Peer Support: Beliefs and Ideas
From Wellness Recovery Action Plan and Peer Support: Personal, Group and Program Development by Mary Ellen Copeland and Shery Mead
It is important to notice how our beliefs and ideas affect how we do Peer Support. If we don’t pay attention, we may end up doing to each other what’s been done to us, and we may behave in old ways to get what we need. If we can learn to stand back from our own perspective and remember that we’ve all had different messages about illness and help, we’ll find that we can build more trusting, healing, and respectful relationships.
| Mental Health Language | Regular People Language |
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Practice transforming these statements to fit with the Peer Support model.
- “The consumers in my program are unmotivated.”
Instead I could say ___________________________________________
- “Maybe I should call the crisis line for you…”
Instead I could say ___________________________________________
- “Staff here are more recovered than members.”
Instead I could say ___________________________________________
- “She’s fragile/in crisis.”
Instead I could say ___________________________________________
- “Staff should have good boundaries and never give out their home phone numbers.”
Instead I could say ___________________________________________
- “No one ever wants to help me.”
Instead I could say ___________________________________________
- “We don’t take calls regarding suicidal feelings, call Crisis.”
Instead I could say ___________________________________________
Some possible responses:
- People here have been taught to have low expectations.
- How can I support you in doing what you need to do?
- We’re all working on our recovery and we all have good and bad days.
- She has survived a lot and will get through this tough time.
- It is good to figure out where and when to set limits.
- I feel pretty isolated.
- I’m a little scared about what’s going on for you, how can we figure this out together?
This excerpt is from:
Peer Support is about having relationships with others in new and different ways that promote growth, recovery and wellness. WRAP is about living in new and different ways that promote growth, recovery, and wellness. By combining the two, the skills and strategies that we discover in peer support can become part of our WRAP and the skills and strategies we discover as we learn about and use WRAP assist us in peer support.
The combination of WRAP and Peer Support can be very powerful in helping us grow, learn from each other and challenge each other beyond what we thought we were capable of. Using some of the peer support theory, we can begin to use WRAP to help each other discover the context within which we've learned about ourselves, and then help each other develop plans that build a new story.