What Is Peer Support?

A Peer is someone who has lived experience (similar experiences) struggling with mental health & life challenges that has been able to find success in their own recovery who can help support others on their journey for successful recovery. Peers may have struggled with depression, anxiety, PTSD, Bipolar disorder, non-consensus reality, and or any number of other mental health challenges.

Peers may have also experienced a myriad of life challenges that include homelessness, addiction, abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, poverty, disability and illness, grief, loss of loved ones, discrimination, loss of job or career, natural disasters and so many other experiences that impact us in difficult ways.

While a Peer has generally found success in their own recovery and is able to help support others on their journey for recovery, Peers still may experience challenges and struggles. As a Peer you know that reaching out for support is crucial along with using your skills for coping and maintaining positive mood and behavior.

Peer Support is when Peers build mutually honest and unbiased relationships with others experiencing mental health and life challenges to help support them on their journey of their mental health wellness and recovery by being able to provide active listening, empathy, encouragement, skills and tools for coping, and mentorship, and additional areas of support.

Peer Support Providers Ask:

1. What happened to you? What is your story?

2. Have I had any similar experiences and emotions? (Internally)

3. What do you need to get through this? What will be most helpful for you?

4. What are the roadblocks or barriers that will challenge or prevent you from obtaining those needs?

5. What steps can we take to get there? What is the plan?

The most fundamental benefit of peer support is being able to receive support and personal connection from another person or group that has shared similar experiences and has shared the same emotions from those experiences. The peer support recovery model focuses on asking ourselves and each other what do we need to get through this; and then working together towards obtaining those needs for successful recovery. This differs from many clinical models of support where the focus is and has been "here is what is wrong with you; and here is what we are going to do to fix you". Clinical models of support still have their importance and need, we believe that the primary source of support should be within the peer recovery model with additional support and assistance from the clinical models of support as secondary mutual support systems.

You can read more about why we believe support is important in our January 2022 blog.

Core Values and Practices: CARES

• Compassion and Kindness

• Accountability

• Respect

• Equity

• Solidarity

Core Skills and Practices

Active listening - key elements of active listening or active conversing rather, are paying attention to each other without judgement and jumping to conclusions, you clarify when you don't understand, and you retain the information you gained from the conversation.

Providing encouragement and guidance

Providing tools and skills for coping with their mental health and difficult situations they experience

Effective counseling skills where we use the acronym A ROSE

• Affirmations of strength and value (I can really hear that you are struggling right now, and it takes a lot of strength and courage to reach out for support and talk about it.)

• Reflecting -we reflect back in our own words, not parroting, what we hear from our clients so that they know we are listening and understand them

• Open Ended Questions - we ask questions that elicit our clients to think beyond just yes or no (How does that "experience" make you feel? What would be helpful for you right now in this moment?)

• Summarising, -we summarise what we hear periodically to help our clients discern and retain the most important aspects of our communication and to help transition the conversation as needed.

• Empathy - is a sacred connection between you and another person in which you are able to understand them and their experiences and be able to relate to them on a personal level by having shared those emotions from similar situations you have experienced.

Validating - this is letting someone know that their experiences and that their feelings are valid. We all need to be heard and validated. One of the most important tools is letting someone else know that they matter and that their experiences and that their feelings matter. By being validated this can help us feel less alone and can take some emotional weight off of us.

Deflection - sometimes we need to deflect a question when we cannot answer it, or in cases where we should not answer it.

Motivational Interviewing - is a counseling method focused on exploring and resolving ambivalence and insecurities to find the internal motivation one needs to change their behavior to find wellness and positive mental health recovery.

As Peer Support Providers, we usually have a strong instinct and desire to want to help people fix their life and resolve their life challenges and difficult situations.

However, that is not the goal of peer support, nor something we can do.

It is easy for us to believe that we have the ideas or the answers that can fix people's lives and their difficult situations. We also can't take responsibility for other people's choices.

However, we can't presume to know the answers that will resolve those situations, nor is it our place to.

What can we do instead of problem solving?

In a way we can offer support and guidance by offering our own experiences in those and similar situations and what was and wasn't helpful for you. You can use counseling skills and motivational interviewing to discuss what their options are and explore their motivations, insecurities, and ambivalence towards those options.

Working with someone as a peer support provider, the help and support that you can genuinely provide is being there for them, hearing them, validating their feelings and experiences, and letting them know that they are not alone. We can provide guidance by offering tools and skills for coping with their emotions, and we can offer resources that may benefit them if asked and if appropriate.