To think that I've been blogging for three years now is just... Wow! I was talking to one of my friends about blogging and how she continuously begins blog's and then loses motivation to maintain it. It made me realise something I'd never considered... What if I'd given up on I'm NOT Disordered? What if in the beginning, I'd lost interest. Motivation. Or thought that it wasn't going anywhere? But I had hope. And faith in it. And I kept going. I feel like this, sums up the past year of I'm NOT Disordered.
But, as usual, here's the highlights of the past year, including the good, the bad and the ugly.
January
I published the Fashion and Beauty meets Mental Health series; a set of posts to illustrate that beauty and fashion bloggers also have experienced mental ill health whilst mental health bloggers may also have an interest in fashion and beauty.
I began receiving gifts from beauty companies asking me to post a review on them. As a fashion and beauty subscriber, I thought being gifted products was a sign of success, I soon realised I was mistaken.
I learnt what my 'early warning signs' are for a deterioration in my mental health and how to find a balance in my life so that everything I do when I'm happy, doesn't exacerbate my tiredness when I'm feeling down.
I featured on the front page of my local newspaper: the Evening Chronicle
February
I celebrated my 24th birthday
I began vlogging.
I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital after overdosing.
I blogged about participating in a research project on BPD with Birmingham University.
I thought about how I felt that I'd been forced into developing coping mechanisms and then they were being judged.
March
I talked about the three lessons in life that I have learnt from my Mum to celebrate Mother's Day.
I attended the National Service User Awards.
My blogs about the channel 4 documentary 'My Self-Harm Nightmare' had the highest views of any posts in the entire three years! http://imnotdisordered.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/my-self-harm-nightmare-channel-4.html and http://imnotdisordered.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/days-worth-of-filming-had-to-be-cut.html
April
I first attended a large event as their blogger.
I began the '7 Days of BPD' series, made up of a Q&A answered by seven different people to illustrate that even with the same diagnosis, each individual has a different experience of Borderline Personality Disorder.
I published a huge collaboration with many different bloggers disclosing their secrets nod confessing!
I attended two more events as their blogger.
May
I worked at the National Good Gestures Day in honour of Stephen Sutton who began the project before dying from cancer.
Take A Break published an article about mine and I'm NOT Disordered's journey.
My anti-psychotic medication was increased to the maximum dose.
I was given the opportunity to interview the CEO of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS.
June
I had the privilege of attending a party at Buckingham Palace for my work with Blind Veterans.
I worked at the three day Public Health Conference from the 22nd until the 24th.
July
I had a chapter published in the Bloggers Love book.
I discussed that if you've used self-harm as a coping mechanism then you shouldn't regret your scars.
I required my very first stitches after self-harming due to a psychotic episode.
I published a guest post by Angharad who featured in a C4 documentary.
I blogged about the relationship between my psychotic episodes and blogging.
August
I wrote about the most popular misconceptions in mental health and the pros and cons that I experience through being an outpatient.
I'm NOT Disordered reached the 100k mark!
September
I questioned whether you can properly recover when the memories of abuse will never go away.
I attended the Story Camp with Time To Change in London.
I finally found my 'safe place' somewhere you can picture in your head if you're feeling distressed, and blogged in the hope that it might help others to discover their own.
My Mum kindly wrote a guest post about ensuring the person you care about gets the help they need from the under-funded services.
My most popular post of September was about challenging stigma towards mental health.
October
I attended the launch of SoMe; a fantastic
I celebrated Dolly's (my cat) first birthday by writing my twelve favourite things from her twelve months of life.
I revealed my tips and advice on being productive and organised before blogging about the fine line between a blog and a business.
November
I gave my advice on telling people that you hallucinate and ensuring that your time at home is of a high quality.
I had the greatest night of my life when I hosted a huge party to celebrate the blog's 100k milestone.
I revealed the stigma that is within the mental health industry including that within professionals and service users.
December
I celebrated my first year in my own home by blogging twelve points around it to symbolise each month that I had lived there.
I blogged about my questioning as to when was the right time to give yourself the label of being a blogger and discussed some of the emotions NHS and thoughts that I experienced when my abuser claimed to be innocent.
The majority of the month, was taken up by a series named 'Christmassy Q&A' which had a huge and amazing variety of people writing responses, from Northumbria Police to the Headmaster of the Educating Essex (a channel 4 documentary series centred around an Academy in Essex).
My final post of 2015 was my thoughts on the privacy of two famous YouTubers/Bloggers being invaded.
I hope you all have enjoyed the past year and if you think you've missed any of the posts mentioned here then just use the Archive button on the right to find the relevant month in 2015. Here's to a year set to be bigger and better than ever!