One Year of Peer Support
It’s hard to believe that just one year ago, Peer Support was a tiny group of clients and a single staff member gathering to talk about their mental health experiences in the far back of the IPR office.
Since then, our Peer Support Program has grown in ways we could have only hoped for. Throughout our first year, we’ve had the privilege of sharing invaluable conversations and experiences with clients—and, in many ways, growing alongside them.
At its core, Peer Support has always been just that: peers supporting peers.
The field of behavioral health is constantly changing and evolving, and along with it has come an important realization: people with lived experience can provide a different kind of insight into the lives of those they support—an insight that cannot simply be taught in a classroom.
Peer Support creates a space where patience, empathy, and understanding come naturally from having experienced feelings of being lost or alone while navigating complex traumas, intrusive thoughts, and other mental health challenges.
Some of the things we hear most frequently from our clients are:
“You actually get it.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one.”
“I finally have a place where I don’t feel judged.”
Our clients know that Peer Support staff are not psychiatrists, and we aren’t there to force them to change before they’re ready. We aren’t trying to “fix” anyone. Instead, we want to empower people to take hold of their lives again by showing them that recovery is possible—and that recovery can look different for everyone.
Growing Into a Space of Our Own
As our program grew, we quickly outgrew our original office space. That gave us the opportunity to create a new environment where acceptance and empathy could be conveyed not only through our staff, but through the physical space itself.
Helping clients feel comfortable and confident when meeting with us has always been extremely important. We recognize that working with new people can be stressful and nerve-wracking, and we’ve seen how small touches can make a meaningful difference.
Gentle lighting, fidgets, comfortable furniture, and empowering posters and wall décor have all helped create a space where clients can feel more at ease, comfortable, and safe.
Our weekly support groups have grown as well. Each week, we tailor our topics to help clients reflect more deeply on themselves, their relationships, and the role they play in their own success story.
Over the past year, we’ve explored topics such as:
Goal setting
Communication skills
Practicing acceptance
Self-advocacy
Physical movement through chair yoga
Artistic expression through painting and crafting
And, of course, some activities have taken us beyond the walls of Successful Living. We even had the opportunity to take clients to Iowa City’s local cat lounge to learn about the benefits animals can have on emotional wellbeing. (The cats were definitely a client favorite!)
Looking Ahead
Our client base continues to grow as more and more people learn about what Peer Support has to offer, and we are incredibly thankful to everyone who has supported us throughout our first year.
It’s more important than ever to continue having open and honest conversations about mental health—especially for those who may have never felt brave enough to have those conversations until they found people who empowered them to do so.
One year in, we are incredibly proud of how far Peer Support has come. More importantly, we’re excited about where we’re going.
We look forward to continuing to grow, continuing to create spaces where people feel accepted and understood, and continuing to be a part of our clients’ support systems as they write their own recovery stories.
Here’s to one year of Peer Support!
~ Lauren Davis, Peer Support Program Manager
