*This post is the third of 4 which will be finished publishing tomorrow!*
Buy You’re NOT Disordered NOW!!
.png)
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.
.png)
I believe that being determined, dedicated, and resilient are
three qualities that can e 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.
.png)
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.