You Don’t Owe Anyone Your Story
There's an unspoken expectation when we talk about mental health advocacy.
If you want to advocate, if you want to lead, if you want to speak about mental health publicly, there's an assumption baked into the room: that you'll share your story. Your diagnosis. Your lowest point. The moment everything broke open.
Somewhere along the way, vulnerability became a prerequisite for credibility.
It's time we push back on that.
Lived experience matters. Deeply.
Let's be clear about that first, because this isn't an argument against sharing.
The people who have shared their stories have moved culture forward in ways that data and policy alone never could. They've reduced stigma. They've given language to experiences that once lived only in silence. They've offered visibility to people who believed they were completely alone.
Organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness were built on the courage of lived experience. Peer-led movements and grassroots advocacy have changed laws, reshaped workplace practices, and shifted public perception, because individuals were willing to say, "This happened to me, and it matters."
That courage is extraordinary. And it belongs in this conversation.
But it is not the only thing that does.
Education and expertise belong here, too.
You can care about mental health, do meaningful and rigorous work in this space, without narrating your own pain in public.
Research matters. Clinical training matters. Organizational psychology matters. Policy design matters. How leaders show up on a Tuesday morning matters.
You can advocate for better access to care, trauma-informed practices, and proactive prevention strategies without disclosing your diagnosis, your history, or your hardest moments.
Both lived experience and professional expertise move this work forward.
Both deserve space.
And neither should cancel out the other.
Advocacy does not require disclosure.
Here's where we need to sit with something important.
We've blurred a critical line: the line between authenticity and exposure.
Somewhere between the vulnerability posts and the conference confessionals, a subtle but powerful pressure emerged. If you're not sharing something personal, you're not being real. If you're not opening up, you must not care.
But psychological safety includes the right to privacy. Full stop.
We saw this dynamic play out during the #MeToo movement. Disclosure felt required, expected. And while that movement surfaced something the world needed to reckon with, it also revealed a harder truth: when sharing becomes the price of being believed or taken seriously, we've removed something essential. We've removed consent. And removing consent is, by definition, not trauma-informed.
The same pattern lives inside mental health advocacy today.
Disclosure is not a neutral act. Depending on someone's role, their industry, or their circumstances, sharing can carry real and lasting consequences:
Career risk
Reputational impact
Family ripple effects
Re-traumatization
Legal or insurance implications
A digital footprint that follows them for years
We cannot say "mental health matters" while building environments where credibility depends on self-disclosure. That isn't culture change. That's expectation dressed up in applause.
Organizations must carry more of the weight.
If the main way a company, a movement, or a community talks about mental health is through personal testimonials, it's time to reassess.
That model places the burden on individual bravery. And it's fragile. What happens when people don't want to share? What does their silence communicate to them, and to everyone watching?
A stronger, more sustainable approach looks like:
Leaders treating mental health as a leadership competency, not a personal confession, but a professional and organizational commitment
Consistent investment in resources and prevention, not just crisis response
Honest, data-informed conversations about burnout, workload, and systemic pressure
Skills-based training that builds capacity for everyone, not just those in distress
Support pathways that people trust: confidential, accessible, and destigmatized by design
When advocacy is embedded in systems, structures, and leadership behavior, it doesn't rely on someone's personal pain to sustain it. It stands on its own.
There needs to be room for both.
Room for those who share lived experience with power and intention. Room for those who contribute expertise, advocacy, and leadership without disclosing.
Room for the person who speaks from the stage about their own journey. Room for the researcher who spent a decade studying what actually works. Room for the person who restructures a policy, advocates for a colleague, or changes a culture from the inside, without anyone knowing their story.
Some of the most powerful advocates in this space share openly. Some of the most powerful advocates never do.
Both are legitimate. Both are needed.
If we want trauma-informed cultures, in workplaces, in movements, in communities, we have to normalize consent not just in policy, but in storytelling. That includes the right not to tell your story at all.
A question worth sitting with:
Are we honoring both lived experience and professional expertise in how we talk about mental health, or are we unintentionally signaling that one is more valid, more real, more worthy than the other?
Culture is built in the nuance.
And all of us, advocates, leaders, organizations, and individuals, get to decide what that nuance looks like.
This one matters.