stuff until it is missing.

Lived experience can bring something into this work that training alone sometimes can’t.

Having lived experience is not the same as knowing how to use it safely when someone else is relying on you. I think it gets skipped because, from the outside, it sounds simple.

A lot of people come into disability, mental health, and community work for good reasons. They care. They relate. They know what it feels like to be on the other side of a system that doesn’t quite get it.

I don’t want that dismissed. Good intent just does not automatically prepare people for what happens when someone starts relying on them emotionally.

I know what it is to live around family mental illness, trauma, anxiety, caregiving, recovery, and support systems that still leave you carrying too much. I have had to learn, sometimes painfully, that love, insight, and survival skills still need boundaries around them. Care can get tangled up with responsibility, fear, guilt, and trying to be useful.

Most of the time, it does not look like a huge deal while it is happening.

A worker stays too close. They avoid escalating because it feels disloyal, cruel, or like they are betraying the person. They blur what belongs to them and what belongs to the participant. They start carrying things home and calling it care.

Some of it still looks caring while it is happening, which is probably why people miss it.

Saying “I get it” or “I’ve been there too” can sound supportive. It can be supportive. It can also make the moment more about the worker than the participant. When a story feels familiar, people can stop asking enough questions.

People can get close too fast and stop noticing. Suddenly they are holding too much, thinking about it constantly, carrying things home, feeling guilty for escalating, feeling responsible for things that were never fully theirs to control.

A lot of people probably would not even call it burnout at first. It looks like caring more and more, until the worker slowly loses perspective on what is theirs and what belongs to the role.

Someone throws themselves in, gets close fast, and starts holding more than they can keep holding. It might feel supportive for a while. It might even be supportive for a while. Then the worker burns out, the support changes, and the participant is left navigating another shift they should never have had to carry.

For some people, that instability is not small. It can stir up older stuff. Not being worth staying for. Not being properly understood. Not feeling safe to depend on anyone for long. People carry that into the next support relationship, whether they mean to or not, and the next person has to work with that too.

I think lived experience sometimes gets named like it fills in the rest of the practice by itself.

I do not actually want people scared off this work. Half the reason I wrote this is because I think some workers are carrying more than people realise and trying to figure it out mostly alone.

I think a lot of workers are trying really hard with not much around them, honestly. Not because they do not care. Usually because they do. They step into support work with their own history, their own read on people, and a very real wish to help.

They may not have enough space to unpack what belongs to them and what belongs to the participant.

It usually shows up in smaller ways: staying too available, feeling guilty for escalating, reading someone’s situation through your own old fear, carrying things home and calling it care.

I’m not saying this because I think workers are bad at this. I think a lot of people are trying hard and have never actually been taught how complicated this part of support work can get.

Most participants can tell pretty quickly whether someone actually gets it or not, but that still does not magically teach boundaries, escalation, or how to notice when your own stuff has entered the room.

Holding risk and distress, while staying clear about your role, takes more than understanding where someone is coming from.

People need actual support around this work, including someone experienced checking in properly and someone who can say, gently but clearly, “I think you might be too close to this one.”

Understanding someone and supporting someone safely are connected. They are not exactly the same skill.

I also don’t want to understate how powerful lived experience can be when people are supported to use it well.

I have seen people with very little trust soften when something familiar finally gets named properly. Not in a big magical way. More like their shoulders drop a little because they are not having to explain the whole thing from scratch again.

Sometimes it is just the person not bracing as much. They are not having to fight to be understood. They can feel believed without the worker making it about them.

Living it is not the same as being ready to hold it for someone else.

I don’t want lived experience pushed out of this work. I want people supported enough that they are not left guessing their way through it.

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If you want to build this into safer practice

For anyone wanting to take this further, these are places to start - not because one course magically sorts this, but because this is something people can keep learning, practising, and being supported in.

Lived Experience Australia has training, webinars, learning resources, and lived experience workforce development.

There is peer work study, like the Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work.

There are also lived experience workforce frameworks coming out of places like NSW Health.

Places to start

• Lived Experience Australia: www.livedexperienceaustralia.com.au/
• Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work: https://training.gov.au/Training/Details/CHC43515
• NSW Health - Elevating Lived Experience Expertise: www.health.nsw.gov.au/towardszerosuicides/Pages/elevating-lived-experience-expertise.aspx

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Jess Schafer-Wilson
Co-Founder | Practice Lead | NDIS Systems, Recovery & Lived Experience - Heart Worx