We’re Just People Being People With People:

Conversation Series Fall 2025 Sofa Issues

The Potential of Peer Support As A Practice In Mutuality

Interview with “H” of Project Belong

“What we really try to promote is the idea that we all belong in society, that individuals who are marginalized as a result of their experiences in life can, through spaces like Project Belong and Social Club, maybe regain some sense of reintegration with a broader community… [peer support] is in some ways potentially revolutionary.” – ‘H’

‘H’ and I first met several years ago when I began working as a Peer Support Specialist on Project Respond’s mobile crisis intervention team. Project Respond is a team of licensed mental health counselors and peers who offer support to a person or family who is experiencing a mental health crisis. The team provides in-the-moment support, assessment, safety planning, and connection to additional community resources at a person’s home or out in the community.

Since 2015, ‘H’ and his collaborator, Sharon Eastman, have been running “Project Belong” as part of the Project Respond crisis response program. Project Belong is space for community members who interact with the crisis team and need additional stabilization support after a mental health crisis. Sharon and ‘H’ meet with participants on an individual basis and in a social support network called ‘Social Club,’ which is offered to individuals seeking community connection.

‘H’ has been working as a certified peer support specialist for over a decade. Prior to working in peer support, he studied physics and worked in the aerospace and semiconductor industry.

Deets: When people who aren’t in the mental health field ask me what peer support is, I have a hard time doing the elevator pitch thing. So I wanted to ask you how you talk about it, in your own words?

H: I basically just say we share and leverage our experiences and see if it’s beneficial to the individuals that we’re speaking to, and it doesn’t even have to be. It’s just sharing life experiences. If there’s commonality, which in peer support is also called mutuality, then we can start a conversation.

Oftentimes it’s a conversation that establishes a relationship, but it’s the relationship which I think people find to be the most helpful.

Most of the people we meet really want to talk and to be heard. When you first meet, it’s usually resource-related because those are the tangible needs on a person’s mind. And also, you don’t have to expose any vulnerabilities. But then people start to open up and say, “well, I never told anybody, but when this happened, etc, etc.”

Once we say, “Oh, hey, that’s similar to my experience,” then you establish mutuality. The other thing is, I think a lot of peers are very good at listening and not invalidating. That’s the whole thing. Just listen, don’t invalidate.

We accept people however they are and we recognize our own value as well as the value of others. And it’s not about us establishing what it is that needs to happen in our relationship, it’s about working together to establish what the relationship is.

We get to set up the rules together.

Deets: Yes!

That makes me think about an aspect of peer support that’s hard for me to explain. You know, because our work is person-centered and is very case by case it can be sort of subversive. To me,

peer support is a radical movement, because it’s flexible and it’s outside of a medical model of mental health. I think there’s a liberatory aspect to it too. It’s not all about outcomes; there’s what we’re doing in the moment, but if you step back, and take in all the unseen, gradual things that happen really slowly and happen maybe even after we met with the person, it becomes a ripple effect. We rarely get to see the more lasting impacts of our time together.

H: Definitely. And you can’t predict what those impacts will be.

Project Belong had a participant that we met with for, I think, seven or eight years. We tried to disengage from that individual a few years back, and we got an email from our supervisor that said, “the client says you guys are the only ones that he ever talks to in a week, so can you please keep meeting with him?”

Deets: Wow.

H: Another thing is, oftentimes, participants are invalidated by mental health providers so you hear responses like, ‘you probably don’t believe what I’m saying.’

And this is especially true if someone has been told that their experience is a delusion.

So I say, ‘well no, that’s not it.

I believe exactly what you’re saying.

I accept your reality, so please accept mine.

My reality is I’m not experiencing what you are experiencing. I’m not saying that you’re wrong or making it up, your opinion and your experience matters, it’s just different from mine.”

Deets: Exactly. I don’t want to dismiss the reality of what someone is seeing that I can’t see, but I also refuse to lie and say I can see it.

H: I mean, what even is a delusion?

I think the people who use the word ‘delusion’ are delusional because they’re suggesting that they can read somebody else’s mind! It’s just that the way that some people interpret the world is different. And in so-called behavioral health, this is often

equated with ‘noncompliance.’ They tried to say this about people like Galileo. People who had these really wild ideas were just ‘delusional’. Well, no, they just had insight that no one else had.

Deets: You’ve been a facilitator of the program “Project Belong” for some time now, can you explain how it got started and share a little about its evolution?

H: Sharon is the visionary behind a lot of the peer support happenings with Project Belong.

When we started out, we would get referrals from the Project Respond crisis response team just like we do now, and from there we’d go and meet people out in the community. For many years she and I would meet with individuals mostly together. But then somehow, you know, we just got too popular.

Deets: [Laughs]

And then there’s “Social Club” which is the group-based aspect of Project Belong. Can you explain a little bit about what Social Club is?

H: Basically, we just think of it as a social club. It’s not a support group or about mental health, but it’s completely about mental health.

[laughs]

We tell the individuals who are referred to Project Belong and who seem like they may benefit from a regularly occurring social space, “look, this is not like a group at the clinic. This is just like if you had a group of friends that hang out regularly.” It doesn’t mean you can’t talk about things that you’re struggling with, but yeah, that’s the framework.

Often Project Belong invites the social club out to a cafe, and we pay the tab for everybody. Sharon has told me that some people really were touched by the idea that anybody would be willing to spend a couple of bucks to buy them a cup of coffee and spend time with them. And that’s really the point. What we really try to promote is the idea that we all belong in society, that individuals who are marginalized as a result of their experiences in life can, through spaces like Project Belong and Social Club, maybe regain some sense of reintegration with a broader community. It’s in some ways potentially revolutionary.

Deets: Oh, definitely. There are so few options for a lot of people to be welcomed into a social group without many formalities other than being respectful of the collective needs of that community.

H: Yes, and that’s one thing to mention, it is open to everybody, and we do treat everybody the same, but the expectations for everybody are also the same. Sometimes there will be someone that can’t participate in a way that feels safe for everyone. So, it’s open to everybody that’s willing to participate as a group.

We don’t ever suggest what’s appropriate or inappropriate behavior, but we do have to say there are some things you just can’t do at Social Club. I think that’s a really important boundary for any social club to maintain. You have to think about how to create a space that more people can feel more comfortable, more often.

Deets: I’m wondering if there is anything you would really like the general public to know about peer support work?

H: Many of us, I think, are socialized to, well, because you have this deficiency or this condition or this limitation, you shouldn’t trust yourself; You should trust others who know better.

But the reality is they don’t live here. [points to chest]

I live here, right?

So learning to trust ourselves, and support each other in doing so is a big part of peer support. Honestly, it’s really just about humans supporting humans, and that can go either way. How do you do that? You share experiences.

And then what happens? You established a relationship.

And from there, you decide (hopefully without a lot of interference), what’s really important? What do you want to do next?

When it works well, that’s what we’re doing. So, to be honest, everybody can do this. We’re just people being people with people.

Deets: [Laughs] That’s your new commercial.

H: I just made that up.

“H” prefers to not over emphasize himself in the work he does as a Peer Wellness Specialist and asked that instead of using his name, I refer to him as “H.”

Peer Support Specialist: (noun) A person trained in effective strategies for sharing their own lived experiences with mental health or substance use recovery in ways that foster hope and resiliency to an individual beginning a healing process. Peers share resources, provide advocacy, and assist in building skills for self-empowerment.

*If you or someone you know is in crisis:

• 988: National Crisis Hotline

• 503-988-4888: Multnomah Co. Crisis Line

(For Project Respond, call this number)

• 877-565-8860: Trans Lifeline

• 877-968-8491: Youth Warmline

• 1-800-698-2392: Peer Support Warmline