Why I started Lived Experience Inspires

For more than twenty five years I have been navigating complex physical and mental health conditions.

Bipolar disorder

Generalised anxiety disorder

PMDD

Inflammatory diseases:

Endometriosis

Adenoymosis

Pain bladder syndrome.

Functional neurological disorder.

A stroke.

Total hysterectomy and bilateral oopherectomy

Surgical menopause

ADHD

Each one has shaped how I understand health, recovery and what it really takes to build a life that works.

But the moment that truly changed the direction of my life happened in 2008.

I experienced a severe breakdown and spent two long periods as an inpatient at The Priory.

It was one of the most frightening and disorientating times of my life.

When I came out the other side, something stayed with me.

People were not talking about mental health in the way we see today. Social media had only just arrived. The conversations we now see everywhere simply did not exist.

What I had lived through felt invisible. It genuinely felt unbelievable that something so horrific could happen to your mind and body yet nothing was spoken about.

So that’s when I began talking and sharing lived experience. I couldn’t live independently, I was medically retired from my management role, my life had turned upside down. I began a new life and the want to make a difference was overwhelming.

I walked into Mind and joined their social enterprise work, sharing lived experience with organisations.

Police forces.

Teachers.

Workplace teams.

Soon afterwards I began co delivering mental health training with a Mental Health First Aid instructor. Together we worked with paramedics, police and organisations across different sectors.

Then universities.

Standing in front of rooms full of nursing and paramedic students, speaking about what it actually feels like to be on the receiving end of healthcare, was powerful and it made an impact.

Future healthcare professionals were listening.

Asking questions.

Thinking differently about the people they would care for.

That mattered.

Because lived experience has the power to bridge a gap that textbooks cannot.

It brings theory to life.

Learning while living it.

All of this work happened while I was still navigating my own health.

There were relapses.

Medication reactions.

New diagnoses.

Periods where simply stabilising my health had to come first.

Living with complex conditions teaches you quickly that the rules are different from the generic advice we often see online.

Recovery is rarely linear.

Stability takes work.

And sustainable wellbeing is something you have to build deliberately.

Over the years I learned how to rebuild life again and again. How to manage capacity. How to create stability that allowed both work and personal life to exist without constant collapse.

These lessons were not theoretical.

They were lived.

For many years I was invited into organisations to speak about my experiences or contribute to training. But I realised something important.

I did not want to simply respond to what people asked for.

I wanted to build something of my own.

A place where lived experience could be structured, thoughtful and purposeful. Where it could sit alongside professional knowledge, psychological safety and strong boundaries.

I wanted to create talks and workshops that did more than share a story.

I wanted to create work that helps people think differently.

That is where Lived Experience Inspires was born.

It brings together over two decades of lived insight with structured education and practical frameworks that organisations and universities can use.

Not just to understand mental health.

But to understand recovery.

Capacity.

Stability.

And sustainable wellbeing.

Bringing theory to life

The aim of this work is simple.

To take concepts that are often abstract in training and make them real.

To help organisations understand the human side of health.

To help healthcare students see the person behind the diagnosis.

And to help teams think differently about wellbeing, resilience and capacity in the workplace.

Two of the ways I do this are through the following carefully curated sessions:

My keynote talk 'The House That Healing Built' - Six stages from recovery to stability and my framework workshop 'The Cup Method', focusing on capacity, balance and capability, both of which I will be sharing more on soon.

Both were created from lived experience, but developed carefully to be delivered safely, professionally and with clear psychological boundaries. Because lived experience, when shared well, is not about oversharing.

It is about insight.

About reflection.

About creating understanding that improves how we care for and support one another.

Why this work matters to me

I know what crisis feels like.

I know what it is to rebuild life from the ground up. Over and over again.

But I also know that recovery, stability and meaningful life after crisis is possible.

If the lessons I have learned can help a healthcare student understand their patient better, help a team think differently about wellbeing, or help someone see hope where they could not see it before, then the journey has purpose.

That is why I do this work.

And that is why Lived Experience Inspires exists.

To educate.

To empower.

And hopefully, to inspire change.

Fliss Hoyle is the founder of Lived Experience Inspires and delivers talks and workshops sharing lived experience across education, workplaces and media.

If you would like to include lived experience within your education programme, organisation or event, you can find more information on the website or get in touch.