Standing In My Shoes Standing In My Shoes Sharing Stories As Peers

By: The Well of PBC

When you share your stories, you give someone a chance to stand in your shoes and see the world from a different perspective.

Sharing their stories on a monthly basis, PBC’s Peer Leadership Council meets once a month for fellowship, advocacy, education, networking and to work together to destigmatize mental illness.

The Well of PBC spoke to peer leaders Joey Nieves and Allie Severino about their role as peer leaders, the importance of sharing their stories, elevating the voices of others, communicating with empathy and their hopes for the future.

Describe your role and responsibilities as a Peer Leader

Joey Nieves: I don’t do this for glory or fame or monetary gain. I do this because I want to watch. I want to watch the clients that we serve.

It’s like saying, “I’m just like you. I just happen to be a leader in this space. And any input you have is something that’s very important to me.”

And that is the ultimate reason why I do the work that I do. It’s more to love others and to see them through their beautiful struggle.

How does your lived experience benefit the Peer Leadership Council initiative?

Joey Nieves: Lived experience is a degree in and of itself.

Knowing those feelings and that hopelessness. I got $20 and I’m hungry but I’m gonna take this $20 and I’m gonna go drink or I’m gonna go use drugs. That’s something that you’ve struggled through in your life and it sticks with you forever.

That’s a beautiful thing to me because now, chaos is nothing to me. I can have chaos going on around me and I’m like, “Sweet. We’re gonna do X, Y and Z. It’s not a big deal. Calm down and take a deep breath. We’re gonna get through this.”

In a way, lived experience is more valuable than even a degree could be in certain instances.

How can someone cultivate a better sense of empathy and be a more supportive individual to the people in their lives?

Allie Severino: I think it starts with education personally. All you have to do is try to understand where the other person is coming from; you don’t have to have experienced it.

Come at every individual with love and compassion. I think it is really important to sit back, hang out and learn to get rid of any potential biases you might have.

Joey Nieves: Actively listening and not just listening to respond is very important. It’s listening to understand and educate yourself on every individual that you’re sitting with. Using lived experience when it’s possible to try to empathize or connect with clients and say, “I understand what you’re going through because I’ve been through that.”

A peer is someone who will use that lived experience as a tool to help others. It’s just a different connection.

What would you say is most meaningful in your role as Peer Leader to you?

Allie Severino: It’s hard for individuals to even visualize themselves in recovery if they’ve never actually experienced that before. And it’s also hard to imagine drug addiction or severe mental health issues if you’ve never actually experienced that before.

Because it’s our life, we care about these people and I think everybody that works in this industry feels part of the same group.

I always think these are my people.

Joey Nieves: I don’t want anybody to be out there and feel like they don’t have anybody. I’ve been at one point in my life where I don’t feel like I have anybody that cares about me except for my family.

But I burned those bridges so badly that they were loving me from a distance but I don’t really have someone that would come out there and just say, ‘Hey, I’m not here for any reason in particular, I’m just here because I want to be here for you. I want to know a little bit about you and

I want to connect with you on a human connection level. Nothing more, nothing less.’

So I think that’s what’s most important to me as a Peer is to just be that for somebody.

I know that you know that somebody’s there.

I feel like if you encourage someone enough and give them hope for the future, you might encourage someone enough to save their own life. They have to want to save their own life because no matter how much I want to save them or you want to save them, we can’t. They have to want to do that for themselves.

Allie Severino: We’re basically farmers at the end of the day.

We hope to plant some seeds and maybe one day, we’ll get to sow those seeds. At a minimum we get to plant those seeds and let people know that they’re loved and cared about while we’re spending time with them. We let them know that they’re more valuable than they realize.

What brought you to the Peer Leadership Council and what would you like to see for future endeavors in the Peer Leadership Council?

Allie Severino: Joey brought me to the Peer Leadership Council which I’m very grateful for. It gives us the opportunity to make a decent wage and be treated in a way where they’re able to take care of themselves, but also show up to work as their best self and to help others. I think that’s the coolest thing that we get to do is just blaze the trail for future peers to be able to make an even bigger difference.

Joey Nieves: My clinical director called one day and said, “Hey, there’s this peer leadership council starting up and I want you to be there because you’re a peer leader in the community.” But what really brought me to the Peer Leadership Council is that it’s a safe space where all of our voices can be heard.

Allie wrote the mission and the values one day at this little coffee shop and hearing it out loud was amazing - Wow. We wrote this.

It felt cool to be a part of that and to let people know that Allie and I now sit in spaces with people with doctorates and master’s degrees and they actually listen to our voices now.

What is one of your proudest accomplishments as a Peer?

Joey Nieves: I love the fact that The Lord’s Place and other organizations are letting peers with lived experience become directors and supervisors and they don’t need a college degree to do that.

My proudest moment was when they offered me to be a director of an entire program. I’m just a kid from Cleveland, Ohio that was misunderstood, incarcerated, on drugs and alcohol for 22 years.

I was in gangs, always told I was not good enough or not going to be anyone. I was called a menace to society by judges in my past.

So my proudest accomplishment was just being considered as an equal to others, including clinicians and doctors, and sharing space with them.

I knew that I’ve worked hard to get there and that they could not deny me and my voice cannot be silenced anymore.

Allie Severino: I agree with Joey being able to have a leadership role at my organization at the City of West Palm Beach was definitely a proud moment.

I never thought that I would work at any kind of corporate or government job ever in my life. I always did gig work because I felt my background would constantly hold me back from securing a position like this.

When I was given the opportunity, it really meant a lot.

Beyond that, I’ve been working with this man for two years and being able to get him into treatment a couple of weeks ago is a proud moment.

Is there anything you want to add or you want people to know?

Joey Nieves: Don’t judge people by their past. Don’t devalue them because of something that they did when they were younger because they could be a huge asset to you and your company.

If you just give them a shot - even if it’s an entry level position - a peer is going to surprise you because we have that chip on our shoulder and it’s not a bad chip. A peer will outwork everybody in the room, because it has been so hard to get there. I guarantee if you give them a shot, they’ll outwork everybody and they’ll be great.

The Providers is a space for providers, practitioners, thought leaders, and systems change leaders to share. To contribute, send your article ideas to thewell@bewellpbc.org with “The Providers” in the subject line.