*Before I began this mini series
celebrating the publication of my new book, I did a poll on Twitter to ask if I
should split one large post into individual ones and splitting it won, but I
wanted to keep things fair and I’ve decided to publish all three previous posts
in one massive one too for those who would rather have the content this way… *
Buy You’re NOT Disordered NOW!!
If you’ve read I’m NOT Disordered for a while or have seen the cover graphic to the left of the blog posts, then you’ll probably know that I released a book a few years ago called Everything Disordered (which you can also buy on Amazon!) and I was honestly worried that having already written a book, the importance and meaning would be taken away in publishing another. Fortunately, the entire process of YND – from having the idea for it to the publication party and everything in between! – has (for so many reasons) felt massively different from that which I experienced with my first book. And one of the largest differences has been the sense of achievement and the notion that it really is a true testament to the progress I’ve made; both in my blogging career and in my mental health recovery journey…
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Those with no experience, knowledge, or awareness around abuse and
rape and the impact they can have on your mental health, may be surprised to
see me consider those traumatic experiences as a reason why I’ve managed to get
to where I am today. However, I believe that those with an education or
understanding of these will have at least some inkling as to the angle and
thought process I might be experiencing in making this statement.
In fairness though, the idea that for some people who have gone
through a massive amount of hardship will later say that they recognise they
wouldn’t be who or where they are today if it weren’t for that. Now, that can
mean positively or negatively – I think that in the immediate aftermath of rape
and/or abuse, it is incredibly common to find the survivor having a more
negative view in holding the belief that these experiences have ruined their
life and changed them for the worse. It’s typically not until much later – when
there has been time to process the trauma, to find a level of acceptance that
it has happened and it can’t be taken back, and to develop the recognition that
you have some amount of choice or power in determining what impact the trauma
has on your life – that some sense of positivity can be taken from it. For me
(because everyone is different), it took the best part of ten years to come to
this more healthy, safe, and productive conclusion!
I think that the largest qualities for me, that the trauma has
really introduced to me, and my personality have been – and I really hope I
don’t sound big-headed – strength, courage, and resilience. This has mostly been
driven from the recognition that the one instance of rape and those six months
of abuse really left me with the notion and belief that they truly are some of
the worst, and most challenging, things that you can go through in life. And
so, if I can make it through them – if I can survive them – how can I not get
through all these other difficult moments that life can throw at you?! Almost
like, when people say that sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you can
start getting back up and climbing into the light… I had to experience the
hardest thing I could go through before I could start establishing strength and
courage that would lead to me feeling so much more resilient than I had thought
of myself as being, prior to the trauma.
In addition to this benefit the trauma had for my mental health, it’s
also very obviously played a massive part in my blogging career; especially in
so far as the content I create and publish. In some instances that has clearly
meant that the abuse and rape are the complete and blatant focus for a blog
post; and sometimes it’s been about the experiences playing a more behind-the-scenes
role in subtly inspiring the content of a post. Either way, had I not gone
through these things, I wouldn’t have been able to write a blog post a few
years ago – in 2017 – about having the ability to cope when reporting your
trauma to the Police (you can read it here) and without
that, I wouldn’t have received the most incredible, motivational,
inspirational, and overwhelming comment that I did a while later from a reader…
A lady sent me an email telling me that she had been abused as a child by a
member of her family and that in reading my blog post, she had found the
determination and strength to finally report it to the Police. She went on to
tell me that as a result of her report, the person had been arrested and was
facing being imprisoned which would mean so many more people would be safe and
saved from the risk he could pose. I couldn’t believe that my words – and my
blog – could have such an enormous impact on someone else’s life (prior to
that, I had only really recognised the positive consequences I was experiencing
from being a blogger) and I immediately realised that if I hadn’t experienced
what I had, I wouldn’t have been able to help someone in this way. And, to have
helped someone like this? Well, it made everything – the abuse and the time and
effort that went into writing the blog post – feel so worthwhile.
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Growing up, I had a huge variety of career dreams and goals that varied
from wanting to be a horse-riding instructor to an education lawyer! Of course,
I had my reasons for each change in them – I mean, I used to take horse-riding
lessons myself when I was younger, and I was obsessed with this series of books
about a girl and her Shetland pony called Sheltie!
When I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital in 2012, I had
spent the previous three years really poorly with my mental health and that
meant I had quit my weekend job as a Sales Assistant in a huge retail store and
instead, I had just had a few voluntary roles in charity shops. It meant that I
had no real employment commitment – neither to an actual, current job or to an
industry or career I was wanting to, or working towards, working in. This was
mostly because I was making so many decisions that could very easily and likely
have ended my life on a ton of occasions; so, I was incredibly sceptical of the
thought that I might have any sort of future that would require me getting a
job with a need to pay bills.
As I got the sensation that I was making some real progress in my
mental health recovery, I decided to look into different careers in retail
because it was really the only experience I had in terms of my CV and so it was
the only industry I felt I had enough knowledge of to be able to determine and
decide that it was worth spending my time outside of the therapeutic timetable researching
and pursuing. In doing this, I came across the career of Visual Merchandising and
felt it was the perfect mix of fashion, imagination, and creativity. I remember
that the Activities department used some of their budget/funding to buy me all
these books from Amazon around the role, the typical job description and
responsibilities, and an activity book for fashion drawing – something I also
really enjoyed doing.
Then, in January 2013, I created I’m NOT Disordered and began
blogging. And immediately – even though I had just a few motivations, little
expectation, and a small (but important target audience) – in that moment, my
life changed forever. It changed and I didn’t know it would nor did I even
intend for it do so!
Originally, my blog’s sole purpose was to keep a document of my
progress because I created it after having just had a really helpful 1:1 with
my Key Nurse when I agreed to begin writing about the trauma I’d been through
and then let the staff read it. It felt like a huge step forward into recovery
with my mental health and being an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital over 100
miles away from home gave me the sense that I wanted to – and needed to – effectively
and efficiently communicate my journey to my friends and family. They had been
so prominent and witnessed so much of my illness and the unsafe ways I was
coping with memories of the abuse and the hallucinations that it felt only right
and fair that they should be able to be ‘beside me’ through these more positive
and productive moments too.
In terms of expectations when I first created, I’m NOT Disordered,
I imagined that – at the absolute very most – it would end when I was
discharged from the psychiatric hospital. I mean, it only made sense; if I was
starting to blog because I wanted to keep in touch with loved ones whilst all
that distance from everyone, why would I still need to do that once I was back
home? Also, what would I have to write about if my mental health was all
better? There’d be no inspiration or influence on content! And I think that
this is one of the greatest reasons why I always try to get the message across
to anyone with a mental illness that they shouldn’t believe or trust any
professionals who talks about recovery being the end of everything. Those who
seem to encourage the notion that once you fit the ‘recovered’ criteria that
will be the end of your struggles and you’ll go on to live a completely
‘normal’ life – as though even having had a mental illness, it won’t shape or
influence so much about you?! The thought that recovery is linear can be so
dangerous because if there is a relapse, you’re left feeling completely alone
(thinking that this doesn’t happen to others, or the professionals would have
warned you) and hopeless (that if it’s got bad again there’s little chance it
will ever completely stop or get better).
If you’ve read, I’m NOT Disordered for a while now, then you might
know that I did actually quit blogging when I was discharged in 2014; but that
was mostly because I’d received two horrible comments from readers. And, at the
time, I weighed up the benefits I was getting from blogging with the thoughts
and feelings I was having to learn to cope with when I got those comments, and
I came to the conclusion that it just wasn’t worth it. That blogging just wasn’t
rewarding enough. In all honesty, even to me this sounds like madness! I mean,
the way I am with my blog today – the passion I hold for it; it’s kind of
surreal to think back and recognise that there was actually a time when I felt
the complete opposite!
In fairness though, my quitting only lasted a few months before I
found myself seriously missing blogging and it was then, that my really true and
obviously still very current and intense passion for I’m NOT Disordered – and
everything surrounding it – was actually properly established. Whilst I was
clearly doing so much better in terms of my mental health than when I started
blogging, having emotions about someone or something and recognising someone or
something as important to me, was still really challenging. It was no longer
about me being cold inside, more that I was afraid things would go downhill
again and I believed that if I had built strong relationships and found
meaningful activities in my life, then going backwards would hurt so much more.
I came to the conclusion, however, that whilst I was alive, I was going to do
everything I wanted to in order to make the most of it and I wondered whether
doing this, would mean that if I were to feel suicidal again, I might be more
capable of getting through it because I would have a huge list of people and
things that I would lose.
Whilst in creating I’m NOT Disordered I had obviously done so with
some sort of purpose in terms of having multiple motivations to do it, it
wasn’t until after my break from it that I finally felt a different sort of
purpose… I started to feel as though I had been put on this earth and have gone
through all that I have, to do this – to blog and to use my experiences and
writing as a means of helping others. I mean, for what felt like forever, I had
been 100% convinced that I had been put in this world to commit suicide at a
young age in order to draw attention to the failures of mental health services…
This was something that I really believed, and it actually made me so much more
suicidal to believe that I’d just be fulfilling my destiny if I were to kill
myself. And so, to finally see that this was wrong and to feel so completely reassured
and comforted by the knowledge that I was meant to be here and that there was
purpose to everything I had gone through. That all those things had a worthy
reason for occurring – I mean, if being abused meant I could help someone else
avoid that or seek help and report their own experiences? Well, maybe I could
find some sort of silver lining in it…? And blogging did that. I’m NOT
Disordered did that for me.
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So, this bit is more about how far my mental health had come
rather than my blog… One question I’ve been asked a lot in mental health crises
that have involved other professionals – particularly Police Officers – has
been whether I have people around me who provide help and/or support for my
mental health. And my immediate – almost automatic – answer is and has always been
“my Mum.”
I honestly feel that I didn’t really appreciate my Mum properly
until I felt as though I was making steps forward in my mental health recovery.
Whilst I was poorly, I had no respect or gratitude for anyone in my life
because I was so caught up in the hallucinations and then the thoughts and
feelings around self-harm and being suicidal meant that I also felt annoyed and
resentful of anyone (professionals mainly, though) who tried to stop me from
doing these things. When someone would stop me or take actions to prevent my
ability to hurt myself, it felt as though they were either punishing me or were
completely ignorant. I mean, it left me convinced that they might think I was
either deserving of living a horrible, difficult, and upsetting life or that my
life wasn’t that bad after all!
I think that another reason why I didn’t feel as good a bond
between my Mum and I as I do now was because I worried that if I did, I would
be even more suicidal from the thought of the stress and psychological pain I
was putting her through. Don’t get me wrong though; it’s not like I don’t feel
bad for everything now – I’ll always be sorry for everything that happened –
but I’m in a much better place mentally so that I don’t feel really unsafe when
I think about it. And, of course, I really appreciate and respect my Mum for
her response whenever I voice this; in saying that I needn’t feel this way
because those things only happened because I wasn’t well – it wasn’t really
‘me’ meaning to and wanting to treat her that way.
The largest positive I taken (and I believe my Mum has too) from our
relationship’s journey has been the thought that we need to make up for lost
time now. There were so many times when I would be travelling on my way to run
off and self-harm and I’d see a Mum and her children outside the bus window,
and I’d be so envious – desperately wishing that it was my Mum and me. Or even just
wishing that it could be us. So, now we do so many activities together, we talk
so much on the phone every day, and send lots of messages to each other with
funny things we’ve seen online.
My best-friends (Georgie, Martin, Sophie, Lauren, and Jack) are
also hugely important to my mental health journey and recovery. I think the
best quality that they all have in common is that they’re each so different to
the other. Not only in terms of their personality, but also the way in which we
met and the importance that holds in our friendship and how much – or how
little – we talk about mental health and other ‘deep’ topics. I mean, when
you’ve got psychiatric professionals in your life, it’s sometimes really nice
to have a person you care about who doesn’t put a lot of attention into that
side of things and who can spur you on to be more positive in putting upsetting
issues to one side whilst you’re with them and focusing simply on having fun.
Georgie: used to be my support worker and now we talk about our
mental health regularly and often end up being supportive and helpful in crises.
Martin: is my only blogging friend and with blogging being such a
huge part of my life, it means a lot to have someone who I know genuinely
understands that.
Sophie: I’ve known the longest (around 17 years!) and having met
whilst the abuse was happening, it’s nice to have someone who has stood by me
literally throughout everything.
Lauren: I’ve known the second longest (around 16 years!) and
whilst we don’t talk often because she moved away and has a child now
(Greylan), when we do get together, it’s like we were never apart.
Jack: we met years ago through a mental health event, then we
reconnected at the Staff Excellence Awards earlier this year and the number of
times we’ve laughed so hard is just phenomenal!
Finally, (last but certainly not least) my little fluffy ones! I’ve
had pets since I was little and the family cat; Saffy, was literally the only
one who knew about the abuse as it happened because I would tell her through my
tears. It meant that when I finally got my own home in 2014, I just felt
completely natural to get my own cat, Dolly. Since then? In 2017, I got my
first Lionhead bunny called Pixie, and then Dolly died in 2018 so I got my
little rescue kitten; Emmy within a week because Pixie and I were so lost
without that third presence in our home. After three years together – in 2021 –
Pixie died and a few months later I got my first mini-Lionhead bunny, Luna.
They had a little over one year together before Emmy died in October 2022 and I
made the decision to give Luna and I some time together before finally deciding
– in January 2023 to get another mini-Lionhead bunny I named Gracie…
When we lost Emmy, I remember asking the Vet what would help Luna
and she said get her a friend and pointed out that it’d be much easier to
introduce her to another bunny than a new cat. However, the two of them bonded
so well – almost within 24 hours – and it meant they spent all their time
snuggled up together or washing each other or chasing each other in a different
room and I was just sat by myself! So, that’s why Ruby came along; to be
company for me and boy, is she the bestest companion ever?! She’s honestly just
like my little shadow!
Since each of my pets that are no longer here (Dolly, Pixie, and
Emmy) have left a huge imprint on my heart, I didn’t want them to receive no
mention… Dolly helped me get through my transition from the psychiatric
hospital to my own home. Pixie helped me to tell the difference between my
rabbit hallucinations and reality, and Emmy helped me through my growth and
progress over the years. And, obviously my three current little ones are having
a huge impact too; I mean Luna and Gracie never fail to amuse me and make me
laugh like, at least once every single day – the chaos they cause and get into was
initially annoying and I found myself shouting a lot, but I found myself
recognising that actually, I’d much rather they cause mess and chew through my
phone charger than not be here at all! And with Dolly and Emmy, there were
things I would always say “I wish ____ did that!” and Ruby literally does
everything I wanted in a kitten. She’s left me feeling really fulfilled and
like my home is eventually complete – as though I was always destined to have
two bunnies and a kitten!
In terms of YND and writing it, Ruby has been the most helpful!
She’s cuddled up beside me while I typed difficult parts, and then she’d lay on
top of the keyboard when it really was time to stop and go to bed!
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The three most obvious, go-to answers that you seriously just
expect to hear when you ask someone how they have recovered from their mental
illness: hospital, medication, and therapy. Fortunately – or unfortunately, I
guess, depending upon how you look at it – for me, all three are true…
When my mental health deteriorated it did so in the form of
auditory hallucinations, which I somehow ‘tolerated’ for around ten days before
finally making my first suicide attempt. After passing out at school I was
taken to hospital in an ambulance and then I ran away. The Police were called
and when they found me when I had almost reached the nearby bus station, they
detained me under section 136 of the 1983 Mental Health Act and I was pretty
much thrown into their car and driven back to hospital where a Mental Health
Act assessment promptly took place in a little room I’d never been in before in
A&E. I honestly don’t’ remember much about it, just that I was told the
Police could finally go and if I continued to try and leave the hospital then
the staff were now allowed to restrain me, sedate me, and force me to finish
the necessary, potentially life-saving medical treatment to counteract my
suicide attempt.
With nothing more being explained, I wasn’t fully aware of the
fact that after finishing the treatment and it being labelled ‘successful’ in
saving my life, I was being transferred to a psychiatric hospital where I could
be held against my will for up to 28 days (it can then be extended by being
transferred to section three) for a period of ‘assessment.’ I was an inpatient
for around two weeks before I started considering going to College to enrol on
a fashion course and the Psychiatrists saw this as a good sign that I was
thinking about having a future and so I was discharged from the section and
allowed home.
My second admission lasted slightly longer and came to an end when
I finally told the psychiatric hospital staff that I had been raped and
sexually abused over a six-month period when I was 15 (I was 18 at this point).
I think the Psychiatrists saw it as both a step forward and a step onto earning
the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder where hospital admissions are
not recommended; unlike the diagnosis they had been hesitating about giving me
of Schizophrenia. I guess once you reveal you’ve been through a trauma, that
completely eradicates the possibility of there being any sort of chemical
imbalance or basically any illness that doesn’t rely upon going through a
trauma to be diagnosed with it!
My third admission was the second longest at a few months and I
have always found it ironic that it lasted that long, but actually hadn’t even
come off the back of a suicide attempt! I found myself being transferred
between different Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICU’s) and restrained and
sedated so many times that they had to call an optician onto the ward because
the muscles around my eyes were almost constantly relaxed and so my vision was
going blurry!
After my discharge, I spent the following three years (2009 –
2012) almost constantly in and out of both psychiatric and medical hospitals.
When I made my third suicide attempt in the summer of 2012, my records
apparently indicated that I’d had over 60 hospital admissions in that
three-year period. The professionals most involved in my care from the
Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) used this as evidence so that when I came
off life support from the attempt, I was given funding to be sectioned and transferred
to a private psychiatric hospital over 100 miles away from home. My Community
Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) and Psychologist claimed that the number of
hospitalisations was evidence that they didn’t have the right help or
supportive services in our locality to manage my presentation of my eventual,
final diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
Initially, the admission to this hospital wasn’t really proving to
be useful beyond the fact that because I was sectioned, and the hospital was
named ‘medium secure’ (which meant that it was locked so tight I literally
broke my foot trying to kick the doors open when I first got there!) it reduced
my safety risk with the chances of me self-harming or making another suicide
attempt being made a fair bit more difficult. However, after finally starting
the recommended treatment for my BPD diagnosis; Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
(DBT – yes, there are many acronyms in the mental health world!), I finally
found myself making some progress.
Even though before going to the hospital I had known that the
average length of admission there was listed as 12 – 18 months, I had remained
convinced that the staff would give up on me as I felt so many others had done
and just discharge me and leave me to my own devices. And so, in finally
starting a Therapy programme that was typically described as requiring one year
of therapeutic sessions to complete and benefit from it, I had recognised that
they were going to keep trying to save me and so, on January 6th
2013, I had a 1:1 with my Key Nurse and I agreed to begin writing about the
abuse and to show the staff my notes so that they could gain more knowledge and
a better understanding of what had happened to me with her telling me the
belief that it would leave them better placed at helping and supporting me. I
remember coming back to my room from the 1:1 and seeing my laptop lying on the
bed… We were only allowed them after our therapeutic timetable groups and
Reflection meeting had finished and even then we were only given them if we
asked. The staff had learnt, however, that I would always ask so if I was busy
or talking to someone when they were able to start taking them out, they would
just get mine automatically. So, coming into my room with it sat there and
having the burning thought and desire in me to do something that would allow me
to begin documenting the recovery journey I finally felt I was embarking on; it
was almost destiny that I turned the laptop on and found myself setting up a
blog…
It's kind of funny because now, when I give talks or write posts
full of advice for starting a blog, I recommend that people put so much thought
into it. I encourage budding Bloggers to give massive consideration to even
just the thought of blogging and do their research into the ins and outs of it
to ensure they make an informed decision as to whether they feel capable of
going ahead and creating a blog. I also suggest people brainstorm title ideas
for their blog and pay consideration to the general aesthetic design for it and
particularly to developing/having a colour scheme and/or logo. I, however,
didn’t pay any mind to literally any of that! I mean, I had no real idea what I
was getting into in starting to blog – and whilst I very obviously never regret
blogging; I do wish I’d perhaps researched what I could expect so that I felt
more prepared and forewarned.
However, one thing in that very beginning of I’m NOT Disordered
that I don’t regret, or wish had happened differently in any way, and which I
honestly believe that despite not brainstorming it; I still thought it through
– was in the naming of it! It was born from the notion that I’m not just my
diagnosis; that it doesn’t and shouldn’t define me nor be one of the first
things that is said about me if someone were to ask who I am. I also wanted the
‘not’ to be in capitals not just to empathise the word and its meaning, but
also because I thought it seemed a bit childish and with the abuse having
happened when I was 15, professionals have voiced the idea that it’s really
prevented me from aging normally and that a part of me is stuck in that age
because I disassociated for a lot of the abusive instances.
So, in addition to the hospital leading to the start of my
blogging career, the other ways in which I benefited from the admission was the
general fact that it meant I was safer than I would have been if I were at home
for the entire two and a half years, I was an inpatient… Unfortunately, though,
a massively common and popular misconception of being in a psychiatric hospital
is that it’s the safest place in the world. The reasons leading to you
self-harming can still be valid and present and with the ward rules banning
certain objects, you become more inventive and creative in coming up with a new
means to self-harm – which, can sometimes end up being more dangerous that your
usual methods. I remember one girl being admitted to the ward with no self-harm
scars or wounds because she abused her insulin medication as a means of
self-harm… By the time I was being discharged, she needed plastic surgery to
heal some of the wounds and to mend the damage they had caused to her tendons
and nerves etc.
Fortunately, seeing this whilst going through therapy meant I had
a more balanced, positive, and productive view of that situation and another
incident that occurred which I will never forget... One of the inpatients snuck
a blade back onto the ward after her leave and everyone passed it round each
other until the staff realised people were coming to them with very similar
injuries and eventually someone handed it in.
We were all made to sit in the communal sitting room whilst a
lockdown and search were carried out of literally every nook and cranny in all
our bedrooms and throughout the rest of the ward. I seriously couldn’t believe
that these girls I’d come to know, and love could be so dangerous and harmful
in basically providing each other with a means of self-harming and having the
full understanding that in passing this blade on, that’s what the other person
would do with it. In addition to recognising the sheer wrong-ness of this
action, therapy also helped me to have not been involved in it at all – the
lockdown was genuinely the first I had heard of it; no one had passed it to me…
And I believe that was likely because they recognised, I was doing so well that
I would likely speak up about it.
Another positive impact being in the hospital had been after the
second time I managed to escape… I knew that if people didn’t come back from
their unescorted leave on time, the staff would drive around the area looking
for them, so I booked a taxi from a nearby shop. Then, on my leave in the
grounds, I climbed over the boundary fence, over the fence of the elderly care
home next door, and then walked out of a person’s side gate and jumped in the
taxi asking the driver to take me to the nearest train station. I got a train
to another city, bought the things I needed for a suicide attempt and boarded a
bus to god knows where so that I had some place warm to continue to make my
attempt and so that I was on the move to avoid any Police (being sectioned and
going AWOL, the psychiatric staff are legally obliged to call the Police).
By the time the Police found me back in the train station, my
attempt was complete, and they called an ambulance but were told that it’d be
far quicker for them to take me to the medical hospital near the psychiatric
one on their lights and sirens and have the psychiatric staff meet us there. I
remember racing through the traffic and thinking ‘I wish I wasn’t poorly so I
could enjoy this instead of it just making me feel even more sick!’ When we got to the hospital I refused the
potentially life-saving medical treatment for the suicide attempt, and I
vaguely remember my favourite Psychiatrist (the one below my Consultant) coming
to the hospital and saying to the Doctors and Nurses “this isn’t like her at
all, just do it.” Next thing I knew I was waking up from life support a while
later and the treatment had been administered and my organs stabilised because
apparently whilst I was out my blood tests turned bad and I had to have
additional medication for a while.
When I was allowed back to the psychiatric hospital a ton of the
staff came to take me from Intensive Care to there and I screamed and cried
when they started guiding me upstairs to the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit
(PICU). The Unit was above the ward I’d been on for over a year by then, and
I’d heard the screaming and alarms through the ceiling/floor, had been told
horror stories of how patients were treat up there and what it was like, and
then – believe it or not (but it’s still on BBC news online if you google) – a
patient killed another patient by suffocating them. So, needless to say, I
panicked and sat on the floor so that the staff literally had to drag me onto
the PICU and into my new, empty bedroom. I spent the following two or three
days alternating between sleeping, vomiting from all the medication and
anaesthetic/sedation, crying, and – at one point – I ended up feeling like I
just had to have a shower despite being on ‘eyesight’ observations (meaning a
member of staff had to have me within eyesight 24/7)!
There came a point when I was being sick that I remember crying
and thinking ‘it cannot get any worse.’ I felt like I’d hit absolute rock
bottom – something which, to be honest, I actually thought I’d already
experienced years ago! – and I found myself literally desperately begging the
staff to move me back down to the ward where I now thought of four of the girls
as ‘best-friends.’ When they finally agreed, I was put in an empty bedroom and
was told I had to have a period of stability to begin earning the right to go
back into my bedroom. I talked to the Ward Manager though and said that despite
the risk and worry of me thinking I’ll be viewed as superficial, I wanted her
to know that being with my own things, having them around me, would be the
thing to make me feel better and the longer I was away from those things, the
more upset I would become.
Thankfully, she told me I’d made some valid points, and I was
allowed back in my room, but the entire ordeal didn’t stray far from my memory
for such a long time after that. This ended up being a good thing though,
because it provided me with a harsh reminder of what my life would become if I
continued to not put in enough effort in DBT sessions. It was a huge motivation
to cooperate more with staff and to try so much harder to take some real notice
of all the safe and healthy coping skills we were being taught and encouraged
to use in Therapy and to actually start really trying to apply them despite
when everything in my body was telling me not to and instead, to self-harm or
make a suicide attempt or run away. I finally saw that I didn’t want this to be
my life. I didn’t want that to be the way my life actually ended, either.
Partaking in weekly group and 1:1 DBT sessions for over two years
was incredibly challenging and sometimes felt like I’d imagine climbing a
mountain or something might feel – like every time you think you see the top;
you get there, and before you can even breathe, you realise that there’s still
so much further to go! I think that the first hardest part to the Therapy was
that it basically meant tearing all my reasons to keep quiet and not talk about
my experiences, my thoughts, and my feelings; to pieces. So that everything was
coming forwards and I was finally able to talk things through to a point where
I got the strangest, and most unexpected sensation that I could properly
breathe now. It felt as though all this time, I had been holding my breath and just
waiting for the inevitable explosive relief that I somehow just knew would come
with blurting everything out. Getting it all off my chest.
The second hardest thing with DBT was that literally every single
coping skill you were taught across the four modules (Distress Tolerance,
Interpersonal Effectiveness, Mindfulness, and Emotion Regulation) were things
which I couldn’t believe I hadn’t already thought of trying to do myself.
Things like writing or mentally doing a pros and cons list before acting or
making decisions in order to ensure they’re balanced and healthy, using
distracting or self-soothing activities to detract or counteract from unsafe,
negative, or self-deprecating thoughts and feelings. I mean, how could I not
have thought of these things? How could I not have wondered if these much more
healthy and productive methods would help more so than self-harming or running
away? It was frustrating, but the staff reassured me – and other inpatients who
were experiencing similar thoughts and feelings – that they recognised and
appreciated that when you’re so poorly and your mental health is so unwell;
thinking things through straightly and reasonably can be really tricky, and
unbalanced and ill-thought-out actions and coping mechanisms can engulf any
ideas to do anything safer and more positive.
Finally – for this part, at
least! – medication! Prescribing medication for me or for most others diagnosed
with BPD; is a fraught, friction-worthy, and debatable issue amongst all in the
mental health industry – even if they’re people who can’t actually prescribe
medication! Being in that psychiatric hospital though, there wasn’t a single
inpatient who didn’t take some kind of psychiatric medication and so it was
there that I was prescribed my anti-depressant, anti-psychotic, and mood
stabiliser.
After being discharged, I had to register with a new GP in my
local town and I remember my first appointment with them I ended up crying
because the GP said that he wanted to stop all of my medication because “it’s
too much medication for one young person to be on!” I was so terrified because whilst
I appreciated and recognised how helpful DBT had been, and how being sectioned
in the hospital had helped with my safety and risk levels, I also believed that
my medication had been hugely beneficial too. I felt that it had helped
stabilise me to a point where I was able to begin Therapy and able and willing
to actually follow any advice or new coping skills I was taught. Whilst I had
been in hospital for over two years, I hadn’t forgotten everything I had gone
through in those three years before that when my mental health was really
poorly… And I couldn’t risk having that happen again – I felt that I’d just
scraped through by the skin of my teeth (is that even the saying?!) and that if
it were to all go backwards, I wouldn’t be so lucky. I wouldn’t make it out
alive. Ironically, being in recovery meant that I had now seen the positives in
life, and I had my blog… So, I really no longer wanted to die, but I felt
fairly convinced that my medication was a huge part of this positivity and
hopefulness too.
I can’t remember how, but the medication drama was sorted and I
continued to take what the hospital has prescribed with the only major changes
being when I was on caseload for the Crisis Team and they added another
anti-depressant to the mix which I took for just over a year, and then the more
recent fiasco with my anti-psychotic medication… Earlier this year – in
February – I was sectioned again and admitted to a local psychiatric hospital
where I spent probably the worst five consecutive days of my entire life. The
entire admission was as complete disaster that actually resulted in me having
to put in a formal complaint to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) who oversee
such wards and services. The complaint was resolved in a 12-page report which
literally listed that the investigator had found evidence the upheld every
single instance and issue during the admission that I’d complained about. It
was full of apologies and ‘actions’ of tasks and duties that would now be
carried out to ensure these things didn’t happen to another inpatient – which
had been my goal in making the complaint – it wasn’t about looking for a ton of
apologies (though it was nice and appreciated of the Trust to issue them) – it
was about making sure the staff learnt from their wrongdoing because perhaps
the next person to go through it actually wouldn’t cope with it the way I had
done. The way where I had managed to survive all of their failings and
shortcomings.
After the admission, I met with a community Psychiatrist who
absolutely refused point blank to increase my anti-psychotic medication –
despite the psychosis being the reason for the admission! She kept talking
about how she’d read my notes dating back to my first hospitalisation in 2009
and that there was no evidence that medication had helped me. I continued
trying to point out that the fact that after the new anti-depressant was at an
effective dose and when my anti-psychotic was last increased, I had actually
been completely discharged from services for over a year. In the end, she gave
me some sleeping tablets and a mild sedative medication! For me, this was
useful but because of the risk of addiction to these tablets, it wasn’t really
a long-term answer at all!
When, a few months later, I ended up under the care of the Crisis
Team again and they arranged for me to see a different Psychiatrist who
immediately offered (without me asking or even suggesting!) an increase to the
anti-psychotic medication, it felt like a complete ‘told-you-so’ moment. A sad
one, obviously. But still, it was hugely validating and helpful; it was just
difficult to hold onto that when the majority of me was wondering whether I
would have been doing so much ‘better’ by now if that first Psychiatrist had
done the increase. However, I knew that I couldn’t change that, so I just had
to focus on the fact that at least it was being done now.
Asking for help from professionals and taking medication for your
mental health is often – and wrongly – seen as weak and as though it’s an
illustration that you’re not strong enough or brave enough to find your way
through, and out of, this by yourself. To me, this leaves the implication or
assumption that to believe this means that you think that to ask for help and
support is ‘easy’ when really, I’d say it’s incredibly difficult, takes an
enormous amount of strength, resilience, determination, and purpose, and that
for someone to do it, they should be seen as utterly inspirational and a force
to be reckoned with!
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I feel like these pieces of content demanding teamwork are hugely
valuable and responsible for how far my blog has come, especially in terms of the
readership count. The obvious logic behind this is that in working with other
bloggers, organisations, or online influencers, you very typically receive
double the publicity than you would if it were a post created solely by yourself
because you’ve attracted their following too.
This has worked especially well for me, and for I’m NOT Disordered
when I’ve collaborated with a person or an organisation who have a very
different following and target audience to me and my blog because it has
enabled me to make my blog’s content applicable and attractive to those who
might not have given it the time of day without the collaboration or
partnership label. And, with everyone having mental health and it just
depending on how well or otherwise a person’s is, I’m NOT Disordered can end up
actually being genuinely appropriate for those new readers too.
Fortunately, in choosing to begin featuring collaborations, I
didn’t have any of the concerning worries that perhaps this was a sign that the
content I produced wasn’t good enough in whatever way. In fact, it was quite
the opposite – because of its popularity – I felt confident in my blog and its
content to feel that it was good enough and therefore worthy of joining up with
others who – I believed – could help me to make some special, unique, exciting,
important, and meaningful content that might be able to help so many
readers/followers in so many different ways. And that was the ultimate
motivation for me – not the idea of how many more people would see my blog, but
how many more people I could reach and then, potentially, help or benefit them
in some way.
I’ve learnt so much in my collaborations with other organisations,
particularly very recently when a huge organisation I’ve worked with many
times, were in the news for a negative issue and I felt forced into making the
decision as to whether to continue working with them. This is something that has
previously happened but with my local Police force who ended up making some
serious failings with someone in a mental health crisis and I made the decision
to distance my blog from their name and cancelled any and all future projects
with them. It ended up proving to be a really challenging, upsetting, and difficult
time and so I didn’t want it to happen again with this organisation. I spoke
with the staff I typically work with there and after a few conversations and
emails, I made the decision to continue collaborating and partnering on some
huge and exciting upcoming projects.
I made this decision based on two factors: the first was that I
received information that left me feeling that I was in a good, confident
position to defend my decision should anyone confront me for it. The second
reason was because I came to recognise that the most important thing should be
the nature of the work we do together and as long as that remains positive and
useful for others, then my conscious feels clear. I also came to realise that
the fact they have requested and enjoyed working with myself/I’m NOT Disordered
does illustrate some sort of willing and want to improve; as well as an
acknowledgement that they need to work with service users or patients in order
to learn how to make those improvements.
I do think that deciding to include collaborations or guest posts
on your blog is an important decision process that I believe those outside of
the blogging industry would overlook or remain ignorant of just how difficult
it can be. And this is just one of many examples for my motivation behind
writing YND; that I want to raise awareness of the wellbeing of bloggers and
highlight how it can really suffer or be challenged by blogging. We’re all
aware that what you see of the lives of others on social media or on their
blogs is what they choose and what they want you to see. This often means
negative aspects or struggles in their lives and in their blogging, career can
be missed out and therefore those outside the industry remain unaware of just
how difficult blogging can be. This absence of knowledge and awareness can have
a further negative impact on a blogger who may come to feel and/or believe that
their loved one’s underestimate and belittle what they do.
One of the best aspects to collaborations, guest posts, and partnerships
for me, has been building connections and the whole networking scene! I
absolutely love it! I love meeting and getting to know people who are in a
position of power in their own industry or career path – especially people who I,
personally, might genuinely think of as being in a really important and
respectable position. People who – when I get to know them and build a rapport
with them – I end up feeling seriously privileged and honoured to be able to
say when I have done so.
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I believe that being determined, dedicated, and resilient are
three qualities that can be absolutely essential – and the very least, really
important – both in recovering from a mental illness and in creating and
maintaining a blog.
Over the years, when I’ve told people how long I was sectioned for
(the two-and-a-half-year long admission) they’ve almost always remarked that
it’s ‘such a long time,’ and I used to agree, but then I came to recognise that
since the abuse had started in 2006, and the admission wasn’t until 2012, that
was six years of things both building up and exploding outwards and all over
the place! So, how could anyone (including me) expect for things to improve –
or to even make any sort of difference – in any less time than one third of the
length of time I had been poorly for? I mean, it’s like if your laptop is playing
up and stopping doing certain features, but you keep using it… Eventually it
gets worse and worse, and that additional damage will likely take longer to fix
than if you’d took the initial fault in to be repaired immediately.
This is where a huge passion of mine lies within the mental health
industry; shedding light and weight on/to the idea of prevention and so giving
added importance and priority to Children and Young People Services (CYPS) because
they’re one of the best methods and opportunities to offering help and support
as soon as signs and symptoms of mental illness are illustrated. One key quality
or strength that can be instilled in a person by doing this is resilience, and
I think that this is because if you start telling someone as soon as possible
that they’re strong enough to fight against any unwanted or unsafe thoughts,
and that they can get through a traumatic event or experience that might have
triggered their illness, they’re more likely to believe it – or at the very
least, come to agree with it.
So, for me, to go through – due to my own doing, though – years
after the abuse of having the ability to repeat my abuser’s words again and
again; that I was useless, that I was weak, that I was worthless and to - due to my own doing, again – have no one
tell me they were all wrong; it meant it took an incredibly long and difficult
time for me to learn to believe the psychiatric professionals when I was
finally faced with them telling me those destabilising, self-deprecating, unhealthy,
and confidence-destroying thoughts and feelings weren’t true. It was like all
those negative ones were almost engrained into my brain and into my heart. As
though someone would actually need to really carve them out in order to take
them from me. In order to stop me from agreeing with them and from – whenever a
professional ‘let me down’ – turning back to them when I felt alone or isolated
as though they were some sort of comfort blanket that I’d grown up with for
years and years.
I actually think that rather than the mental health professionals
– particularly those in the psychiatric hospital on the long admission – be the
most monumental in helping build my resilience, my blogging was! Because it was
the purpose and passion in my life that left me feeling motivated to continue
with life… It helped give me reason to put in as much effort as possible to working
with the staff and arriving at the same conclusion – that I’m strong, brave,
worthy, and clever… This really helped when it came to recognising my
resilience because I felt the need to ensure that I didn’t become cold and unaffected
emotionally by upsetting or difficult instances. I had to make sure that in building
on the belief that I can make it through a lot of a hardship, that didn’t stop
me from still reacting to those hardships with genuine thoughts and feelings.
My resilience was actually tested by my blog when I received a few
horrible comments just before my planned discharge from the psychiatric
hospital and whilst my resilience allowed me to safely cope with those
comments, I wasn’t determined or dedicated enough to blogging to continue with
it. So, on my discharge, I closed I’m NOT Disordered down and spent a short
while without it in my life… But I grew to miss it. I missed having the outlet
of both my creativity and my pent-up thoughts, feelings, and
experiences/memories. And so, that was actually the longest period in almost
eleven years that I totally didn’t blog for; but I’m glad I did it because
ultimately, that helped me develop my dedication and determination to continue
blogging and to make my blog into all that it is now – although some moments,
opportunities, and achievements have surpassed even my dreams!
I think that the memory, understanding, insight, and knowledge of
how it felt to not have my blog has really helped me to find the courage and
strength to put myself – and my blog – out there in the world in building
connections, handing out my business cards to anyone I think might benefit from
my blog, and doing media appearances and interviews etc (which I’ll talk about
next). It’s helped me to become determined to grow and develop I’m NOT
Disordered to now be at the point where I honestly and seriously can’t imagine
my life without it. Sometimes I used to wonder if that sounds a bit superficial
to need your blog so desperately and to be so determined and dedicated to it. Ultimately,
though, it’s so important and special to me that I’ve grown to be somewhat
careless about others having that thought or belief of me and my blog, because
I’ve developed the notion that nothing and no one can stop me now! I’ve come
too far to quit now.
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The first of these to happen was attending my first event in 2014 for
Time To Change (who are no longer operational but were a huge campaigning
organisation trying to encourage and promote a reduction in stigma and
discrimination around mental health) when I volunteered to be at their stall
and activities in the shopping centre local to the psychiatric hospital, I was
actually still an inpatient of. I remember doing the pre-event training session
with one of the hospital staff accompanying me and then she came to the event
too! And whilst I felt totally appreciated by the event staff, all I really did
was hand out leaflets and try to entice people to come to the pledge booth or
to get involved in the drama and art activities. I feel bad saying ‘all’
because I respect and am grateful for all the volunteers who do these roles at
events, it’s just that I say ‘all’ in terms of in comparison with the seniority
and the responsibilities I’m given at events more recently. But I don’t want it
to seem as though these roles have made me arrogant in any way…
I try to think of it as
like any other 9 – 5 job or some other well-understood, typical career like
medicine with their 12-hour-long shift and that similarly to those, in blogging
and working at events, you can work your way ‘up’ and earn promotions. If you earn
trust and work so hard that you also acquire higher expectations and confidence
in your skills, that can lead to more responsibilities. And, sometimes this can
actually be surreal! I mean, I was so awe-stricken when, just a few years later
– after numerous collaborations with Time To Change – I was actually asked to
give the closing speech at one of their huge events in London! It felt like a
massive turnaround from handing out leaflets and I thought that it was a really
good symbol and example of just how well I’m NOT Disordered was doing,
especially in terms of both its popularity and reputation.
I think that the one, main downside of events – no matter what
their cause, duration, or my responsibilities within them – has been the toll
they’ve taken on my energy levels. At one point, I was travelling to London so
often that I actually considered moving there (then I was at an event literally
around the corner when the terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge occurred and
that terrified into changing my mind!) and ended up having to tell
organisations that if they wanted me to travel that sort of distance and which
takes that length of time, I would need overnight stays in hotels too. I think
the reason this became a huge problem though, was because that having been
suicidal for so long, and now feeling better and being so proud of my blog, I
wanted to grab every opportunity and event invitation that came my way! But
sometimes this meant I was taking on far too much at once. I’ve learned from doing
this though, and I now recognise that I actually enjoy events more and feel
that I’m more helpful and useful at them, if I choose carefully between which I
attend/speak at etc because it means that I’m able to dedicate 100% of my
energy.
A few years after I started blogging and I saw that I’m NOT
Disordered was reaching hundreds and then tens of thousands of people, I began
writing emails to various local newspapers about my mental health journey and
my blog’s successes, various achievements, and special collaborations. I didn’t
think, for one minute, that any of my emails would actually be read or taken
seriously; never mind being used in one of the major local papers; The
Chronicle! It was so surreal doing the interview and then having my first ever
photoshoot on the footpath and grass in front of my house and bang in the
middle of the street (so all my neighbours and anyone passing could watch the
photographer telling me to pull my hood up a little bit and to ‘look thoughtfully
into the distance’!)! After that article was published and proved to be
popular, I then had an Agent get in touch who offered to sell my story to other
media outlets and see if it got any attention and so, before I knew it, I’m NOT
Disordered, and I were also in Take A Break magazine!
A part of me was nervous as heck to tell my entire life story and
reveal some hugely important (and potentially controversial) details about my
mental health journey e.g., the number of hospitalisations (60) in the three
years of 2009 – 2012 – I was so scared people would judge me for that and say I
had been unworthy of the care I’d received or that I was an attention-seeker or
something! But I recognised that all these worries were based on previous
experiences and was it really fair to hold those against this new one? Should I
let previous terrible moments hinder my future? Because I knew that being in
the media was really going to help my blog to reach so many more people and
that would open up the possibility of helping that increase of people too, so I
felt motivated to do whatever I could to try make this work and to go ahead
with the media appearances.
Funnily enough, I had submitted some press releases for the
release of You’re NOT Disordered so I Googled my name in the ‘news’ section to
see if anyone has published them, and it turned out I’d actually been on the
sites of two other huge media outlets too – The Daily Mail in 2015 and The
Mirror in 2019! I learnt whilst in a voluntary role years ago that newspapers
etc can often print press releases or stories without contacting the person or
organisation to tell them that they are… Now, I understand this might be based
on sheer workload in that they must get so many stories to publish and how can
they go about contacting every single person, but it also doesn’t make sense
because if they did contact the person or organisation, they could share the
article on their own social media, blog, or website too and bring it even more
attention/readers etc.
One of the other negatives I experienced with doing media
appearances, was when I did some interviews for a few different items on TV,
and I quickly learnt just how edited your interview can be! In one piece that
my local mental health Trust CNTW (Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne, and Wear NHS
Foundation Trust) asked me to be a part of was for the news and I remember my
interview taking about two or three hours and then on the actual report on TV,
I think I said/they kept about three sentences! Initially, I was not only
disappointed, but also insulted because I honestly thought that it meant that
everything else, I’d said hadn’t been good enough to be featured! I mean, of
course I’d heard numerous stories about how edited programmes can be – such as
24 hours in A&E and Big Brother. I had actually had someone who had
featured in a mental health documentary do a guest post on my blog about how
days of filming had been cut down, so I definitely had an awareness from before
I began going into these types of opportunities. But unfortunately, that didn’t
really prepare me for the disappointment.
Since then, however, in any further media appearances, I’ve never
felt that same dismay nor the insult because I had come to accept that this is
the way the media works… I still felt lucky though, for one thing, I was
relieved that what I said – although edited and cut – was still kept within
context and didn’t leave room for misinterpretation. I’ve learnt that can
happen from not long into my blogging career when I found out a part of a blog
post I’d written for I’m NOT Disordered had been taken completely out of
context and used on a Facebook group that actually promoted self-harm. I was
absolutely horrified and so angry and frustrated because it was a hard thing to
fight... I mean, they’d literally copied and pasted what I’d written so it
wasn’t like I could deny it… It was just that they’d taken it out of the issue
and instance it was regarding and in doing so, had made it sound like something
I would never even think, say, or write! Fortunately, the owners of the group
agreed to remove the post when I messaged them.
One final thing I’d like to say about publicity opportunities, is
that so many people now attempt to join the blogging world/industry with the
misguided impression that you’ll just instantly or automatically get views and
earn some sort of privileges and people talking about you. This isn’t – or at
least it hasn’t been for me – at all true! I’ve really chosen to put myself and
my blog out there to the media and press, I’ve worked hard to create so many
opportunities that I’m almost at a point where I don’t often need to initiate
anything anymore. I’d like to think, though, that I still don’t rest on my
laurels. That I still have the drive and determination to continue to better my
mental health and I’m NOT Disordered.