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Stop flaunting your trauma The ravening voyeurs will always want more

Darren McGarvey. "Our stories are a commodity" (Credit:Tern TV)

Darren McGarvey. "Our stories are a commodity" (Credit:Tern TV)


August 24, 2024   5 mins

With the Edinburgh Fringe well and truly over, countless performers will be counting up how many coveted four- or five-star reviews they garnered. Most, though, won’t have even landed one. I’ve been there and let me tell you, it’s hard not to take the rejection personally — especially if your show is all about you.

From cancer to coming-out, poverty to prison, and addiction to ADHD, this year’s Fringe had something to offer anyone of a voyeuristic bent. This massive rise in comedy, music and drama exploring personal adversities peaked this year with the wildly successful TV show Baby Reindeer — which was itself born in Edinburgh. Today, it seems, we can’t get enough of that “lived-experience” pie.

But many years before this particular pie became a mainstay of the arts, I was one of several unwitting pioneers who road-tested this highly personal brand of storytelling in the most glamorous and prestigious domain of all: Scotland’s third sector.

In 2001, grieving the sudden death of my alcoholic, drug-addicted mother and reeling from a family breakdown which had left me homeless and also on the path of alcoholism, I carried a lot of sorrow and anger which required an outlet. I hastily began up-cycling my trauma into my best attempt at art. A growing interest in hip-hop and rap quickly became an obsession; notepads scrawled with lyrics and ideas, baggy trousers, hoodies and headphones, and the obligatory confrontational attitude.

Performing locally, under the name Loki, at open-mic nights and rap battles, I discharged my adolescent fury as autobiographical stories set to dusty boom-bap drumbeats. My reputation grew in the Glasgow music scene, and I eventually established myself as a community artist. Then when the third sector got a hold of me (and my “story”), I would take to the stage at conferences where professionals sat slack jawed and misty-eyed at my ability to not only tell my story, but to see it in a wider social and economic context: poverty.

Back then there seemed an endless thirst for my accounts of adversity. Whether campaigning for Scottish Independence, calling out decision-makers for letting down the most vulnerable or, indeed, my musical output, everything seemed to land a little better if my opinions or observations were nested within my own “experience”. This eventually culminated in the publication of my 2017 debut book Poverty Safari — part memoir, part social commentary — in which I revealed, among other things, the traumatic experiences of my childhood.

That book changed my life. Overcoming my challenging personal odds, I had been redeemed. People loved my story, my lived experience; they loved me.

In the past decade, as this type of personal disclosure has become a mainstay of civic discourse — reaching beyond the arts and into every corner of culture — charities, philanthropists and, inevitably, politicians, appear to see the value in hearing from those with direct experience of many of the challenges they and their organisations have a stake in addressing.

But those of us sharing our experiences need to be careful. Our stories are also a commodity. They move and inspire professionals. They grace the pages of policy documents and funding applications. They may even become best-selling memoirs, or, in the case of Richard Gadd, world-beating Netflix shows. As a result, we creators may feel we are making a difference but as our “story” attracts more attention, our lives themselves can become something of a performance.

Those of us who trade in the currency of lived experiences are, like everyone else, unreliable narrators. We are always rewriting them, ensuring that we remain the hero. Kernels of truth are discarded and replaced with assumption, speculation or unconscious white lies.

“Those of us who trade in the currency of lived experiences are, like everyone else, unreliable narrators of our own stories.”

The truth of our lives could never be distilled into a tight three-act structure, let’s be honest. Like most people, we take small liberties with certain details, and massive leaps with others. As a form of entertainment, there’s no real harm in that, but where lived experience is deployed in civic discourse or politics, subtly shaping policy, it is highly problematic.

Much like a fickle Fringe audience, resident critics don’t believe our stories of overcoming the odds are as powerful or useful as our fans. In fact, many are irritated by the vulgar spectacle of watching people vomit their trauma up on social media or on stage. They regard lived experience as a Trojan horse that smuggles unscientific, politically motivated, narcissistic anecdotes and personal opinions into serious matters of science and politics. They balk at the notion those of us with lived experience of trauma or adversity are automatically granted victim status in public discourse, because our stories are not interrogated like other forms of evidence.

Ultimately, sceptics worry that every anecdote is blindly accepted as a statement of fact, and that fear of being seen to “invalidate” the lived experiences of “victims” and “survivors” too often takes precedence over the need to ground discussion and debate firmly within the realm of truth. And they may have a point.

Certain stories of trauma and recovery are regarded as more useful than others, depending on one’s political agenda. Take, for example, the drug-debate in Scotland, where advocates of competing forms of treatment (such as opiate replacement therapy or the 12-steps) tend only to promote and platform those who have succeeded, and rarely mention all the ones who relapsed or died trying to get well with that method. There’s a cynicism at play, not just among the storytellers who develop a keen sense of which plot-points to emphasise and which ones to edit out, but also the organisations and institutions platforming those stories, often as a means of furthering their own social or political objectives.

And then we have the basic issue of safeguarding. What if, paradoxically, the psychological wounds we carry predispose us to enter this performative arena naively, oversharing the intimate details of our lives with little thought given to the fullness of the consequences of doing so. What if our trauma primes us for a subtle form of self-exploitation, where in pursuit of safety, security and validation, we tell our stories in ways that actually make us more vulnerable?

Our desire to help others, and, yes, to gain affection and security and love, is often so overwhelming that we push aside any lingering doubt as to our fitness to engage in the risky public exhibitionism which may come to define us. And let’s not forget, once we’ve decanted our traumas into a rowdy and unforgiving public square, we cannot un-disclose them.

But perhaps the biggest mistaken assumption on the part of those who feast rapaciously on our personal testimony, is that we who are willing to disclose so much are representative of a mythical, voiceless mass — that everyone affected by trauma or adversity shares our experience, our pain, our story.

When the truth might be that those of us who do act on this impulse to disclose, and perhaps even overshare, may in truth be a distinct entity, much like people who apply to go on reality TV shows. We are people pleasers. We desire validation from strangers. We feel confident in speaking our minds and wrapping our trauma in a palatable narrative ribbon for public consumption. The greatest irony of the lived experience movement is that most people living with active trauma wouldn’t be caught dead in the media. Most people with trauma don’t even know they have it. And even fewer were at the Edinburgh Fringe — a trauma in an of itself.

So, to the many thousands of acts who sang for their suppers in Scotland’s glorious capital this year, offering audiences a glimpse behind the curtain of their personal lives, take it from me: now that you’ve told your story publicly, it’s not yours anymore. And now that you’ve done telling it, there will be a sudden dip in enthusiasm for anything else you have to say. Once you’ve made your own life the product, you’ll be tempted to drill that reservoir forever more.

I think the public would be far more interested in the real story. The story where we confused the fleeting catharsis of feeling seen, with the painful work of actually healing. The one where we’ve become trapped in our own self-portraits, no longer able to discern the truth of our lives, from the story we’ve created. The one where we naively believed “our” truth, was the same as the actual truth. The Fringe is a great experience for sure, but take it from me, a lived experience pioneer: the next booking you need is not at The Stand — it’s with a qualified therapist!


Darren McGarvey is a Scottish hip hop artist and social commentator. In 2018, his book Poverty Safari won the Orwell Prize and his new book The Social Distance Between Us (Ebury Press) is out on 16th June.

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Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
2 months ago

Top marks to him for getting it right in the end, and top marks to Unherd for giving him the outlet for this change of tack. (And yes, i do regard the outpouring of victimhood as tacky.)
This needs to be more widely publicised, but then i suppose the trolls will get hold of it. That’s the world that his initial outpourings have created.

N Forster
N Forster
2 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Not just tacky, unhealthy.

Lindsay S
Lindsay S
2 months ago

Is what is needed more therapists? Or is it a culture that focuses less on the self and more on getting heads out of b*m holes and getting on with lives!
I believe half our problems stem from therapists not actually wanting to work with truly traumatised people and wanting easier subjects like the mildly anxious or depressed. Unfortunately truly traumatised people tend to have such defences in place that they are very dislikable and difficult to help if they can be helped at all! Sadly being mildly anxious or depressed is so normal, we are all potential therapy patients!
Interestingly, if your lived experiences contradicts the equality and diversity message, then your lived experience is wrong!

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
2 months ago
Reply to  Lindsay S

It reminds me of this:

In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be any hospital waiting lists.

No, in perfect world, we wouldn’t need any hospitals.

jane baker
jane baker
2 months ago

I read Mr Garveys book recently and was appalled at a lot of it. That real people really do those things that I thought were just in TV dramas I choose not to watch. Then I thought it was intelligent that he did something with it,but what I think is astonishing is that he didn’t stop there. A professional victim making money from his trauma. He went beyond that,he saw how in a.subtle.way HE was being used. Nowadays unless you have a trauma you’re not a validated person. The problem is,if you cure your problem and you’re “normal” youre not interesting any more. A further thought occurs to me. Pre 1979 when it was harder to be unemployed than employed being normal and dull was OK,it didnt stop you having an income of sorts. But since then and with rising unemployment and a regular income more precarious having a trauma or.condition may be the gate to an income,meagre but available. It’s just a thought

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
2 months ago

“The greatest irony of the lived experience movement is that most people living with active trauma wouldn’t be caught dead in the media.” is well said…and is the real story here.
Willful victimhood, victimhood-by-proxy and performative victimhood are collectively the great curse of our Woke era. Virtue-signalling victimhood-by-proxy is the worst of the lot and toxically seductive because many decent people just don’t pick up on its essentially bogus nature…. pick up on the champagne in the socialist, the thought-policeman in the Gay Pride marcher, the racist in the anti-Racist, the have-your-cake-and-eat-it coquetry in the Cosmopolitan feminist.  https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago

Well-expressed and worthwhile thoughts at your linked Substack. Cheers.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
2 months ago

I suggest one listens to those who survived the death camps of the Nazis. the Gulags of the Communists and killing fields of Cambodia.
A Lithuanian friend who survived the USSR invasion of his country in 1939; growing up in Eastern Europe in WW2 and the refugee camps of Germany post WW2 said in order to survive one has to place ones memories in abox and bury it. Once he talked about the mass executions he had witnessed; the hunger and seeing refugee colums blown to pieces with scraps of human and horse flesh hanging from shattered trees. Perhaps one of the most chilling comments he made ” It is difficult to kill someone when one looks into their eyes, that is why the executioners shot people in the back of the head “.
Those who have lived through horrors do not pay to be entertained by people talking about their problems.

Brett H
Brett H
2 months ago

You know what – I just don’t care.

El Uro
El Uro
2 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

Your comment is the best!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

Then why comment?

Brett H
Brett H
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It’s simple. To express my contempt.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

Does that make you feel superior?

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Exactly.

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
2 months ago

This is better from Darren but wtf is the Third Sector?
Anyway turning your trauma into performance might be therapeutic for some but others will feel that their grief is not a public property.

Laura Creighton
Laura Creighton
2 months ago
Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
2 months ago

They’re state as far as I’m concerned. They all get their money from somewhere and I’m not aware of any that are wholly privately funded.

RM Parker
RM Parker
2 months ago

You’re right, about the funding at any rate. The risk that I’ve always perceived with NGOs is that they receive public money without public accountability.

Julia Whitaker
Julia Whitaker
2 months ago

This is the most humble, most honest, most authentic first-person article I’ve read in a long time

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago
Reply to  Julia Whitaker

I agree. I really enjoyed it. And I certainly don’t believe the author was looking for pity or anything like that.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
2 months ago
Reply to  Julia Whitaker

So true.

N Forster
N Forster
2 months ago

Self pity, conceit and attention seeking take many forms.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
2 months ago

Interesting but I am having some difficulty squaring the title with this line: Those of us who trade in the currency of lived experiences are, like everyone else, unreliable narrators.”
Flaunting looks very much like trading in the currency of.

Robert Eagle
Robert Eagle
2 months ago

The only performance I managed to attend at the Edinburgh Fringe this year fitted your description. A humourless, self-indulgent monologue which the performer clearly thought insightful and witty – and which had, incidentally, won prizes in the United States. It quite put me off going to see anything that threatened to be remotely similar. However that weekend we did manage to find a great value Italian restaurant called Mamma Roma and enjoyed a delicious exhibition of paintings by John Lavery at the Royal Scottish Academy (which runs till October).
Edinburgh is a lovely city; it’s just a pity they don’t bother to scrub the soot off all that elegant stonework.

Martin Goodfellow
Martin Goodfellow
2 months ago
Reply to  Robert Eagle

The soot is part of the heritage. Edinburgh wasn’t called ‘auld reeky’ for nothing.

Mike SampleName
Mike SampleName
2 months ago

Whenever I hear phrases such as “my truth” or “my lived experience” I generally tune out to everything that comes after. Everyone has a story and just because someone has a “stage” to tell theirs doesn’t mean it has any relevance beyond them.

Catherine Conroy
Catherine Conroy
2 months ago

A fine piece, thank you.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

Excellent.

Philip Burrell
Philip Burrell
2 months ago

An interesting article but there are good examples of real life trauma being parlayed into great art. Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose novels and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain spring to mind.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
2 months ago

Very good personal essay. Self-searching but not self-fixated. I’ve seen McGarvey’s voice and depth develop since his first byline here, still bearing the “Loki” moniker. I expect increasingly good things from this youngish author. And I’m glad I haven’t read his earlier Trauma Chronicles.
Since the mid-Nineties success of memoirs like Angela’s Ashes (McCourt) and Liar’s Club (Karr)—both worthwhile in my view, both part poverty-misery porn—a steaming heap of exercises in public catharsis/sordid exhibition have been under the literary spotlight.
“What if our trauma primes us for a subtle form of self-exploitation, where in pursuit of safety, security and validation, we tell our stories in ways that actually make us more vulnerable?”
Aye, and how about the fact that the modish quality of vulnerability is not an intrinsic virtue? Do we need to reveal any vulnerability to predators and cheats, let alone share every element of weakness we can think of?
As a very moody person with competing strains of toughness and hypersensitivity—what a brave confession!—I think more of us need to lean into a kind of humane stoicism. With much less self-pity and more generosity: something between ‘shut up I can’t be bothered about your suffering’ and ‘make me your next victim’.

Simon White
Simon White
2 months ago

What is “lived experience” beyond merely experience?
The trauma of my lived experience of experiencing this pleonasm is endless.

David Hirst
David Hirst
2 months ago

If there’s an expression whose eyes I could happily pull out with my thumbs, it’s the tautological shitter that is ‘lived experience’ – ‘experience’, but with a line of heart emojis after it.

RM Parker
RM Parker
2 months ago
Reply to  David Hirst

Excellent comment – I just about sprayed my breakfast across the table laughing. Thanks for that!

Tris Torrance
Tris Torrance
2 months ago

“Lived experience…”

Is there any other kind?

Max Beran
Max Beran
2 months ago
Reply to  Tris Torrance

There’s the vicarious kind. Just a bit of imagination needed with a sufficiently vivid account of an event – could be written, recounted, or watched. Like I’ve seen all sorts of places close up – Lagos, Tomsk, Bella Horizonte – but only on a Google StreetView trudge! Seen not smelled or heard I’ll grant but it’s still experience, just not “lived”. I guess the writer was referring fairly specifically to the more dramatic end of the spectrum with consequences that outlasted the event.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 months ago

Excellent, very self-aware analysis. I don’t agree with everything Darren McGarvey says, but he certainly can write.

shay fish
shay fish
2 months ago

We wouldn’t be so susceptible to the “lived experience” manipulation if we had more exposure to literature and history. There is no aspect of this trend that has not been lived before.