“If you have a dream, don’t just sit there. Gather courage to
believe that you can succeed and leave no stone unturned to make it a reality”
Dr Roopleen
As
if my little blog has just passed the 700,000 readers mark! Like, what?!
I’ll
never be one of those Bloggers who can say that I always had confidence in my
blog to take off and become as popular and successful as it has, but not
because I don’t have faith in, I’m NOT Disordered. It’s more that I didn’t have
too much faith in myself and my own capabilities and skills as a Blogger. I’ve never
been a fan of blowing my own trumpet because I’ve always worried that I’d come
across as full of myself or self-involved; but since starting I’m NOT
Disordered in 2013 I’ve developed an understanding that it’s all about your
motivation for blowing that trumpet! If you’re doing it for the attention or to
boost your own confidence then maybe it’ll come across as selfish, but where it’s
about being passionate and enjoying something, it should be seen as an effort
to raise awareness of what you are so excited about. I mean, when I’ve been
asked to give talks and presentations about my own mental health journey I’ve
been stuck for words and have felt nervous and reluctant; but when it’s been more
about talking all things blogging? Well, just try and shut me up!
I
think that in the beginning of I’m NOT Disordered, my intentions for it were a
large part of the doubt because really the only reason I started blogging was
to give myself an outlet whilst I was a psychiatric inpatient over 100 miles
away from home. Being on a ward where the staff specialized in Personality
Disorders and all of the other inpatients had the same diagnosis just with a
different plethora of symptoms, was so overwhelming and it resulted in endless
drama that I struggled to voice my frustration over. I may have had staff and other
inpatients just down the corridor 24/7, but I had spent twenty-one years living
with my Mum and being surrounded by my best-friends and now I was so far away
from everyone I knew and loved that I felt so completely alone. Of course, I eventually
bonded with some of the staff and the other girls on the ward, but that wasn’t’
the same as having people around me who really knew me – who knew who I had
been before my mental health became poorly.
With
all of the inpatients having the same diagnosis, there were so many clashes and
arguments that may have been between two people, but which really affected the
entire ward’s atmosphere and everyone else’s mental health. The staff were sometimes
a part of this drama; they would occasionally trigger thoughts and feelings in one
of the girls or make decisions that not everyone agreed with and because we
were all in such an intense, confined space (it was a secure Hospital so the
doors were locked and you needed special permission to leave the ward) it was
hard to see the bigger picture. It was difficult to see that sometimes a person’s
actions and comments wouldn’t be such a huge deal in the ‘real world’ and
wouldn’t have the same impact on you if you had been able to just leave the
situation and avoid the drama. Feeling that I had such little choice in my
involvement in these dramas, was hard and when my Key Nurse and I decided that I
was ready to begin talking more about the abuse I’d gone through when I was 15,
I decided that I needed a sounding-off board. Somewhere that I could voice
everything I was thinking and feeling with no fear of having my leave off the
ward taken away from me or of starting an argument with someone who disagreed
or couldn’t empathize properly.
So
that was my motivation in starting to blog, my plan for I’m NOT Disordered was
to share it’s links just to my Facebook where my ‘friends’ are people that I actually
know and not random strangers who have happened across my account because we
have things in common. I wanted for my blog to provide my friends and family
with an insight into what I was going through all that distance from home. I
had kept my mental health problems a secret until my admission to the hospital
and I only announced it on Facebook because the admission was set to be ‘long-term’
and the hospital’s website warns that admissions typically last 12-18 months, and
I realized that I wouldn’t be able to lie about where I was for that long! The
response I got when I posted that status, though, was so heartwarming and reassuring
that I had very little nerves when I decided to share my blog; but I definitely
began experiencing those nerves when the number of readers began to climb… I
can’t remember making a conscious decision to share my blog on Twitter (where
my followers do include random strangers!) but I think that doing so, and
word-of-mouth through my Facebook, were what began rolling the snowball that
picked up speed and soon became 700,000! I actually still remember reaching my
first 100 readers and when my scream from excitement resulted in the staff
running down the corridor thinking that I was self-harming or hallucinating, or
God knows what!
Second
to my thoughts that my audience would remain small and confined to my Facebook ‘friends,’
I also believed that I wouldn’t maintain I’m NOT Disordered for very long. I definitely
couldn’t have ever imagined that it would still be going seven years later! I honestly
thought that it would be something I would do occasionally, in the evenings
when we (the inpatients) were allowed time on our laptops! And these thoughts
left me doubting that my blog would amount to anything special…
Here
are two of the things that I think helped to make I’m NOT Disordered so successful…
Perseverance
After
all that I’ve gone through, ‘admitting defeat’ and ‘giving up’ is a tricky
subject; I think because I can now recognize that everyone has their limits and
their boundaries, and no one should be judged when they’re deemed to have a
lower threshold than others. It’s like when Doctors and Nurses ask you in
hospital to score your pain out of ten but someone’s ‘nine’ might be the
equivalent of a headache that someone else might rate a ‘four!’ I think it
should be the same in mental health; if two people are abused and one goes on
to live a full and healthy life and the other commits suicide; that second
person shouldn’t be seen as weak. We should all be seen as individuals and our
own trials and traumas respected and not belittled.
For
me, learning that thoughts and feelings pass has been one of the greatest
lessons in my mental health because a huge reason for me self-harming and
attempting suicide was losing hope that things could ever improve. I think that
I can now persevere with some emotions that would have previously driven me to
unsafe coping mechanisms, and this has rubbed off onto my blogging… I’m so much
more committed to seeing things through that I use this on I’m NOT Disordered by
pushing through challenges that the blog throws my way. I’ve persevered through
spiteful comments and letdowns around opportunities and collaborations.
Passion
Until
I started blogging, I had never really felt passionate about anything; I’d
enjoyed things and had hobbies… but when I think of my passion for, I’m NOT
Disordered; I had nothing compared to that. I enjoyed horse riding all through
my childhood, but I don’t remember ever thinking ‘this is what I want to do for
the rest of my life!’ I also flitted between careers when considering my
education in preparation for a dream job, I went from fashion to law, to wanting
to work in childcare!
Being
passionate about blogging was a pretty immediate feeling! I’d always enjoyed
writing so realizing that I could do this, and that it could help myself and
others?! Well, that was the greatest feeling! In blogging, I honestly feel as
though I’ve found my calling in life; found a reason why my suicide attempts
have failed. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I don’t still feel suicidal occasionally,
it’s just that blogging gives me one reason not to act on it. Sometimes I worry
that this sounds superficial, but I’m a firm believer that if someone develops
a reason to stay alive then no one has the right to take that away from them.