With the upcoming second London in2gr8 peer groups, below are the themes we meet and talk about.
How we understand our identity as someone who has accessed support, public or private, and being a professional working to support others in mental health.
Thoughts about how discussions range, differ and are similar between different professions and roles.
Our experiences of the options and choices of sharing and supporting current difficulties of mental ill health, as a mental health professional, at different career stages and with different role responsibilities at work.
Our experiences of organisational responsibility to provide nourishing environments for the emotional labour of human work, barriers to that, and of toxic environments. What is toxic? Thoughts about all levels of the systems in which we work.
Thoughts about the meanings, differences and crossovers between the words and phenomena: ‘lived experience’, ‘vicarious trauma’, ‘dual identity’, ‘dual status’ and ‘burnout’.
Thoughts about all the different reasons someone might choose to share lived experience, past or present.
Thoughts about the themes of stigma, transformation and flourishing.
Thoughts about activism
Our thoughts and experiences of sharing in the therapeutic relationship, what does emerging research and viewpoints of those accessing services tell us?
Our experiences of mental ill health and implications for the power and privilege of different types of knowledge and the ‘us provider / them user’ divide.
Peer groups as supportive and cheerleading of members to navigate their way through these themes in a way that is meaningful to them, honouring all differences.
If you are a mental health professional interested in discussing your 'dual identity' and the wider themes surrounding it with your peers who identify the same way, please ask to join the forum and come along to a peer group.
We are in early stages and the London peer group is the first to run and has had it's second meeting. If there is interest from at least about 5 members in a area local to you, the complete peer group guidance on the member's media page will help you set up. Put your interest on the peer group request thread in the forum. We currently have interest in setting up in Suffolk and Liverpool...
Any questions, get in touch at www.in2gr8mentalhealth.com