Peer Specialist Ideas

Last week I was asked for ideas about how to succeed in a paid Peer Specialist job. These tactics could work well at any job.

1. Set boundaries between you and your clients / coworkers.
2. Create workday rituals—more on this in the next blog entry.
3. Focus on having conversations with your clients.
4. View the relationship as an equal partnership.
5. “Practice what you preach” to clients.
6. Expect to have setbacks.
7. Act resilient after a setback—see my blog entry on using FORCE.
8. Set career goals you want to achieve.
9. Take walks with your clients should you be able to.

In the words of Pat Deegan Peer Advocate pioneer:

Recovery involves having “the dignity of risk” and “the right to fail.”

Too often peers can buy into the myth of self-stigma and its corollary feeling that we’re not good enough. This is an impossible standard that peers are held to that people who don’t have a mental health issue aren’t held to.

This thinking can be reinforced by outsiders or by ourselves.

I would say the two top tactics for any career are to set boundaries and to set job and career goals. The third tactic is creating daily rituals.