Been running a little sideproject on here. I used to be a peer worker and I’ve worked in mental health and stuff. So I decided to find a game with a live chat option and a setting that would suit a a drop-in space except online, essentially to offer freebies to the community. Or to volunteer/to contribute to the site and its culture. However you want to slice it.

If you’ve ever seen my effortposts on mental illness and especially ADHD or autism around the place here I guess it gives the impression that I am pretty knowledgeable on these things. What you don’t get to see is that this stuff is the hard facts that I draw on, the “theory” if you will. I’m also decent at application side of things, where this “theory” is turned into “praxis”, but you don’t get to see much of that at all in a forum because it’s much more like writing letters than it is a real-time conversation. And generally speaking it’s those critical conversations that often lead to improvements, not just reading a wall of text. Otherwise mental health services would supply you with books and call it good, y’know?

Also it’s just fucked trying to find the holy grail of a therapist who is in your region, whose books are open, who doesn’t charge an arm and a leg, who actually does a good job, whose approach fits with your needs. Throw in the radical politics or, at least, not wanting a therapist who is steeped in liberal cultural hegemony and then maybe one who specialises in ADHD or autism or trauma. Maybe all three. Good luck finding that particular unicorn.

Not that I’m a therapist. But I can cover a lot of bases that are currently grossly underserved. And I can do it for free because I’m a bit of a veteran at this stuff and I don’t really require practice development or a supervisor who I can go to for guidance or to process difficult things that might come up. Not saying that I’ve arrived at the end point and I have no learning to do but I am very seasoned when it comes to this. It’s never going to be a replacement for therapy but if people cannot access therapy, especially due to cost or disability, or they cannot access appropriate therapy then the peer work that I can do is hopefully a way to bridge that gap.

Anyway it’s been exceeding my wildest expectations. Turnout has been great. It’s definitely challenging doing this in a live chat context because I’m flying blind in many respects and I can’t rely on observations through stuff like tone of voice or body language. But you work within the confines that you find yourself in. It’s against my own project’s rules to go into any depth on this I feel as though I’ve been able to achieve some good outcomes in conversation so far, so I am satisfied with my performance and overall the game I chose seems pretty well fit for purpose. There has been a lot of demand, an overwhelming amount of support, and people have been so encouraging of me. It reinforces to me that I made the right decision to try this project out with the community here.

Just ran my third session earlier today. You can read about the whole damn thing here if you want to know more.

I guess it’s nice that I’m in a position to provide something which is uncommon but high in demand for free. You know how libs ask “What kind of job do you think you’d do after the revolution? Do you think you’d be a poet or something?” Well, here’s my answer.