Since I’ve been doing these, I get messages from ppl ‘off the record’ who either need to reach out for support or who reach out to provide support. I’ve found the hardest thing is being treated with such different levels of respect in different contexts. Does anyone else >
> experience this? What I’ve found is that as I’ve had expertise recognised and respected in some contexts, the contexts in which it is disrespected somehow go from being upsetting to unbearable. As you raise the fact that what you are experiencing is discriminatory & >
> disrespectful, and you have it ignored time and time again, you go from being able to give the benefit of the doubt, of being able to put what is happening down to ignorance, to starting to realise that it can no longer be ignorance. So what is it? Is it maliciousness? >
> For me, it has gone beyond just feeling like gaslighting, because I’ve lost so much. My health. Right now, I can’t drive. On Friday I have to have wires glued to my head to try and work out why the f* the issues aren’t sorted yet. *spoiler alert - maybe it’s because nothing >
> has changed? So does this mean that I’m worth nothing, my life and health are worth nothing, not worth changing policies for? It’s only the same experience of others, I just have a bigger mouth and am more stubborn. But why aren’t we worth anything? >
> So, like I was saying, the most painful thing for me has been seeing that what I’ve been saying is true, because I’ve experienced being treated differently in different contexts. I’ve seen the way #LXPs are viewed & treated differently, so it becomes unbearable to exist in an >
> environment that won’t acknowledge when it is discriminating against us and hurting us. I can cope with the blows, but the gaslighting - that is the killer. Especially when you wear a Mad label. It questions your reality, your expertise. It pathologises you. You become the >
> pathology you are given. It’s written about in the literature - @AiyegbusiDr wrote about the skilled, qualified overseas nurses who were called incompetent by their racist coworkers. They became their label. Yesterday I became my label, a literally hysterical poster child for >
> BPD howling that I had been badly hurt, and no one was accountable, or cared. As I cried out that I was being badly treated in only this one place, not others, that I wasn’t delusional, this wasn’t me being unreasonable.... I sounded and became every stereotype being forced >
> upon me. People with power don’t seem to have to be accountable for the impact of their actions, or to provide any grounds for why decisions are made in certain ways. As LXPs we provide literature, evidence, case studies, lobby. We have to be so much better than our colleagues>
> yet we don’t get treated with the same respect the other way round. I’ve never had anyone give an evidence based response as to why they have decided to ignore LX knowledge to make decisions about LXP work. Those decisions have harmed me so badly. Yet even then, they are still>
> made, regardless. I am so fucking hurt. How little am I valued at? Worst still, if this was all I knew, I would be gaslighted into believing this was ok, and that I was the problem, a bad person. My confidence is already shot. It’s only because I know better and have links >
> elsewhere that I know that this is wrong. It is only because of that, I’m able to understand I’m not shit at my job, useless... that in fact I’ve got a lot to offer in this area, and it’s appreciated in some areas. But it’s also a total mindfuck going from one world into the >
> other. It is literally killing me slowly. My body is breaking down. Last year I tried to die. This year I’ve felt like that, albeit with improved coping mechanisms. My point is, nobody should ever, ever be treated or made to feel this way. It’s not as simple as ignoring >
> this type of behaviour or treatment, being a bit stronger, assimilating. It didn’t work for those overseas nurses. It won’t work for LXPs either. #Equality, please. Remember, most stories remain untold. People are scared to say this shit.
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More from @tamar_whyte

14 Feb
This reminds me of the time I was part of an art exhibition in Schloss Hartheim in Austria. The palace had been used as a gas chamber in by Nazis to murder disabled people & ppl with learning difficulties, so it was now an institute to take care of ppl with learning difficulties>
> The palace was beautiful but such an ugly, evil thing had been done there. The downstairs was a museum that remembered what had been done. Upstairs was the art gallery, where work of disabled artists was shown. There was a custom built, beautiful building next door, where >
> residents lived, and appeared to have a much happier life in comfortable surroundings where they were free to create. The ugliness of the past was remembered though, alongside the progress of the future, a memorial to prevent the same thing happening again. >
Read 5 tweets
3 Jan
Discrimination is everywhere - sexism, homophobia, racism. I tweet a lot about the discrimination faced by #LivedExperiencePractitioners #LXPs who openly use their lived experience of mental health in their work. Do we need new legislation to protect us all from #discrimination?>
> Ppl who follow me/know me in real life know my health has been decimated over my experience of trying to address mental health discrimination. Did you know there is no legislation against systemic discrimination? Well, that’s what my union told me. It’s also almost impossible >
> to win a personal discrimination case, so they don’t give you access to a lawyer. Even stress claims are hard to win, so you rarely get union help either, including legal representation. I’ve lost my driving license, had seizures, take medicine that has left me with blurred >
Read 24 tweets
31 Dec 20
Yikes. I’ve had a bit of a shitty night. Woke up from a dream where I was sobbing - proper distressed, inconsolable body sobs - about work. I was living in a tiny cramped flat with my deceased family members, with no room. People from work were coming in and out & I felt >
> ashamed and I was trying to say that I used to live on my own in a bigger flat and not share a bedroom with my siblings & live with my Mum but I couldn’t. There was a new manager who came to see me and somehow bizarrely ended up in my bedroom waiting for me and it felt >
> intrusive & shaming because she saw my poor living conditions and I knew she would have been told by management that I was unstable/troublemaker/no good/rubbish. So then I cried and cried and cried and cried (to show how stable I was 🤣) and then I woke up 😳😳😳 >
Read 35 tweets
19 Dec 20
Is it bad that I feel my blood boil when I see equality drives that completely ignore the inequality that people in the #LivedExperienceProfessions face in the mental health organisations they work in. Imagine being in the intersection of being a Black, non-binary LXP? Your >
> experience of discrimination won’t even be registered. It won’t make the equality drive photos. Mad people, esp those who deign to be open about ourselves & champion Mad knowledge in Mental Health settings are actively held back, treated differently. Even LXPs with White Male >
> privilege are treated worse than their colleagues, paid less, exploited with no career opportunities. So heaven help our openly #Mad #LXP colleagues of colour, who are LGBTQ, with coexisting health conditions. Is it any coincidence that myself and my colleague - both with >
Read 8 tweets
16 Dec 20
COVID is frightening. The deaths, the restrictions, the lack of knowledge and consistency of how to deal with it. Conspiracy theories are a response to fear, I suppose. Thinking about it that way may help to mitigate clashes with ppl who believe them. There is generally a grain >
> of truth in everything. During periods of crisis & uncertainty, there are always people who use this for profit, like the disgusting assigning of contracts to companies who have never produced the PPE they were paid for. They also happen to have links with govt ministers >
> so yes, it makes sense that ppl mistrust the govt and the freedoms being taken away, because the ppl doing it aren’t trustworthy. But that doesn’t automatically mean that the precautions & restrictions to control the virus are wrong or the virus doesn’t exist. >
Read 4 tweets
30 Nov 20
#LXP explanation thread: There is no standardised language in the Survivor movement. When I use the term #LXP it is an acronym for #LivedExperiencePractitioners or #LivedExperienceProfessions. It refers to ALL people who work in posts that require use of insight from >
> lived experience of adverse mental health. So that includes LE Consultants, Survivor Researchers, Peer Support Workers etc, It’s not a universally accepted term, but when I tweet I need to use *something* to refer to us all, so that’s the term I use, because it’s quicker than >
> writing an explanation each time that Twitter doesn’t allow enough characters for, unless it’s a thread which people are less likely to read (ha, that’s a hilarious thing to say in a thread 😂). We all do very different roles but the one thing that binds us is the unique way >
Read 20 tweets

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