Forgetting and finding myself in graduate school: How I reclaimed my lived experience.

It is a cruel irony that psychologists are urged to keep their lived experience to themselves, despite these experiences often being what draws them to the profession in the first place. As a result, trainees who are recovering or recovered from addictions, and especially those with associated criminal histories, may be motivated to hide their lived experience, which can generate feelings of shame. Some trainees may also respond by overcompensating for their lived experience in problematic ways, for example, through overworking or excessive impression management. In this lived experience paper, I share my own journey of losing pride in my lived experience during graduate school and the steps I took that allowed me to celebrate it once more. I hope that my story can help aspiring psychologists with similar lived experiences.