Making Music: Using Lived Experience in Open Dialogue 

I’m often asked, in Open Dialogue Training, how to use one’s own life experiences when it feels relevant or potentially useful. Sometimes this question comes from people with Lived Experience of mental ill health, distress and/or trauma who occupy a role that encourages the use of these experiences (Peer Support Workers and Lived Experience Practitioners, for example). Sometimes it comes from people who have wider experiences that are evoked within the course of a network meeting. Grief, discrimination, shame, powerlessness – there is so much in our lives that might resonate with those we wish to support.

Beware of false equivalency

Whilst we might see similarities between our own experiences and those of a network member, they are never the same. The concept of otherness can be helpful here. Each person experiences similar sounding situations differently. The feeling of shared Lived Experience can come with a risk of curtailing curiosity. If I believe I know what someone means when they talk I may forget to ask them to say more. I might stifle the dialogue. Ultimately, I might leave someone alone in their experience without realising it.

We do not need to speak about our specific experiences

Whilst Open Dialogue encourages practitioners to be authentic and transparent, we are not required to speak every thought and feeling that we have. Discernment is crucial, as is working within our own level of comfort. Sharing isn’t always useful. Sometimes our experiences may be too raw for us to share them and remain fully present to the network. Sometimes our experiences might invalidate or obscure those of the network member we are wishing to connect with. They might even become a burden to the network, leading them to feel they need to take care of us.

Lived Experience can assist us in the dialogue without ever being spoken out loud. We might use it as a guide, alerting us to quieter voices in the dialogue. If we slow down and reflect on the words that resonate with us, for example, it may lead to further dialogue. It may help the person, themselves, say more if they choose to. Our own words may not be needed.

But, speaking about our Lived Experience can also help the dialogue

In my experience, at least, sharing some aspects of my Lived Experience has served the dialogue. It can query the professional/client divide, helping emphasise that we are all humans trying to navigate a complex life. We can use Lived Experience to help build connections with people, especially those whose experiences may leave them feeling isolated from others. It can challenge taboos, shame and isolation. Sometimes, it can foster hope. I remember a time when a network, after a crisis, told me that the fact I’d had some similar experiences helped them stay with the process and continue meeting at a time when hope was in short supply.

How I share my Lived Experience in Open Dialogue

There is precious little guidance on sharing one’s own Lived Experience as an Open Dialogue Practitioner. In this void, I was left to try different ways of doing it – in conversation with team members and other allies. There is no single answer to how use Lived Experience, and nor should there be. We are all different and will find different paths towards using Lived Experience thoughtfully and carefully within Network Meetings. Over time I began to notice the times when sharing something of myself seemed to enable people to say more about their experiences. I noticed those times when it seemed to inhibit or stop the conversation.

I began to ask myself questions when I felt moved to share something from my Lived Experience.

• What is my motivation for sharing? Why am I moved to share now? What am I hoping for?
• Is it sufficiently processed? Can I talk about it in a relatively brief way, without needing to go into the whole story from beginning to end.
• How raw and exposing is the experience I wish to share? Am I able to share it and stay present to the network?
• If it isn’t well received would I be OK with network members rebuffing it?

When speaking from my own experience, I tend to use a reflection, rather than speaking directly to the network. This enables each network member to listen without the demand for a response that sharing directly might make. It enables them to respond, or not, as they choose. I anchor it as a response to something someone in the network has said, am tentative and stay curious as to whether network members relate to it or if it’s different for them.

A Network Meeting as musical improvisation with a band

One way of seeing a network meeting is as akin to playing in a band where members are improvising together, creating something new. Playing in a band takes a skill that is useful in Open Dialogue facilitation – being able to listen to the people around you whilst simultaneously listening to oneself. It can help to notice whether what you’re playing is enhancing the music and giving space for others to take part. It’s also useful to notice the times where what you offer disrupts the flow and makes it hard for others to play. There is little point in having great technical prowess and being able to shred a complex guitar solo if the people you’re playing with put down their instruments and walk away.

Adding harmonies to the main theme

Adding harmonies to someone else’s tune can add richness and depth. Harmonies are responsive to what’s there – the context of the tune and the chords that surround it. They can dramatically affect how we hear the music as a whole. They don’t overpower the tune, but offer the possibility of hearing it differently.

In Open Dialogue, I might use my Lived Experience to add a harmony to what someone else has shared. I might both acknowledge the importance of what they have said, in a reflection, and share some of my own experience of complex or contradictory feelings around it. As always, in a reflection, I would share my curiosity around whether the person relates to it, or how it’s different for them. In these reflections I’m careful not to dominate or say too much. They tend to be brief and rooted in what has come before.

Introducing a New Theme

Sometimes, when I’m playing in a band, someone will come in with a new theme – something that takes us in a different direction. It might offer some space from the initial theme, one that helps us hear it differently when we return to it. It might inspire the band to go in a different direction. This approach is risky, though. If no-one else connects with the new theme the band might not know what to play. Equally in Open Dialogue, if you introduce something too different it risks disconnection.

I’ve had the experience of introducing a new theme when I’ve disclosed my own diagnosis or experiences (e.g. talked about hospitalisation or my relationship with medication). It is always linked to something someone in the network has talked about, but at these times has the feeling of something new and the network may – for a time – organise themselves around this new information. It can structure the music so the focus is on what I have shared. This risks obscuring people’s own experiences and, yet, if done carefully and responsively it can enhance the dialogue. Network members may use this new information in a way that makes sense for them, connecting with it and returning to their theme in a new way.

Shifting focus away from me

If the focus stays on me for too long I need the skill of being able to step back, once more, to allow space for others to play. I can do this explicitly, for example, by being honest that I really want to hear more about the network’s experiences. Doing this in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re telling someone off for being interested in you feels important. It’s natural to be curious and, by sharing something of myself, I have opened a door. To slam it in someone’s face doesn’t feel OK.

One way amongst many

What I write here is not the truth of using Lived Experience in Open Dialogue. In it I’m simply sharing some of the things I think about. You may have a different approach, based on your own experience of doing this. I hope that this post helps encourage more dialogue around the nuances of experiential sharing in Open Dialogue.