The Recovery Lab is a meeting place where people work on mental health from their own experience. The focus is not diagnosis, but experiential knowledge. In a safe environment conversations, activities and connection arise, supported by De Regenboog Groep. Bram Vreeswijk is the founder. "Recovery Lab helps people explore their own experiences without medicalizing them."
Six years ago, Bram Vreeswijk took the initiative to establish The Recovery Lab. It immediately earned him an award from mental health platform MIND and health insurer VGZ. "Within the GGZ, the focus is on diagnosis," he says from his own experience. "The starting point was that there was something wrong with me. Recovery, on the other hand, brings a different message: you are moving, you are searching and others are walking with you."
Bram studied Cultural Anthropology (cum laude), but had difficulty finding his way in life. Anxieties and his alcoholism got in his way. Sometimes things went well for a while, then a little less. During those periods, he sought help from the mental health system. "That had moderate results," Bram said. It wasn't until he joined AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) that he felt helped. "I found that sharing stories of experience was essential to my recovery."
"Within professional counseling, the relationship is asymmetrical. The client tells, the professional analyzes. That is not equal."
EXPERIENCES CENTRAL TO RECOVERY
For Bram, the difference between working from experience expertise and working as a regular professional is not in intentions - they are usually good - but in position and starting point. "Within regular professional care, the relationship is asymmetrical. The client tells, the professional analyzes. This is not equal. The client reflects on his thoughts and behavior, but the professional does not explain how he arrived at his beliefs, models and diagnoses."
Bram himself has experienced this asymmetry in his own counseling experiences. The feeling that a practitioner was simultaneously listening and, in the back of his mind, already preoccupied with reporting, protocols and accountability to insurers. "That is not unwillingness," he stresses, "but a consequence of a system in which care is organized as a product."
During AA meetings, he experienced something radically different. There, people spoke openly about their struggles, without diagnosis, without a treatment plan. "The knowledge circulated there came directly from lived experience. That made the exchange more equal and honest and ultimately more effective."
The core attitude of any counselor and thus also that of the experiencer, according to Bram, should be "not-knowing. An attitude of curiosity, openness and awareness of limitedness. That attitude aligns with the thinking of psychiatrist Jim van Os, who argues for a psychiatry in which the focus is not diagnosis but experience. "Jim van Os is something of a hero to me and an important inspiration. I admire how, as a professor of psychiatry, he has chosen to go straight against the system, and to do so carefully and well-founded. He points out that the mental health system knows things, but much more it does not know. Especially when it comes to an individual. Every person is different. People like to know what they have and ask the mental health service. But it is not that simple. Paradoxically, the attitude of not knowing turns out to create more safety. It creates a space in which a client can do their own research. It feels safer when someone says, "I don't know anything about you," than when someone says, "I know exactly what ails you, because I've had people like this in my consulting room many times."
"Recovery is not about erasing your experiences, but integrating them."
EXAMINE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES
The question of how experiences define who you are is ridiculous to Bram. It even makes him laugh: "No human being can be separated from his experiences. You are what you have experienced. The problem only arises when experiences are fixed in labels, diagnoses and identities that leave no room for movement. Recovery is not about erasing experiences, but integrating them. Experiential recovery is thus not an end point, but is constant movement."
This vision translates concretely into the work of The Recovery Lab. There, no diagnoses are central and no predetermined goals are imposed. Instead, conversations and activities emerge around themes that are meaningful to participants: choices, boundaries, desires, fears and possibilities. "Conversations are used, as well as creative assignments, constellations and moments of silence. This creates space to feel. The goal is to increase movement space. The Recovery Lab helps people explore their own experiences without medicalizing them."
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Bram Vreeswijk of Recovery Lab
."Expertise in experience requires timing and dosage."
EXPERIENTIAL EXPERTISE
Bram deliberately deploys his own experiences, but never as a central narrative. He talks about his alcohol addiction, his relapses, his fears, not to get attention, but to make space for others. "By sharing something himself, he invites others to do the same. It breaks the asymmetry and creates trust."
Next he warns of a familiar pitfall. "In recovery, there can be a phase where someone wants to put everything on the table, every detail, every trauma. That can be healing, but it can also disrupt the group process. Being an expert in experience requires dosage, timing and taking responsibility for the whole. It is not about just expressing yourself, but about contributing to a shared space in which everyone can move."
"In a recovery environment, people can analyze themselves. This is how recovery arises from one's own strengths."
WORKING TOGETHER ON MENTAL HEALTH
Recovery is not an individual achievement, Bram continues to emphasize. It is a relational process, embedded in environments that offer safety, time and openness. Environments in which experiences are not reduced to problems, but are recognized as sources of knowledge. This brings him to Lekker in je Vel, a project in Amsterdam Southeast, where, in the spirit of Jim van Os, various organizations are working on an ecosystem mental health. Bram's Recovery Lab also participates in this project. "For people who suffer structurally mentally, it is much more effective to create a recovery environment than to offer a health product, as happens in the current health system. Safe recovery environments offer peace of mind and are equal. Without diagnosis or pressure, people can share experiences, analyze themselves and explore new possibilities. In this way, recovery occurs from one's own strengths." This is not only more efficient, Bram said, but also cheaper than the current offerings. What we need to do is tilt our current health care system. We have a big job to do there for the time being!"
.Text: Nicolline van der Spek | Photography: Marlise Steeman