Public commitments to valuing lived experience are not always matched by how individuals are engaged when they raise concerns or challenge existing narratives. Where responses default to silence or control, it shapes trust, limits accountability, and affects how effectively systems can recognise harm, incorporate insight, and respond to the people they are intended to serve.
An organisation that publicly champions lived experience once responded to a critique I raised by listing all the ways people like me could contribute. Blogs. Panels. Videos. “We really value lived experience.”
I responded publicly, saying I had already reached out, had not received a reply, and remained open to contributing.
Privately, I was stood up for a meeting they organised, treated as a nuisance, and not given an opportunity to speak, write or share. When I emailed multiple people from the organisation—including senior leaders and psychological experts—naming the harm their actions had caused and asking how the way I had been treated aligned with trauma-informed principles, I received no response. From anyone.
I raised a valid concern. They responded with silence.
That silence communicated far more about how lived experience was valued than any public statement ever could.
But this institution is not an anomaly. In reality, when lived experience is welcome, but only on certain terms; or when systems say, “we value lived experience”, but the unspoken subtext is “…provided it’s system-compliant, tidy, non-disruptive, and reflects well on us,” then the system is not organised around response, but around self-protection.
In trauma-impacted spaces, silence after harm is not neutral. Systems can tell themselves whatever they like about the strategic intent behind their silence, but silence performs very specific work. It avoids creating a record. It removes the conditions for accountability. And it forces the person who raised the issue to choose between escalating, with all the personal and professional risk that entails, or withdrawing to protect themselves.
When uncomfortable truths are ignored because of how they might reflect on an organisation, a decision has been made. The system has chosen itself over the people it claims to serve.
When feedback is treated as risk
Many government departments, service sector institutions, and organisations are now required to demonstrate engagement with lived experience. But there is little oversight into how this is put into practice. There are few independent pathways for raising concerns, limited mechanisms for redress, and almost no structural checks on how power is exercised once people have spoken. In many institutions, lived experience is treated primarily as brand or reputational risk. They select “safe” stories. Their focus is on optics rather than harm-reduction. Difficult stories are ignored, patterns go unrecognised and people are left to carry their burdens alone.
Power dynamics are the key
People who share their lived experience to drive societal change do so because they believe their perspective might shape decisions, reduce future damage, or prevent repetition. They willingly take on this role out of service to a cause, because they want to stop what happened to them happening to someone else.
But too often, unless something becomes a reputational issue, systems either ignore lived experience or incorporate it only in the most tokenistic ways. If people with lived experience are invited in, they are usually kept well away from power. They are listened to, but not in ways that influence decisions. They are thanked, but not resourced, supported, or taken seriously as contributors to solutions.
Lived experience is often reduced to “personal story”, despite the fact many people who have lived through trauma spend a lifetime thinking about systems, failures, unintended consequences, and how harm might be prevented.
Lived experience as evidence, not confession
I published a book about the way my father’s experience as a Vietnam veteran impacted my family. My experience echoes the experiences of many veteran children; as war trauma playing out as family violence and psychological abuse. A parent who treats you as if you are in the army. A childhood spent walking on eggshells, trying to be perfect while walking along a razor edge of expectations that are impossible to meet.
I tell my story not to cast shade on veterans, who deserve every support they receive and more, but because I felt so alone in my experience. I have since been contacted by many other veteran children who are astonished by how similar our experiences are. Almost all of them say the same thing: I thought it was just me.
This collective silencing has been so profound that few people even understand children of veterans as a distinct group, with similar characteristics and life impacts. I share my story not because I want sympathy, but because I want other veteran children to know they aren’t alone.
I reach out to institutions because I want to make sure children of veterans—not just people under 18, but the trauma-impacted adults we grow into—are included in policy, funding, and support services. Over ten years of outreach, I have rarely received a reply. Silence is the standard response.
How trust in systems is broken
Systems dealing with the messiest of human problems are not going to satisfy everyone, meet everyone’s needs, or have all the answers. Most people understand this. They are not looking for perfection. They are looking for systems that are reliable, transparent, and willing to act ethically when harm is raised.
Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score that trauma almost always involves not being seen, not being mirrored, and not being taken into account.
Words can sound great. Websites and reports can say all the right things. But if they are not aligned with how your organisation behaves, they mean little. Systems that respond to uncomfortable issues with silence are repeating the conditions where trauma is created. If silence were audited as a system behaviour, what would it reveal?
Further questions for systems to consider
These are not abstract values questions. They are matters of system design.
- Who is ultimately accountable when harm is raised and no one responds?
- How do we define harm in our organisation, and who gets to decide whether harm has occurred?
- What issues are taken seriously, which are minimised, reframed, or ignored, who makes these judgements and why is their perspective the one that matters?
- Do we recognise non-response, delay, and deflection as potential sources of harm in their own right?
- How do we account for cumulative injury caused by repeated silencing, not just single incidents?
- How do we respond when lived experience contradicts our data, narratives, or success stories?
- How often do we use process, delay, or bureaucracy to avoid engaging with uncomfortable truths?
- What organisational behaviours are implicitly rewarded when people keep problems quiet rather than raising them?
- What parts of our decision-making process are visible to the people affected by it, what parts are hidden, and why?
- Who benefits from opacity in our system, and who pays the cost?
- How much of your system focuses on serving the community and how much is focused on protecting itself from discomfort, complexity, and responsibility?
- Are the same people responsible for listening and responding also responsible for protecting the organisation’s reputation?
- What structural incentives encourage people to minimise, reframe, or bury issues rather than surface them?
Ultimately, a system reveals its values in how it responds to discomfort. Silence and delay are design choices that determine who is heard and who is not. If organisations are serious about lived experience, the work is not in inviting voices in, but in building systems that respond, are accountable, and engage rather than retreat. Without that, lived experience will continue to be welcomed in theory and excluded in practice.
