Site Update - Lived Experience Vs Comfort supporting with a topic
Hi All,
Have you ever thought about what direct lived experience means vs a willingness to support someone in a topic?
Direct lived experience - This means you have direct personal experience with a particular mental health condition. This does not mean experience with a family member or friend who is living with the mental health condition, it means you personally have lived with the mental health condition. You do not need to have a diagnosis from a medical professional. If you believe you have lived experience with the condition, then we trust you to identify yourself appropriately.
Willingness to support someone in a topic - This means you do not necessarily have lived experience, but rather a comfort with or additional knowledge on the topic that makes you feel comfortable to support members in this topic!
It may seem obvious, but up till this point weve not differentiated between these two items. And we have not updated this section of the listener sign up process for over 5 years! Today, I am excited to announce, we will more clearly differentiate between direct lived experience vs a willingness to support someone in a topic in our product. We want to give members more opportunity to find listeners who may be a good match.
Dont worry, as listeners, it is up to you to decide how you want to present your listening skills or classify your experience. You are welcome to leave one or both of these topic areas completely blank on your profiles. These are both optional classifications for you to use in any way you personally feel comfortable.
We are making some language and functionality changes in the following locations:
1. Listener sign up - currently, when you sign up to be a listener the following option is presented:
Old text/ Header: area of expertise
Old Text/ Below topic list: OPTIONAL: Select areas that you have expertise, experience, or real interest in supporting. It is better to have a few key areas that you really care about, than it is to have many areas that you dont really care about.
Moving forward, the listener sign up will read like this:
Updated text/ Header: Your lived experience
Updated Text/ Below topic list: OPTIONAL: Some members like to talk to listeners with lived experience. Lived experience means that you have personal experience with a particular mental health condition. Select any topics that you have lived experience in.
Add we will add an additional topic section to Listener sign ups! :
Header Text: Topics I feel comfortable supporting someone with
[Insert same list of topic categories with check boxes]
Below Topic list text: Please share topics you may not have direct lived experience with, but you feel comfortable talking to someone about.
2.Browse listeners
We need browse listener search function to mimic changes made to listener profile sign up re direct lived experience vs topics a listener is comfortable supporting in.
Remove topics & change language to Direct Lived Experience
Add hover text/ explanation text: Direct Lived Experience indicates that the listener has direct lived experience with a specific mental health condition or topic.
Functionality: This search function should link directly to what the listener shares during the sign up process.
Add additional drop down Comfort with topic
Add hover text/ explanation text: Comfort with a topic indicates that the listener does not have direct lived experience with the topic but is comfortable supporting in this topic.
Functionality: This search function should link directly to what the listener shares during the sign up
3.Listener profiles
We need to update the listener profile page (on mobile & desktop / screen grabs attached).
We need to remove categories and add two distinct sections:
Direct Lived Experience
Comfort with Topic
Functionality for both should link directly to what Listeners report during Listener sign up and then manage from their settings page.
4.Listener Settings page - option to change/ tweak
Similar to the listener profiles update - we need to divide into two categories:
Direct Lived Experience
Add explanation text: Direct Lived Experience indicates that you have personally experienced the mental health condition.
Comfort with Topic
Add explanation text: Comfort with Topic indicates that you do not have direct lived experience, but you are comfortable supporting members with this topic.
I am confused as to why the list of topics is being limited, why can't every topic be listed? To pick out ten is to say that some topics are more important than others which is rather invalidating to all the rest of the topics. Im not quite sure why this update was needed to begin with. To imply that just because someone doesn't have the highly specific direct lived experience that they aren't as good with the topic is rather insulting to all those who have supported family members and friends in a variety of different struggles, but even if they haven't done that, it doesn't mean they are incapable of sharing empathy with the member who is struggling.
I was not previously aware that 7 Cups measured the ability to empathize by whether or not we have personally experienced what the member has.
Not only does this update imply that some listeners are better than others based on their experiences, but it also opens up a whole new level of targeted bullying. It is a hard truth that 7 Cups is home to several individuals whose mission it is is to tear down vulnerable individuals. It's awful, especially in a place that is designed to be a place where everyone feels safe and welcome and free of judgement. Yeah it sucks, but pretending there are not people who will use this update to target listeners isn't going to make it go away.
The above stated leaves out the fact that many listeners are unaware (largely due to a lack of training) that sharing personal experiences to members is not encouraged. (Ex: member: I think I have depression listener: I have depression too, most days I can't even get out of bed.) we discourage this to make sure the attention is always focused on the member, a HUGE part of listening. Listing all of the topics we have had personal experience in will lead the member to ask about our personal experiences, which is innocent enough until new listeners who don't know any better start sharing their experiences with their members, which is not only unprofessional but takes the attention away from the member.
I am well aware that listeners are not the same as professional therapists, but that doesn't mean we should lower our standards. You wouldn't see a therapist advertising their services saying I have personally experienced trauma and self harm so if you struggle with that give me a call!
https://youtu.be/ESujTCel6lM ← the video from the listener training shows just this. In the video, the woman speaking to her co workers stops herself from sharing her own personal experiences, even though she was going to do so in an attempt to make the co worker feel validated. This update has been developed in an attempt to make members feel more validated, just like the woman in the video who was about to share her personal experiences for the same reason. Keeping the attention fixed on the member is a core goal in chats. This update blurs the listener boundary lines.
Listeners ability to empathize is not limited by their experiences and to list all the topics that a particular listener has experienced implies that. Listing the topics we have experienced takes the attention away from the member and onto ourselves, and gives the member more information about their listener then they should. Patients shouldn't know about their therapists struggles, and nor should members know their listeners struggles.
I am not sure if this update was done in an attempt to raise the ‘satisfaction level so to speak of members by pairing listeners who have more experiences with particular topics to members who are looking for support on that same topic. If this is so, then providing better training for listeners is in my opinion a more efficient way of improving member chats, and does not involve pinning labels on listeners making targeted bullying easier, blur the lines of listener boundaries, and taking the focus away from members :)
As always, forever grateful for the dedication admin and others involved have shown in improving the site, and the openness in taking feedback from the community!
@Kate
@neverendingMusic92
I agree with Music. I could see this update potentially being good, but at the same time, the bad seems to outweigh all of that potential. I hope the admins will take the time to consider this :)