Lived Experience in a Dehumanizing System

As someone with lived and living experience, I’ve spent years navigating the mental health system as both a consumer and a professional. I entered this work hoping to be part of a solution, but what I witnessed behind closed doors left me disillusioned and heartbroken. The moral injury I experienced in treatment settings has shaped not only how I see the system, but how I choose to engage with it moving forward.

One of the most devastating parts was witnessing how people seeking support were discussed in treatment team meetings. The very therapists clients trusted with their healing were often the same people making fun of them, using stigmatizing language, and reducing them to diagnoses, symptoms, or behaviors. In some meetings, clients were treated as little more than their insurance policies, valuable only as long as coverage lasted. Sitting in those rooms, watching people being spoken about as case studies or punchlines instead of human beings in need of care, broke something in me. This was not the system I had hoped to be part of.

Each time I tried to advocate for change, I was met with questions about whether I was "doing okay," with my recovery status subtly or openly used against me. The concerns I raised about systemic failures were never truly addressed. Instead, I was told to "practice self-care" or "take a mental health day." These responses felt dismissive and condescending and reinforced the idea that the problem was me, not the system.

We need real, honest conversations about the harm that happens in these spaces. Too often, those of us with lived experience are tokenized. We’re invited in but tone-policed when we speak clearly about what is not working. We’re asked to share our stories but expected to make others comfortable while doing it. When we dare to challenge the status quo, our voices are dismissed or pathologized. It is exhausting.

Our experiences should be valued, not weaponized against us. The dehumanization we witness, and the moral injury we carry because of it, needs to be acknowledged. We cannot keep sweeping these truths aside.

For those of us working in this field with lived and living experience, we deserve spaces where we can speak openly without fear of being patronized or silenced.

We need systems that support not only the people seeking care but also the peer support workers who bring their whole selves into this work. I have stepped away from working directly in treatment, but my hope is that by raising these issues, we can move toward creating spaces that truly value our experiences, our insights, and our humanity.