Not A Professional

Starting a blog is always a mark that I’m about to learn a whole lot.  This is my fifth blog.  Three of the other four blogs which I’ve written were published on an online magazine called Vermont Views.  You may find the only blog which I’ve written—not for Vermont Views—at breathebrattleboro.blogspot.com.  Breathe took seven months to write; it was a blog about my recovery story; I am a schizophrenic.  In writing Breathe, I emerged into the mental health advocacy field, here in Vermont.  I spoke at the state house in Vermont and even got a job as a peer specialist at a social services agency.

Now, you might not know what a peer specialist is—a lot of people don’t.  It is a person who lends moral support to another in recover; most often in recovery from a bout with mental illness; and most often a peer is someone who themselves is in recovery from mental health challenges.  In addiction recovery, they refer to people of a similar role as recovery coaches.  But I’ve digressed.  My reason for explaining what a peer specialist is is to make argument for the consideration that professionalizing peer support—while having many good points—has its drawbacks as well.

My role as a peer at the social services agency had conflicting currents to it.  I say currents, and would like to clarify, a current here, is an influence on how I do my job.  Ideally, I would do my job so that the clients I worked with would be supported in taking strides towards leading more rewarding lives.  The relationship with my clients created an influence over how I did my job—it was a current.  But the other current to how I did my job was of keeping enough money flowing through the agency I worked for. 

Keeping money flowing through the agency makes my role as a peer more regimented.  Money flows in for each minute of face to face time.  That means I got paid to sit and talk with clients. The hope my employers had for me was that in sitting in conversation with my clients, I’d cultivate relationships.  And I did.  But sitting and talking about what goes on in a person’s life only helps things so much.

What I’d like to see out of my role in the peer community isn’t focused on sitting and talking.  I want to create movement within my community for people who have faced challenges similar to me which will create a sense of pride around facing adversity.  If I cannot make that my endeavor as a peer professional then it is not what I feel I should be doing. 

What I feel I must say before my readers go out and denounce the professionalization of peer support, is mention my own recovery, and how professional peers impacted that.  I was encouraged to start blogging by a professional peer; and I was encouraged to pursue employment as a peer—by a professional peer.  Each of these words of encouragement planted a seed for life change.  And I mean dramatic life change.  Very literally, about four years ago now, I thought the best thing I could hope for was to spend the rest of my life in jail.  I felt life was too difficult for me.  I was too much a failure.

We cannot do away with professional peer support.  We can, however, create a paradigm of peer support which honors confidentiality in all situations where no one is in danger.  We can create a paradigm where peers are independent of agencies—freelance peer support.  These, and many other steps, can be taken to make it so that professionalizing the work people do in lending support is not conflicted.