.png)
You may remember that a number of months ago (June) I wrote a blog post launching my new media Campaign; Shake My Hand (you can read the post here: MY JOURNEY TO CREATE A MEDIA CAMPAIGN | CELEBRATING THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF SHAKE MY HAND’S WEBSITE | ad | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)) so in addition to writing the content for World Suicide Prevention Day 2024 (WSPD) over on the Shake My Hand website (www.shakemyhandcampaign.com), I thought ‘how could I not write something for my own blog?!’ I also recognised that my news article for the Campaign was of a completely different angle than I would write for I’m NOT Disordered, but at the same time, I still wanted to incorporate Shake My Hand in this post. So, I’ve decided to talk about how staying productive with the Campaign is saving my life…
I’ve
always loved learning, to the point where it was actually one of a few things
which kept my dedication and determination to continue going to school despite the
abuse starting (during my GCSE education) and when my mental health started to
decline (during my A Level education). Back then – during my GCSE’s – I was so
desperate to tell someone that the abuse was happening that I did everything I
could to change myself in a way where I hoped it would leave someone
questioning ‘why is Aimee doing this now?’ And one of the things I changed was my
attitude and general behaviours at School. I thought that if anyone was trained
to know and look out for the signs of abuse it was my teachers… Oh, how wrong?!
I would
talk back to them, ask sarcastic questions, be rude, refuse to do my school
work or homework, avoid lessons and detentions, turn up to class late, distract
other pupils… I was regularly called attention-seeking and a drama queen, and
it made me want to scream at them to look more closely or to just tell them
what was happening, but I had so many reasons why I couldn’t. Not only was I
worried I wouldn’t be believed, but my abuser/rapist would also tell me that I
wouldn’t be, and he’d threaten me with the worst kind of consequences if I were
to report him. It left me feeling totally isolated because not only did I feel
I had no one to talk to, but I also felt that no one would care if I did. There
was always my Mum, of course; but my abuser made threats that regarded her too
and that caused me to feel distant and friction in our relationship that led me
to begin ‘acting out’ outside of school too in hanging out with a bad kind of
crowd and under-age drinking (to block out the memories too) and smoking.
When I eventually
reported the abuse to my abuser’s employer and was branded a manipulative liar
by him, some of my ‘punishments’ for telling this lie included consequences at
School that rendered me unable to attend for the rest of the School year (which
was really only a few months because then we had our exams and finished early
for the School Summer Holidays!). Then, after the abuse and during the School Holidays,
my group of friends got into a really bad fight with another group and when the
Police became involved, my Mum really ‘put her foot down’ and I was told I
couldn’t see my friends again and – feeling that I’d lost my coping skill of drinking
– I finally turned my attention back to education in considering where to study
for my A Levels qualifications.
A huge
motivation for my need to learn was my goal of becoming a Lawyer – something which
had been inspired by the abuse and my new hope of wanting to help others get
justice for their own experiences – and I obviously knew I needed really good
grades in my A Level exams to be accepted to University to study for the Law
Degree. Another motivation was also the thought – or hope – that throwing
myself into my schoolwork might help give me some sort of huge distraction from
all the memories of the abuse that seemed to occupy my entire brain.
Upon
applying to my three Universities in my last year of my A Levels, I was offered
conditional acceptances and that really spurred me on in my learning and
engagement of my chosen subjects: Law, History, and Philosophy and Ethics. Unfortunately,
though, around ten days before an exam day, I started experiencing auditory
hallucinations and on the day that I had three back-to-back exams, the voices
had grown so loud that I couldn’t concentrate at all and ended up writing as
much as I could one exam, completing half of the second, and by the third I
only wrote my name. Afterwards, I made my first suicide attempt and ended up
passing out at School and an ambulance being called.
Almost
inevitably, I ended up only passing Philosophy and Ethics and so I wasn’t able
to go to University. After being sectioned under the 1983 Mental Health Act twice
for two suicide attempts over the following few months, I finally found myself experiencing
some sense of stability in my mental health and began considering alternative
careers and education routes. My first thought was wanting to work with
children and young people to provide the care and attention they might need to
disclose difficulties they’re facing, so I wanted to be a Play Therapist. I
enrolled on a Child Care course at a local College, but in my DBS checks (or
CRB as it was called then), there was a section where the Police could decide
to disclose other information beyond cautions and convictions. In it, they had
chosen to document the occasions that I had gone AWOL from the two psychiatric
hospital admissions I’d had because due to me being sectioned at the time, the
Police had to be called to find me, so I suppose they really had a great awareness
of the extent of my mental illness.
My
second and final attempt at education during my most poorly period in the
community, was when I had started seeing a Psychologist who helped me so much
that I decided it was a career I’d like to have and so I enrolled in a local
College to do a course which was basically your two years of A Levels condensed
into one year. Unfortunately, despite the Psychologist – and other mental
health professional’s – support, my mental health deteriorated, and I was
sectioned again.
In 2012,
during another psychiatric hospital admission, a Psychiatrist recommended my
Community Mental Health Team look into securing funding for me to be admitted
to a psychiatric hospital specialising in my diagnosis of Borderline
Personality Disorder (BPD). At that point, I had been out of education and
employment for a lengthy period of time and so when I was assessed by a specialist
hospital and told they had a morning meeting followed by an entire day of a
therapeutic timetable, and a reflection meeting in the evening; I was actually
completely put-off by the idea of all the productivity and energy-consuming commitments!
And I think that anyone who knows me now will likely find it hard to believe that
I once had the absolute attitude around work and keeping busy! But, perhaps,
this is an illustration of just how bad my mental health was and how unmotivated
and sometimes, just pure lazy, it was making me.
After almost
one year of adjusting to the timetable and attending the groups, I think that this
had really helped to improve my distaste for anything productive(!), because it’s
when (January 2013) I created I’m NOT Disordered and began my blogging career.
Despite not having huge hopes and expectations for it – I had two motivations
to start: first, to document my journey, and second, to communicate with my
friends and family over 100 miles away – I did see it as something productive and
positive to do with my free-time after the timetable and the reflection meeting
when we were free in the evenings and for part of the night (around 9/10pm on a
weekday and 11pm/midnight at the weekend – except for New Years and that one
night when we had a Duty Nurse who had never worked on our ward before and we
managed to convince him that lights out was at 1am!).
Obviously,
I’m NOT Disordered became a whole lot more than a ‘pastime’ and over the years,
I have found myself becoming more and more eager to take on other commitments and
responsibilities around my blog and the communications and marketing industry. This
has actually also meant I’ve been doing a lot of online learning courses over
the years (mostly through Future Learn
and Centre of Excellence) which
have varied from a Fundraising
Diploma to a Certificate
in Credible Content Creation for Communications Professionals. Fortunately,
I think that all the courses I’ve studied have ended up playing a hugely
beneficial role in the creation of the Campaign…
When I
first started really wanting to do a huge project at the beginning of the year,
I didn’t think for one minute that that thought would become all that it has
now amounted to. And, even in creating the Shake My Hand Campaign in June 2024,
I didn’t imagine it becoming as important and huge as it is now. As an example
of that; I was recently in a meeting with my local mental health NHS Trust: Cumbria,
Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust and their lovely Chief
Executive; James Duncan and their Director of Communications and Corporate
Affairs; Debbie Henderson when Debbie commented that she thought the Campaign
had so much potential it could end up being a registered charity! Later, in an
event (the Offence to Sentence Conference with Northumbria
University and The
Modern Law Review),
I was speaking with the Chief Executive Officer of Rape
Crisis England and Wales
and told her about this comment and she asked whether that was something I had
wanted or was planning to reach. I told her that when I started the Campaign, I
had really only imagined designing a logo and having a few social media
accounts! I now have five volunteers (a Fundraising Coordinator, Social Media
Assistant, two Research Assistants, and a Communications and Marketing Advisor)!
This
mindset or occurrence of having small expectations, but a huge outcome isn’t
exactly something I’m a stranger to. I think it’s actually exactly what has
happened with I’m NOT Disordered – which might speak volumes for the potential
that the Campaign has – because in creating my blog I really just saw it as
something to do in my free time outside of the therapeutic timetable we had in
the psychiatric hospital I was an inpatient in at the time. I did also think it
would be therapeutic for me to write about things that I felt were just banging
around inside my head, and I also soon realised it was a good communication
tool/technique for my friends and family because the hospital was over 100
miles away from home and I was in there for two and a half years. But I
definitely didn’t imagine or consider it ending up with over 1.4 million
readers, being listed as the UK’s number one Borderline Personality Disorder
blog on Feedspot (4 Best UK Borderline Personality
Disorder Blogs and Websites in 2024 (feedspot.com), and earning me countless
amazing opportunities and media appearances!
I
think that my low expectations or inability to dream too high and my mindset of
‘hope for the best, prepare for the worst’ is actually quite a good quality –
if I do say so myself! – because it means I’m not big-headed or overly
confident. It also, thankfully, means I’m very rarely disappointed because I
hadn’t had massive hopes and goals anyway! I think that the only perhaps
difficult aspect to having this quality and mindset is that when things do kind
of… explode or ‘take off,’ I’m a bit taken aback and shocked, so it takes me a
minute or two to really acclimate and settle with the notion that this is going
to be the way things are going to go. This often means that my mental health
and coping skills have to adjust accordingly too because before the Campaign
became all that it is today, I had prepared my mental health for the consequences
I thought Shake My Hand would have. I’d thought about how I would cope if I
received any negativity on social media… And not much else really. And I know
it sounds strange that all this positivity and success has come from it, but
that I still needed to have some coping skills because why do you need to
‘cope’ with good things? But it stems back to not picturing all these
achievements and that made them so overwhelming and a bit surreal at times.
So,
in addition to learning to change my coping skills and expectations, I’ve also
learnt a lot of new practical skills and I’ve developed some really new and
exciting abilities in the communications and marketing industry. Here’s just five
of my favourite lessons:
ü
How
to write and organise policies and procedures – the Campaign has a Volunteer
Code of Conduct, Data Protection and Confidentiality Policy, Safeguarding
Vulnerable Adults Policy, and an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Policy.
ü
The
process and procedures around recruitment – I’ve had to create effective job
adverts with descriptions of the roles and responsibilities each role would
have and the skills and qualifications that were favoured for each vacancy.
ü
The
definition of, and how to apply, SMART principles – I did this in the Marketing
Strategy document for each of our 7 Marketing Objectives where I listed how
they were specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
ü
How
to conduct a SWOT analysis of something – I first did this in the Campaign
Strategy document where I listed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
threats that the Campaign could face.
ü
How
to create, organise, and write several (there is a Campaign Strategy, Brand
Strategy, and Marketing Strategy) different Strategic documents and a Volunteer
Handbook and appreciate the meaning and importance of each of them.
Now,
why is being productive still so helpful for me these days?
1.
It’s
still a useful distraction if I am struggling to manage my safety and
hallucinations.
2.
It
makes me feel like I’m achieving something.
3.
It
teaches me basic skills that are also useful for my mental health like prioritising
and managing my concentration levels.
4.
I
feel proud of myself when I complete a course or something on my to-do list.
5.
It
makes me appreciate my recovery for giving me the opportunity to do these
things.
6.
It
makes me feel useful when I can utilise what I’ve learnt and experienced to
help others.
7.
I
still have a pure, passion for learning more about subjects I’m genuinely
interested in.
8.
It’s
a sheer confidence boost seeing these qualifications, this career experience,
and all my achievements recorded on my CV or in some way.
9.
It
often provides me with inspiration and ideas for new projects and things for
the Campaign.