Expe­ri­ence Project treats its mem­bers as indi­vid­u­als, not conditions

Feel­ing alone dur­ing a moment of cri­sis can com­pound the grav­ity of a sit­u­a­tion. While it may not be pos­si­ble for peo­ple to be phys­i­cally by your side, social net­works allow peo­ple to find you and com­mu­ni­cate with you, mak­ing you feel less alone.

Some­times you don’t want your friends to help you because you don’t want your friends to know your prob­lems. That’s why we often divulge our dark­est con­cerns to ther­a­pists and psy­chi­a­trists. Beyond hav­ing the train­ing to help us, they’re morally and pro­fes­sion­ally bound to not repeat any­thing you say to them.

Prob­lem is pro­fes­sional ther­apy costs money. But anony­mous social net­works don’t.

Expe­ri­ence Project (EP) is a unique social net­work in that it pro­motes anonymity. Most social net­works focus on pro­mot­ing your­self as a brand and con­nect­ing you to your friends by name. EP mem­bers are anony­mous and are able to con­nect through each other’s sto­ries. EP is not the first anony­mous social net­work. It’s just the first one I know of that doesn’t have a pre­de­fined agenda. With other social net­works join­ing them auto­mat­i­cally iden­ti­fies you as a rape sur­vivor, some­one suf­fer­ing from MS, or some other ail­ment or a physical/emotional tragedy. While these social net­works are all valid and help­ful, peo­ple are first seen by their issue or ail­ment. It’s hard to break out of that image and when you over­come that issue, then there’s no rea­son to be on that spe­cific social network.

I spoke to many mem­bers of Expe­ri­ence Project to learn how they came upon dis­cov­er­ing EP and how the anony­mous social net­work helped them cope with their concerns.

Free­dom to speak through anonymity

EP mem­ber, Mello, doesn’t have the abil­ity to express her true con­cerns and feel­ings with her own fam­ily and friends. Her home unfor­tu­nately is not a sanc­tu­ary as she copes with depres­sion. Par­tic­i­pat­ing on EP every day, she looks for­ward to the oppor­tu­nity to express her­self and con­nect with other peo­ple with­out worry of being judged. Those bot­tled up feel­ings that get expressed on EP anony­mously become the cur­rency for rela­tion­ships. “What you keep hid­den from oth­ers is what causes peo­ple to friend you,” said Mello, “It becomes addictive.”

“I need to get rid of this instead of car­ry­ing it around with me,” said Mello of her unex­pressed thoughts. At one time she just wanted to drop every­thing and start a new life. She admits that the act of writ­ing the pre­vi­ously unspo­ken is phys­i­cally ther­a­peu­tic. “Once I write it, it’s gone.”

While pub­licly express­ing her con­cerns lifts an emo­tional bur­den, the responses on EP made her real­ize that she’s not alone. There are many oth­ers who can relate (Who hasn’t wanted to start a new life?) and have had sim­i­lar trou­bles. They bond through these concerns.

Mello ended up meet­ing her hus­band, user­name Blue­Ge­or­gia, on EP and Mello attests to their suc­cess being that they knew very inti­mate details of each other before they ever met. In the end, when they got mar­ried, they invited three other EP mem­bers to the wed­ding, but not her parents.

As I spoke to more EP mem­bers, the sto­ries were all very sim­i­lar. All of them appre­ci­ated the anonymity because it allowed them to share deep secrets. One woman, who goes by the han­dle Fun­Girl, had been sex­u­ally abused by a fam­ily mem­ber (EP story 1, EP story 2, free reg­is­tra­tion required). Fun­Girl admits to being in tears when she writes her sto­ries of which have num­bered more than 2,500. “I would never share the things I’ve said on Expe­ri­ence Project on Face­book or MySpace,” she admits. Like Mello, pub­lish­ing sto­ries has been a part of her healing.

You’re not the only one who is feel­ing this way

That’s a core theme that many EP users dis­cuss. Before you pub­lish a story on EP you feel alone. You feel like a vic­tim and that you’re the only one who has these prob­lems. But through the response, users quickly real­ize they’re not alone.

Michelle dis­cov­ered Expe­ri­ence Project dur­ing a very dark time in her mar­riage. She was search­ing the Web using terms such as “prob­lem mar­riage” and “sex­ual prob­lems.” She stum­bled upon EP and just started read­ing, soon real­iz­ing she wasn’t the only one going through the same mar­i­tal problems.

“When I’m in a cri­sis, the first place I go to is EP,” said Sherri, an active EP user who blogged anony­mously on Live­Jour­nal for many years. She has a his­tory of hurt­ing her­self with cut­ting and over­dos­ing on med­ica­tion. EP has become her life­line for emer­gency therapy.

“You can never get to see a ther­a­pist when you’re in a cri­sis. You need help in that moment, not four days from now when that cri­sis has passed,” said Sherri, “I can go on EP and this is how I’m feel­ing. As soon as I’ve writ­ten it down, two or three peo­ple have responded and I feel less want­ing to want to hurt myself… It’s like being in a sup­port group. I can get responses within sec­onds of being online.”

For more on social net­works help­ing out in a cri­sis, read my arti­cle on Mash­able enti­tled, “5 Unique Sto­ries of Social Media Sav­ing the Day” or lis­ten to my inter­view with Cur­tis Sliwa on WABC radio on the sub­ject.David Spark helps busi­nesses grow by devel­op­ing thought lead­er­ship through sto­ry­telling and cov­er­ing live events at Spark Media Solu­tions. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be heard and seen reg­u­larly on ABC Radio, Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvo­rak, and KQED in San Fran­cisco. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact David, or leave a com­ment below.

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