Anna Fielding explains the background and principles behind a new peer support group

I can’t remember when I first realised I had a problem with ‘normality’, but it was probably long before I had the words to say it. I was never a good fit for the expectations the world had of me, and I never understood the limitations it placed on me and others. But by the time I had survived psychiatric hospital in my teens, I had learnt that not being ‘normal’ was my problem, and I directed my energies into fitting in, with varying degrees of success.

While I did my best to mask who I was, I still couldn’t accept the world as it was. I spent the next 20 years working to challenge social, economic and environmental injustices – work that was often frustrating and exhausting. For many of these years, I kept my identity as a psychiatric survivor and my diagnosis of a so-called ‘severe mental illness’ hidden. When I did disclose, I found it easier to talk about the labels I carried, not the things I’d been through. I didn’t have the support I needed to understand that the mental health system was the problem, not me, and that the antidote to shame was solidarity.

Over time, that changed.

I began to see my own struggles and the fight for justice as one and the same cause. I learnt about the radical mental health movement and I began to join the dots between my political stance and my personal journey. I became a student of my own history and I started to dream of a different future.

I also saw I wasn’t alone in lacking support. I noticed a wider pattern: people try to change the world because we’ve experienced the harms it causes, either directly or indirectly. We campaign for change, build movements, challenge institutions, experiment with alternative ways of being and doing – but it’s tiring, often painful. We try to survive in a system that we are fighting to change. The strain and disconnection this causes is grinding and, at times, overwhelming.

If we’re lucky, an organisation we work for might provide access to mental health support, but that support is often the opposite of what we need – rooted in the medical model, situating the problem in us, rather than the world, and asserting clinical expertise over our lived experience.

Where could we find support that responds to the realities of our struggles and respects our full humanity? As I learnt to shake off my shame, I also learnt the answer: it’s right here, between us. I wanted that space to exist, so I built it.

Introducing Antinormality Club

Antinormality Club is a community of people who are changing the world and living with mental ill-health, distress and trauma – a place to find support and solidarity, and to build collective voice and power. We’re rooted in the radical tradition of the survivor movement and the principles of Intentional Peer Support.

We launched in April 2024, with the hope of recruiting 10 members in three months, and were quickly inundated with applications. We now have over 70 members in six countries, we host monthly online support sessions, and we’re trialling an action space for members who want to work together to change the system.

We didn’t set out with a masterplan. If the idea resonated, it would be for members to decide how they wanted the club to develop. But it felt important to be transparent about the principles on which the club was founded:

• We see care as a collective activity that’s central to our humanity, and an expression of resistance in itself. This includes being sensitive to the impact that our experiences may have had on us, but also recognising the strength we have shown in surviving this far.

• The club is survivor-led and always will be. We do things with, not to. This includes ensuring that everyone can choose the ways in which their experiences are described and understood.

• Every perspective matters. We don’t want to create another normative space in which there are good and bad ways to do mental health activism. Survival and healing look different for everyone, and there are many possible versions of a mental health system that centres care and justice.

• We build relationships of mutual accountability, in which we commit to openness and learning, not taking choice or power away from each other.

• Liberation is collective. Recognising the validity of different viewpoints is not the same as tolerating viewpoints that invalidate people’s identities or experiences. We hold ourselves and each other accountable for our part in sustaining systems of oppression, and we want to work in solidarity with other networks and movements.

• We avoid false binaries that limit our thinking and connection. Harms must be addressed at all levels, from the individual to the systemic. So we emphasise both-and, not either-or.

• We move slowly, resisting productivity culture and the co-option of wellbeing to serve capitalism.

Sticking to the last principle has been tough. But it’s also a necessity, as we’re run entirely on the work of a few volunteers, sustained by love, hope, rage, instant coffee, and a belief that this is something worth working for. That belief is validated by the experiences of our members, who tell us that club meetings are a space unlike any other in their lives, where everyone is accepted, just as they are.

Why antinormality?

Over the past six months, I’ve been amazed at how strongly the concept of antinormality has resonated with our members (and beyond.) Everyone has a slightly different take on what the term means for them, but for me there are at least three levels, each of which is woven into the club’s DNA.

First, no one is ‘normal’. It’s a false concept, one that encourages us to conform to a limited model of being human; to change ourselves, work harder and consume more, in the hope that perhaps, one day, we will fit the mould. It’s a concept that stigmatises and excludes people with non-normative identities. Whether we’re feeling good or in distress, adding shame to the mix doesn’t help.

Secondly, the narrative that “it’s normal not to be OK”, while helpful for many people, can erase the fact that there are real differences in the way we experience the world. Those of us with so-called severe mental illness and/or multiple marginalisations can feel that our realities are left out of mainstream portrayals of mental health. Being accepted as fully human should not be dependent on being palatable.

Finally, this world – a world of oppression and extraction, genocide and ecocide – should not be normal. This is a world in crisis. If anything is to be pathologised, it’s the systems that have brought us to this point, capitalism, colonialism and cis-hetero-patriarchy chief among the culprits.

For Antinormality Club members, challenging this world is a daily practice, from personal acts of resistance to collective efforts to shift the status quo. But we also have to survive it. And for that, we need each other. We need a space where we can tell our stories, sit in grief and share in joy, and take time out from the oppressive fog of ‘normality’ to breathe clear air. This is the space we hope Antinormality Club offers. It would be an honour if you would join us.

Find out more and join Antinormality Club at www.antinormality.club

This is a Sample Article from the Winter 2024 issue of Asylum Magazine. To read more, subscribe to Asylum.