Strategy 1: Your stories about research
A big part of being a peer supporter is sharing your lived experience with another person like you. For example, both you and the peer researcher have a disability, and you are both working on a research team. You can share information about yourself. You can tell stories about your work on the research team. You can give examples of things that are hard in research, and what you did to make it easier to do your job.
| Things that are hard in research: | What I can do to make it easier: |
|---|---|
| Meetings are held at different times each week. | Ask the team leader to send calendar invitations so it shows up correctly on my schedule. |
| The work takes a long time to complete because it is hard. | Take a break every hour to walk around and get a drink of water. |
| Confusing to follow the conversation during team meetings because a lot of information is shared. | Ask to get the agenda ahead of time, so I can be familiar with the things we will be talking about. Before moving to the next agenda item, give everyone a chance to ask final questions. |
Sharing your experiences can help you feel more confident about your job as a researcher. When you share your experiences, other peer researchers can become confident, too, and believe that they can be successful members of the research team.
Go to the next page to learn about finding experiences you have in common.
If you want to skip ahead, see Show pages in this section at the top of the page.