Mastery Vibes: Peer Support Unleashed

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Mastery Vibes: Peer Support Unleashed, Season 2, Episode 7
"When the System Forgets You: Charlie’s Story of Survival, Sanity & Self-Determination"
In this episode of Mastery Vibes: Peer Support Unleashed, Charlotte Armstrong and Robyn Priest are joined by Charlie, a First Nations peer cadet at a lived experience residential service in Adelaide that has only just opened its doors. Robyn met her during two days of training with role plays, where Charlie was the one who put her hand up to go first while the rest of the room sat frozen.
Charlie has been in recovery or as she says “clean and sober” for 14 months. Before that she used drugs for 33 years. She is direct about why people start, that substances are often a way to cope with something that has already happened, and that nothing in a life moves forward while they are still in the picture. For Charlie, giving up drugs meant going back and feeling all of it.
Her turning point has a date. On 6 May last year she got a phone call from her twin boys, who she had not seen in 14 years, telling her they needed her. She talks about what followed without smoothing any of it out, including the part most recovery stories leave off the end: that the hardest thing she had to learn was how to set boundaries, and that things did not go the way she hoped they would.
Charlotte picks up the thread from the family side, where much of her own work sits. Carers spend their energy trying to make things better for their person, and sometimes making things better starts with taking care of yourself first. She and Robyn also name a gap they keep running into lived experience services are opening without any family or carer peer support beside them, so people do the work, go home, and find that the household has not.
The phrase both hosts stopped on is Charlie’s own. A friend in the dark. Someone who does not have to do anything and does not have to fix you, who just has to be there. She puts it plainly. She did not need anyone to fix her, because what she has lived through is not the kind of thing that gets fixed. She needed someone to walk beside her while she worked it out. She also names the parts of her history that still carry the heaviest stigma, including sex work, where she sees people struggling with almost nowhere to turn.
Charlie walked into her group interview convinced she did not stand a chance, coming straight from being a client of these services into applying to work in one. She got the job. What she wants to do with it is be loud enough, and stubborn enough, to not take no for an answer on behalf of people who have no one in their corner.
Her closing line is the one to sit with: you do not have to walk alone, and if you have trouble finding someone, come find me, and I will walk with you.
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#PeerSupport #LivedExperience #LivedAndLivingExperience #Recovery #AddictionRecovery #FirstNations #PeerWorkforce #FriendInTheDark #Boundaries #StigmaFree #FamilyPeerSupport #CaregiverSupport #PeerSupportUnleashed #MasteryVibes
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Mastery Vibes: Peer Support Unleashed, Season 2, Episode 6
"I Don’t Want to Be a Burden": Robyn’s Health Scare and the Ripple We Don’t See
In this unscripted episode, Charlotte Armstrong and Robyn Priest turn the microphone on themselves. There is no guest this time. The subject is Robyn’s recent health scare, and everything she nearly talked herself out of.
Robyn had been coughing for weeks. She masked on the flight from Canada to Australia, went straight from the plane to a work event, and kept telling herself what a lot of us tell ourselves: it is just a bug, give it a few days. By the time a friend insisted on urgent care, she could not walk to the train platform without taking the lift, could not eat, and could not properly breathe. Within hours she was in the emergency department. Then she was admitted, with pneumonia and severe asthma.
The question Robyn keeps returning to is why so many of us wait. "I don’t want to be a bother." "There are people sicker than me." "I don’t want to take a bed from someone with a heart problem," said by a woman who has a heart condition. For people carrying a mental health diagnosis there is another layer: being doubted when you say you are physically unwell and slowly learning to stop saying it.
Charlotte brings the perspective she knows best, the friend who does the driving to emergency and the phoning around. Robyn had not thought about what those days cost the friend who pushed her to go, or her mother, who could not get to her and thought she might die. Charlotte has her own version of the story too: a broken arm she decided was a bad sprain, and the odd experience of being wheeled into emergency after years of being the one pushing the chair.
Both of them are clear that this is not a guilt and shame conversation. Peer support training asks people to sit with someone else’s perspective and stay passionately curious about it, and this is an honest look at how easily any of us miss that when the life in question is our own. More than one thing can be true at the same time. Robyn was not being difficult, and her friends were not overreacting.
What Robyn takes from it: listen to your body and listen to the people who notice things before you do. What Charlotte takes from it: caring sometimes means being more direct than "drink some more water."
This one is for anyone who has ever decided they will be fine, and for anyone who has stood beside that person, waiting.
Where do you do this in your own life? Tell us in the comments.
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#PeerSupport #LivedExperience #MentalHealthMatters #SelfCare #AskingForHelp #NotABurden #CaregiverSupport #FamilyPerspective #MultipleTruths #LifelongLearning #PeerSupportValues #PeerSupportUnleashed #MasteryVibes #HealthAndMentalHealth
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In this powerful episode of Mastery Vibe: Peer Support Unleashed, hosts Robyn Priest and Charlotte Armstrong sit down with Joe Johnson, a former paramedic of 20 years turned Peer Support Specialist in Colorado. Joe shares his transformative journey from the high-stakes, often jaded world of first responding to the heart-centered discipline of peer support.
The conversation dives deep into the "unspoken" side of the profession: the challenge of being "in the system but not of it." Joe discusses the importance of staying true to peer values while working alongside clinical teams and highlights the life-changing moment when a simple question—"Did you ask the client what they want?"—can shift an entire treatment perspective. 
We also explore the critical need for family peer support for first responders, the value of discipline-specific supervision, and why peer work is a professional role that deserves equal footing and fair pay. Whether you're a clinician, a first responder, or a peer worker, this episode offers a raw and essential look at the "rope" that connects us all.
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Mastery Vibes Episode 4 Season 2: Trapped, Not Treated: Compulsory Care, Restraint & the Human Right to Be Heard
 In this raw and powerful conversation, Charlotte Armstrong and Robyn Priest sit down with Cat Morgan to unpack the lasting impact of compulsory treatment, restraint, and seclusion. Cat shares her experiences starting at age 14—being treated as if she were a danger that needed containing, feeling trapped, and watching her mental health spiral because the system prioritised control over care.
We explore why restrictive practices often do the opposite of what they’re meant to do, what it really means to ask someone “What do you need right now?” instead of assuming we know best, and how peer support can create the safe, accepting spaces that clinical systems so often fail to provide.
Whether you’re living with mental health challenges, supporting a loved one, or working in the field, this episode will challenge what you think you know about “help” and leave you with hope for genuinely compassionate alternatives: peer-run community hubs, respite options, and systems that see people first.
Tune in now and join the conversation about human rights, lived experience, and the future of mental health support.
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Both/And: Embracing Grief, Relief & Conflicting Emotions in Peer Support 
Mastery Vibes: Peer Support Unleashed – Season 2, Episode 3

In this warm, honest, and deeply human conversation, Charlotte Armstrong and Robyn Priest sit down with Janelle Cancade-White to explore one of the most common yet rarely talked-about experiences in mental health and recovery: feeling two completely opposite emotions at the same time.

Together they unpack the “both/and” — grief and relief after losing a loved one (including stories of suicide and parental death), love and anger in family relationships, joy and sadness in parenting, and how we so often shame ourselves for not feeling “the right way.”

Robyn shares the peace she felt for her brother after his suicide in 2020 alongside her own profound loss. Janelle opens up about the mix of mourning and guilt-free relief after her father’s passing.

Charlotte brings her own powerful reflections as a mother, daughter, and partner, reminding us that it’s completely human to love someone fiercely while sometimes feeling anger or frustration in the moment — whether it’s toward a child, a spouse’s political views, or an aging parent. She gently encourages us to drop the shame and give ourselves permission to hold the full range of feelings without judgment.
They talk about why our brains crave black-and-white answers, how cognitive dissonance shows up in everyday life, and why giving ourselves (and others) permission to feel everything at once is one of the most powerful acts of self-compassion — and the very foundation of great peer support.

This episode is gentle, hopeful, and full of “me too” moments. It reminds us that we don’t have to choose one emotion over another, and that peer support (formal or just in our everyday friendships and families) creates the safest space to feel everything at once.

Whether you’re walking your own mental health or recovery journey, supporting someone through grief or family challenges, or working in the field, this conversation will give you permission, language, and tools to navigate the beautiful complexity of being human.

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#PeerSupport #BothAnd #GriefAndRelief #LivedExperience #MentalHealthMatters #EmotionalComplexity #CognitiveDissonance #GriefSupport #FamilyDynamics #PeerSupportUnleashed #MasteryVibes #CaregiverSupport #RecoveryJourney #CommunityCare #NoShameInFeelingItAll

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