Originally a comment by KBPlayer on The magic in everyday life.

During the Edinburgh Festival I saw Jenny Lindsay in a talk with a guy called Darren McGarvey. McGarvey was host of a series of talks on the Industrial Trauma Complex, i.e. how people frame their traumas, and the dangers of airing them (see a quote below about the lived experience and how airing it can harm the sufferer). McGarvey is from a very tough Glasgow background (and looks it) and a recovering addict. He got known as a rapper and then as writer and talker on social issues eg The Poverty Safari and The Social Distance Between Us, about class poverty and class differences.

The talk was well attended, almost all women including the former MP Joanna Cherry, who is known in these parts for her doughtiness on the gender issue. I don’t remember much about the substance of what was said – Jenny repeated the story of her hounding and the general shoddiness of her fellow creatives. What got me was McGarvey, who is known as a fearless commentator on social affairs, was so tentative in introducing Jenny, who in comparison to his rough guy’s looks and scruffy clothes, was smartly dressed and well groomed. He wanted to assure us that no offence was meant, that if anyone felt vulnerable they should be careful. He was full of trigger warnings.

Christ, I thought, we have bought a ticket and this is the Edinburgh Fringe, supposedly the arts festival where you think outside the envelope and push the box, and we are supposed to react like a bunch of Morningside Matrons circa 1972 at the flash of a breast at an experimental theatre.

As it was, Jenny was warmly received and I hope she made some money after the crappy time she’s been having. I think her book will do well and she should get some more gigs.

Concerning lived experience… I think this is very good. As an offshoot of this how much of the creative arts are about supposedly authentic autobiography. In one form it’s sharing the trauma, in another it’s where influencers create an instagrammable life and can never enjoy an experience for its own sake, but must submit it to an saudience.

“I am one of those people often referred to as having ‘lived experience’ – a label given to those of us who are not professionally qualified to assert the things we do who are instead authenticated by the adversities we have suffered. If you spend enough time online, you’re sure to encounter someone like me.

We have strong opinions which we often express with passion and conviction. We believe our experiences are important. That they may shed light on certain social and cultural challenges, backfilling the knowledge gaps so evident among a well-meaning managerial class. From addiction, to homelessness, criminal justice, gender-based violence, racism, housing, mental health and trauma, our lived experiences, which take the form of stories, are regarded by many (and by ourselves) as the solutions to a complex puzzle.

Missing pieces which, when truly grasped by decision makers and wider society, could help shape a more compassionate, informed, and inclusive future. But that’s not the whole story. Our lived experience is also a commodity. One which adds immeasurable value to workplaces, academic research, and media enterprises dominated by middle class professionals.

Every day lived experience permeates culture, driving engagement on social media platforms, generating millions of views, clicks and comments. Posts and status updates, online think-pieces, video essays, news segments and shortform clips online are disseminated, debated, and deconstructed.

In a free market, our willingness to eagerly supply the rapacious demand for authenticity and social realism can certainly leave us with a sense that we are making waves. That we are having an impact and making a difference. Regrettably, the allure of presenting ourselves as recovered (because that’s the nice little bow most people want their affirming lived experience testimonies wrapped up in) may pull us further from the truth of who we are and what we suffer from. In essence, by falsely portraying ourselves as the finished article, our vulnerability increases.

We may be prompted onto a platform to air our trauma publicly by others who’ve done no such thing, and are therefore ill-equipped to provide the necessary insight, support, or aftercare we might require. Our expectations may inadvertently rise, sensing we are on the cusp of some breakthrough which has previously eluded us, only to be dealt a crushing blow upon the realisation that people we thought were friends and allies (because we often attach intensely to anyone who gives us the time of day), were simply associates engaged in a transaction of some kind. And we may experience the nip of negative consequences, when our stories reach a level of prominence we did not foresee, provoking unpleasant reactions in others, be they strangers we’ll never meet or friends and family members who share neither our recollections of what happened, nor our desire to make a public display of it.

This lived experience movement ought to come with some caveats, not simply for the benefit those of us putting it all out there, but also to people on the lower slopes of their own recovery from trauma, who look those of us with a platform for an examples to follow, like we did our favourite artists.

There is a darker side to this lived experience moment, which must be articulated with great care, so as not to stoke unnecessary tumult. Though I suspect those currently riding the wave will find some of what I am going to say extremely challenging, no matter how delicately its put.

So let me first say this: I do not believe people with lived experience are being deliberately exploited by anyone; we have agency and participate willingly in most cases. I wish to cast no aspersions on organisations which have in recent years sought to platform, collaborate with, or even employ the lived experienced.

My concern is that we, the individuals being invited to share intimate details of our lives, are often not as well as we believe. We are often not as firm in our footing in life as we appear. Indeed, the demons of childhood trauma we’d all like to think long banished, wait patiently. We worry that showing vulnerability may result in a withdrawal of interest – abandonment.

We are afraid to assert ourselves and our needs, so make commitments we are unsure we can fulfil while accepting terms and conditions we often sense are unfair – conflict averse and overly compliant. And we often don’t understand the fullness of the consequences that may lie ahead when we agree to sing for our suppers – impulsivity.

Our desire to help others, to participate, to be seen to be achieving, and, yes, to gain affection and security and love, is often so overwhelming that we push aside any lingering doubt as to our fitness to engage in the risky public exhibitionism which may come to define us.

And let’s not forget, we decant our traumas into a rowdy and unforgiving public square where, once disclosed, they cannot be un-disclosed. “