“The
great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.”
Herbert
Spencer
A number of years ago, I was asked to co-facilitate mental health training for the new recruits of my local Police force (Northumbria Police) in partnership with Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). It was my first experience of doing something like that, but it remains one of the most enjoyable, influential, and educational opportunities I’ve ever had in the entirety of my blogging career! So, since then, I’ve gone to take on a number of additional, similar commitments and with those experiences and a recent decision in mind, I have created Understand with IND and its five Training Programmes. To launch it and acknowledge its feature in the brand-new pages on I’m NOT Disordered, I’ve put together this piece which is full of accounts of my experiences in facilitating training around mental health as well as things I’ve learnt from them, and advice I would give to budding facilitators…
So, I
thought I’d start this post with a few – fairly lengthy, so sorry about that! –
bits about my education journey because it has obviously played a huge role in
my career in facilitating training. I’ve also included bits of advice which are
relevant to each stage as I think they could also impact your own decisions and
experiences of the many stages on your way to facilitating training…
“If she doesn’t pass those exams, I’m
holding him personally responsible!”
Unfortunately,
due to the abuse starting when I was 15, I have very little memory of my
childhood, but from Middle School, I can remember my favourite subject being
English and that I was in the most advanced class for it. I think that a huge
reason why this was the case, was because from a young age, I enjoyed writing
short stories – mostly about animals going on adventures and with my very
special readership being my Mum and my Nana! My Mum told me that my Nana would
always be asking her when the next story was coming!
In High
School however, well, that’s why the abuse started, and it was by someone who
actually had a huge impact and influence on my education and so my interest and
passion for studying was really badly affected. I also stopped writing because
I was so afraid that despite the many reasons why I couldn’t speak up and
report it, it would come out in my writing in some way and everyone would know.
Not
long before my GCSE exams, I got into an argument with my abuser and it was
overheard by his employer who, upon asking me why I had the right to speak to
him in that way, left me with the distinct feeling that it was the straw that
broke the camel’s back and so I blurted the whole thing out. As I had expected
– but obviously I’d hoped for the opposite – I wasn’t believed. His employer
went so far as to call me a ‘manipulative liar’ and told me to leave the
building. And because of the influence my abuser had on my education, I wasn’t
allowed to attend school for revision classes in preparation for my exams, and
he intercepted a practice essay which had been done in a way to determine
whether I was on the right track for the actual exam piece.
Another
regulation for me being told to leave the building was that I had to sit my
GCSE exams separately from my classmates and friends. This ended up being a
good thing because it meant I had my own exam invigilator who ended up being a
witness to my abuser trying to interrupt three of my exams in various ways and
with pitiful excuses each time! It got to the point where my Mum – even without
knowing what had happened – told the manager of the invigilators that if I
failed any of my tests, she would hold him personally responsible! It turned
out to be just what was needed for them to actually take action and I ended up
having to finish my exams in a community building across the road! For me, this
really illustrated his determination to ruin my life and even after six months
of abuse and one instance of rape, I still had the determination in me to not
let him win and so I didn’t give up in completing my exams nor did I begin
making less effort in answering the questions.
In one
of my compulsory subjects, Religious Studies, I still remember one of the
questions because it was the one I most certainly spent the most time answering
and I did so in such a lengthy way that I had to ask for additional paper! The
question was whether a religious person could be a bully. At one point, during
the abuse, my Great Uncle passed away and the complication of my relationship
with my abuser meant hat I found myself asking him if he believed in heaven. He
told me he was religious and so he did believe in it but thought that my Great
Uncle would never get there. So, with this knowledge that he was religious, I
answered the exam question with a huge rant about how the largest bully I knew
was religious and so, his beliefs seemed to have no impact on his negative
behaviours and attitude towards others.
When
the day came to collect my exam results – which would determine whether you
were able to go on to further study – I got a phone call from the receptionist
stating that I had to call her when I was at the School, and she would come to
the gate to hand over my results. I wasn’t allowed to go into the building with
all my friends. I found out my abuser was actually helping to hand out the exam
results and eventually, determined it was him who had said I couldn’t come in
the building. After a lot of consideration from me about whether I actually
wanted to see his face again, and some backwards and forwards with various
people, he caved, and I met my friends to go in together. In the end, it was
actually going to be him who handed them to me, but I watched him give them to
another person and she passed me it. And I literally re-read my results around
five times because I literally couldn’t believe that I had passed all nine
subjects! I’d even achieved two B grades (you needed a minimum of C to have
passed)! And what subject was one of my B grades in? Religious Studies!!!
Going
to my Mum’s place of work at the time after getting my results to tell her what
they were, was one of the proudest times of my life. She’d said to me
beforehand that she would love me and be proud of me no matter what the grades and
whilst I believed her and that meant so much to me, I knew that I’d feel a
whole lot prouder of myself and more deserving of her love and pride, if I had
passed them. And I’ll never forget the feeling of her scooping me up in her
arms and then dragging me around the offices and telling all her colleagues!
“If you don’t even know what an
adjective is, you shouldn’t be in this class!”
In
addition to the regulation about sitting my exams separately, I also wasn’t
allowed to join the Sixth Form of that school to study my A Levels. Not that I
particularly wanted to, but one motivation to do so had been that literally all
my friends are staying on for them. But I realised that I’d far rather be alone
in a new school than stay on at that one and risk seeing my abuser every day.
So, I applied to a school that was actually closer to home and having passed
all of exams, I was accepted and joined their Sixth Form to begin studying my A
Levels in 2007.
The
first of two massive, educational instances that affected my studies there, was
when I attended my first or second class in my chosen subject of English
Language (which I’d opted to do because of my love for writing and how much I’d
enjoyed the subject in Middle School) and they were discussing adjectives,
verbs, and nouns. I was chosen – despite not raising my hand to answer! – to
give the definitions of each one and when I admitted I actually couldn’t
remember the different between them, the entire class laughed at me! Then the
Teacher made the comment that I really shouldn’t be in that class and studying
the subject at that level if I didn’t have this ‘basic’ knowledge and
understanding! Now, in all honesty, I genuinely still can’t even remember the
difference between the three – over ten years later! But I love the fact that
my writing has gotten me over two million readers and millions of
once-in-a-lifetime opportunities which, at that time, that Teacher would have
probably laughed in my face if I said this is what I wanted to do with my life
and as an entire career!
The
second monumental, educational thing to happen in my education at A Level, was
when one of my teachers told me that she thought I should drop another (I had
dropped out of English Language after that little incident!) subject. I cried
with this one because you needed three grades to study at University, and I had
actually been offered a place to study Law at Newcastle University (the most
demanding – in terms of grades – local University to get into) with the
conditions that I achieve a particular grade in three A Level subjects. So, the
idea of dropping a subject, meant I wouldn’t get into University and that left
me struggling to see a point in continuing to study the other two subjects if I
couldn’t do much with the results for them.
“Call an ambulance; she definitely isn’t
breathing!”
Now,
the reason I referred to those two instances as being ‘educationally’
monumental is because the most influential was definitely my mental health
deteriorating. For literally the entire length of studying for my A Levels (two
years) I was desperately trying to cope with my horrific and overwhelming
memories of the rape and abuse. It felt as though each time one popped into my
head or before my eyes, another piece of me was destroyed. I tried all sorts of
negative and unsafe coping methods for them which varied from drinking
(underage) to restricting my diet and overexercising (to the point where my BMI
alone was within the criteria for Anorexia). So, I really shouldn’t have been
so surprised when, just days before the start of my A Level exams, I began
experiencing auditory hallucinations. But I was surprised. I mean, it
completely caught me off-guard!
I
managed to somehow tolerate the voice for around ten days before – on a day I
had three A Level exams one after the other – I made my first suicide attempt
in the form of an overdose. After taking some on the way to school, I took one
exam and in the break before the other, I went to the Head of Year in
hysterical tears, telling her I had failed in life in general and that the exam
was just the icing on the cake! She started taking me back to the exam room and
I said I needed the loo and ended up taking more tablets in the toilets there.
When I came out, I fainted in the corridor and as I was coming round, I
remember hearing the Head of Year shout to someone that I wasn’t breathing and
to call an ambulance. And I was like “I’m still alive!” But what I had done
just sort of spilled out of my mouth and I told her everything, and so I was
taken to the nurse’s office in the school and waited there for the ambulance.
In all
honesty, I don’t think I really realised what cooperating with them meant, and
so it wasn’t until I was in A&E and a Nurse was telling me I had to wait
four hours before they could do blood tests and decide whether I need an
antidote medication, that I realised my attempt wasn’t going to work if I just
went along with what they were saying. So, when everyone had sort of turned
their backs, I made a run for it! I managed to be almost at the nearby town
centre when I noticed a Police car pull up on a curb on the opposite side of
the road and because I didn’t know whether they were actually there for me, I
just quickened my pace because I thought that running would be a bit
suspicious! So, they obviously caught up to me and got on their radios to say
they had “located that high-risk miss-per (‘miss-per’ is Police speak for
missing person!)” and began guiding me to their car. But when we reached it,
they left go and so I ran off, but I hadn’t been to that town before so I had
no clue where I was going and with one chasing me on foot and the other coming
after me in the car, I ended up at a dead end in an alleyway with no other
route out than the way the Police Officer was coming from!
So, I
was slightly man-handled and put in the car before they drove back to the
hospital and took me back in. I remember being in this room in A&E with one
Officer and I could hear the other talking to a Nurse just outside (isn’t it
stupid how they think you suddenly can’t hear them any more just because
they’re not in the same room or have pulled a curtain around your bed?!) and
she was saying that they didn’t have the staff to sit with me to make sure I
didn’t leave. The Police Officer told her there were two laws I could be
detained under and after establishing my age, he told her they would detain me
under section 136 of the 1983 Mental Health Act (for more information on this, the
mental health charity, Mind actually have a really good section on their
website about it, you can read it here). He came back in the room and
told the Officer who had stayed with me: “she’s under 136, I’ll go get the
paper work and you stay here.” Now, in addition to me having never been
detained under this Act, never mind under the Police’s powers within it, the
Officer with me actually hadn’t ever sectioned someone under it before either
and so neither of us knew what the heck was going on nor what was going to
happen. This is incredibly bad practice because a hugely important factor in
being sectioned is for the person to be made aware of their rights under it and
to therefore understand – or at least be told – what it means to be sectioned.
Eventually,
it was explained that under the 136 section, you have to undergo a Mental
Health Act assessment within 24 hours and two Psychiatrists and an Approved
Mental Health Practitioner (AMHP) determine whether to detain you under an
actual, more long-term section (2 or 3 – you can read more about both of these,
on another informative section from Mind’s website, here). At my assessment, apparently
my refusal to explain why I had made the suicide attempt and was refusing the
treatment for it, played a huge part in the professionals making the decision
to detain me under section 2 of the Mental Health Act for the first time. Being
sectioned meant I could no longer complete my A Level exams and so my
application to University became null and I felt an added sense of hopelessness
and failure than I was already struggling to manage anyway!
“You can’t look after a child if you
can’t look after yourself!”
A
number of years ago now, I had the sudden realisation that at School, we were
actually taught that basically the process of life – at least, in terms of
education and career! – was; GCSE exams, A Level qualifications, a University
degree, and then employment and striving to achieve promotions. I think that
it’s somewhat understandable that the teachers taught us this because it really
is the most simple, basic, straightforward, and – probably – the most common
path which people take. Having these qualities mean it is the easiest to promote
and encourage others to work towards experiencing it. In doing so though, it
meant that when I found myself unable to attend University, I felt like a huge
failure – larger and more so than if I’d been aware purely of the existence of alternative
education methods and ways into particular, and different, career paths. It’s
reminiscent of mental health recovery in that not being made aware that
recovery isn’t linear, leaves you feeling totally hopeless if you experience a
setback or relapse. When actually, they can really be pretty normal and
reasonable moments in mental health recovery.
In
fairness, it didn’t take me too long to consider an alternative career industry
and I found myself going from dreams of being a Lawyer, to wanting to work in
fashion! On my second psychiatric hospital admission, I began looking into the
different roles in fashion and researching the qualifications and requirements
for joining that industry and being well-placed to apply for a role in it. I
found a fashion course at a local College and upon enrolling on the taster
session in the Summer of 2010, my inpatient Psychiatrist said that this showed
that my suicidal thoughts and feelings were decreasing, and I was discharged. Of
course, that hadn’t been true, and it wasn’t long before I felt that I was
struggling too much to commit to the course.
My next
thoughts on career paths, were in childcare and, in particularly, I looked at
the role of being a Play Therapist. I loved the fact that it would involve
using my imagination and creativity and that it could help children to cope
with difficult situations and experiences, thoughts, and feelings. So, I
applied for a course in childcare with a local College and I honestly thought I
had nothing to worry about when I was completing the paperwork to authorise a
CRB check (now called DBS). There was a section however, where the Police can use
their discretion to add information and details which might not normally be
included. They chose to disclose that I had a history of going AWOL from
psychiatric hospitals and I was faced with the response from the College of;
‘if you can’t take care of yourself, how can we let you be responsible for a
child?’ Of course they were right, and so I withdrew my application for the
course and almost immediately felt like I was back to square one.
As a
result of my Mum’s work ethics, I was raised with the belief that if you can do
something and want to do it, you do it. So, despite my mental health being up
and down over the three years between my A Level failure in 2009 and my
hospitalisation in 2012, I did what I could in terms of working. This mostly
meant volunteering in charity retail stores, these varied wildly from charities
ranging from Mind to Oxfam to the British Heart Foundation! My typical
responsibility in these roles were manning the tills, processing donations, and
– my favourite task – creating displays both in -store and in the store’s
windows. And that favourite bit and the fact that my colleagues and managers
all provided really positive praise and feedback for my work, led to my last career
aspiration of being a Visual Merchandiser when I was finally starting to feel
like mental health recovery was an actual possibility. Amongst my thoughts on
my mental health improving, I also found the confidence to start doing fashion drawings
again.
“Everything happens for a reason.” –
Dorothy Wilson
On
January 6th, 2013, as a sectioned psychiatric hospital inpatient, I
had a really positive and productive 1:1 with my Key Nurse and upon leaving the
room, I had this feeling that the conversation was a huge step forward in my
mental health recovery. In our chat, I’d agreed to begin writing little notes about
the abuse for the staff because I thought it would be a good way of them having
better insight and understanding into what I’d gone through and that in doing
so, they would be better placed in helping and supporting me. Having mentioned
earlier that I’d stopped writing because of the abuse, this step forward wasn’t
just about what I would be writing about, but also the fact that I was going to
do it! In the minute that it took me to get from the meeting room we’d talked
in to my bedroom, I had wondered how I could begin documenting my journey and just
when I thought that keeping a diary was the only real method, I found my laptop
lying on the bed. This doesn’t sound too strange or special until you know that
we were only allowed our laptops at particular times, and you had to ask a
member of staff for it. I had been in the 1:1 when the time to have access to
them started, so obviously the member of staff has known I always want my laptop
and – for the first time – just got it out anyway and left it there for me.
Some
might say that’s just a random timing, but my Nana and Mum have always taught
me that everything happens for a reason and so, I saw the laptop being there as
a sign and without any thought or consideration, I created I’m NOT Disordered. Upon
reflection, I do wonder whether I should have paid more attention to making my decision
to start blogging because it might have saved me from learning a lot of things
the hard way and from being caught off-guard a number of times. But I worry
that if I had spent more time thinking it through and brainstorming and
creating lists weighing up the pros and the cons, it might have meant I wouldn’t
have created my blog at all and whilst it would have avoided the difficult
moments, it would have also meant that all the amazing things that have come
from it, wouldn’t have happened…
“Why would I work with them after the
way they treated me?”
Not
long after my discharge from the two-and-a-half-year long psychiatric hospital admission,
I found myself making connections in my local mental health NHS Trust: CNTW (though they were actually NTW back
then!) and then into my local Police force; Northumbria. And after a little
while, I found myself being asked to work in partnership with CNTW to deliver a
few full days of mental health training to each cohort of the new recruits in Northumbria
Police.
Initially,
I was incredibly reluctant to be a part of it because I hadn’t received the greatest
response form the Police in my mental health crisis before the lengthy
hospitalisation. Fortunately, many of those instances which I would have
labelled cruel or nasty, have kind of been turned around by my more positive perspective
that has come alongside my mental health recovery. I now recognise the bits and
pieces that were going on in the background, the bits which contributed to
their response to me. I mean, probably the worst memory I have with the Police
regarding my mental health was when the Crisis Team called a Mental Health Act
assessment at my Mum’s home (where I lived at the time) and when they decided
to section me but I still refused to attend A&E for the medical treatment I
needed, six Police Officers stormed into my Mum’s sitting room. They handcuffed
me and wrapped Velcro leg restraints around my thighs and calves and then
carried me out like a parcel and threw me into the cage in the back of one of
their vans.
Before
my recovery, this was just one of a few instances or examples which I used in
favour of my mindset that it was an us vs them scenario when it came to the
Police and people with a mental illness. A huge reason for that way of thinking
was because I was so suicidal that anyone who tried to save my life became the enemy,
and I developed a resentment and hatred towards them. So, to finally be well,
safe, and stable in my mental health, it made sense that my outlook would also
change and it’s almost predictable that I would actually become grateful to all
those Officers and Sergeants. Grateful, because I was finally happy to be alive!
Finally thankful that for all those years, they had stuck to that ‘duty of care’
party-line, which can sometimes feel so condescending and robotic, but I’d actually
become full of gratitude for its existence!
Alongside
my change in mindset toward the Police, I also developed a thought process
which I actually still hold closely with a massive amount of significance today.
It’s what motivates me to pursue making a complaint or raising concerns; the
recognition that any wrongdoing by me, is done and I’ve coped with it, but what
happens if they do those things again? But to someone else who doesn’t or can’t
cope with them? And so, I speak up in the hope that professionals or
organisations and services will learn from how they’ve treated me and take
steps to prevent it happening again. Its no secret that suicides exist by
people who have only done so – or at least have been exacerbated – because they
have been generally failed by mental health services and/or mistreat by the staff
of those services. I believe that you can’t be more vulnerable than you are
when you feel suicidal and ring the Crisis Team or an emergency service for
help when you’re literally on the brink of acting upon those thoughts and feelings.
And I think that the level of vulnerability a person can experience in that situation
can be very easily affected by the response you receive from whoever you’re
revealing your vulnerability to. So, receiving a poor – in whatever way you
would define that – one can really break you.
Knowing
this, experiencing this, led me to agreeing to co-facilitate the mental health training
for the Police recruits. At first, I was just going to go in for the afternoon
to share my story and answer any questions but I said I’d be interested to find
out what else is said and even though the NHS staff and the Police Inspector
who was the Mental Health Lead, were taking the mornings to talk through the
different laws and their relevance to particular scenarios, it turned out I
could actually still have some input! I was able to tell them how it felt to be
the one in that scenario and what that person might find helpful as an
alternative or in addition to whatever legal process was necessary/appropriate.
Then,
in my turn, the staff always asked if I would tell this one story about when I
was detained on the 136 section one time and I was in a room in A&E with a
Police Officer when I started hallucinating. She asked what I could see, and I
told her there was a rabbit under the plastic chair on the other side of the
room so she went over, picked the chair up, and stamped her boot all over where
it had been until I couldn’t see it any more. I honestly think I’ve probably been
more grateful for that than the instances where professionals have literally, medically
saved my life. A huge reason for this is that a real pet hate of mine, is when
you get professionals or organisations and services who save your life, but
then they do nothing to improve it. I mean, I’d be sedated in hospital, have a
drip of an antidote for my suicide attempt, and then be discharged with all the
thoughts, feelings, and experiences I’d been struggling with – to the point where
they’d caused me to make the suicide attempt – still there! Whereas, stamping
on that rabbit – which she obviously couldn’t see! – illustrated that the
Officer was actually trying to help improve things so that when I was finally
home, maybe the visual hallucinations would be a bit less overpowering.
After
sharing that story with one cohort, a few months later, I heard from one of the
Officers and she told me that because of the rabbit story, she had been inspired
and ended up finding herself chasing the ‘devil’ around a kitchen and flushing
it down the sink! This became one of the two largest instances in my life where
I’ve really seen just how powerful your words can be (the other instance, if
you’re wondering; was when a reader told me that after reading my blog post on
how to cope with the process of reporting abuse and rape to the Police, she had
reported her experiences now too!). I think that it also helped the Police and
NHS staff to see the importance of having a service user and someone with
actual lived experience of Police interactions around mental health. This
recognition meant that I was invited to a huge event (which I blogged about in two
posts, here
and here)
with some incredibly ‘high up’ professionals there! Including the Police Crime
Commissioner at the time; Vera Baird. The event actually also ended up
inspiring a hugely popular post a little while later: FROM
CELLS TO CONFERENCES | MY MENTAL HEALTH RECOVERY WITH NORTHUMBRIA POLICE | I'm
NOT Disordered.
“Where am I supposed to get the
confidence from to do that?!”
Through
the first two or three years of my blogging career – and all the time before
them – I’ve not been one to blow my own trumpet! I mean, even when I was writing
the short stories and sharing them with my Mum and my Nana; I wasn’t doing so
for the praise or the recognition. It was more about enjoying writing them so much
and then also knowing that they enjoyed reading the stories too. Reflecting on
this, I can actually see a lot of similarities in my blogging career in that I
only really publish my content because I’ve enjoyed writing it and because I
know – from the tons of messages and emails I’ve received over the years – that
others find my pieces helpful in a lot of different ways. And I think that
sometimes this is a balancing act in that you have to get the prioritising right
by ensuring you don’t find yourself creating content which you don’t find
beneficial for yourself and are just doing it for the sake of either helping
others or just purely to attract views!
My inability
or just automatic reluctance to blow my own trumpet, changed massively – to the
degree that if anyone met me recently, they would struggle to imagine me ever not
doing it! – a few years into my blogging career. The largest reason for this
was that I was actually beginning to really experience and appreciate the once-in-a-lifetime
opportunities I was being offered as a direct result of I’m NOT Disordered’s popularity.
One of the first things that made me struggle in recognising my blog’s
popularity and the impact it was having, was my concerns around whether I was
even deserving of all these amazing things. Was my content actually good
enough? Was I, personally, worthy of the praise? To challenge or overcome these
thoughts and feelings, I learnt to focus on the fact that I was just trying my
best to provide content that I enjoyed creating; how it was received – in terms
of feedback, popularity, and the opportunities it led others to offer me – was actually
completely out of my control. Proof in the pudding is those two horrible
comments I received not long into my blogging, because each one was regarding a
blog post which, between 5 and 10 other readers had actually told me they’d
found it helpful!
In
appreciating the results of my blog’s popularity, it seemed to make an
incredible amount of sense for me to want to grow and improve on that. Like, why
wouldn’t you want more goodness in life? Especially when there’s been a whole
of horrible, bag, negative times! Something a lot of professionals tried to
drill into my head for a long time was that recovery would mean I’d become
grateful for everything that had happened to me. That I’d finally be glad for
it all because it made me into who I am today. At the time, I couldn’t imagine
ever having any sense of pride or happiness with the person I was, and I also
couldn’t envision how anyone could end up grateful for the traumatic things that
had happened to me. Well, through my blogging and the opportunities I’ve had as
a result of it, I finally get it! I finally get how you can be thankful. I’m
finally happy with who I am and where I am in life, and I 100% recognise that these
things would not be the case if I hadn’t gone through all that I had.
After around
seven years of blogging, I’d built enough confidence to begin really putting
myself ‘out there’ and I ended up really loving the fact that I was going and
making the opportunities for myself rather than sitting back and expecting them
to be handed to me on a platter. I actually used to follow one Blogger/YouTuber
for a number of years, until it got to the point where she’d built a huge
following and made a lot of money and she seemed to just be satisfied with that
and stopped putting so much effort, energy, dedication, and time into her online
content creation. With her sudden lack of motivation and passion, I looked elsewhere
for a blogging inspiration/role model and came across Victoria Magrath (www.inthefrow.com) and my admiration for
her was solidified when I actually won a competition to meet her in 2018 (I
blogged about it here)
and I haven’t stopped following her journey since! Mostly because she hasn’t
stopped working her ass off since then, either!
With my
newly-found confidence, when I was in a conversation with a British Transport
Police (BTP) Officer after a passenger on my train had been abusive to the
staff and I was asked give a statement as a witness, we ended up talking about
the training I had been co-facilitating with the NHS for the Police. He asked if
I would feel comfortable leading my own session for their Officers and I said I’d
have to think on it – something which would never happen these days because my
confidence now would have me biting their hand off to do it! Anyway, coming
away from the situation to think on things, something I found massively helpful
and enforcing for my confidence was all the tweets I’d received at that large
Police event – they were so helpful that I’ve managed to put almost all of them
into a graphic below…
All those
lovely, motivating comments led me to finally creating a ‘Suicide Awareness
Training’ PowerPoint and writing a ‘brief outline’ for the Inspector to ‘sign
off’ on me delivering the training in the 50-minute window the Officer and I
had scheduled. Incredibly and – to be honest – a bit surprisingly, when I’d
finished delivering one session, the next shift was starting and so I was asked
to stay behind and deliver it again to them too (I wrote a blog post about it,
which you can read here)!
This was another big boost of my motivation and confidence levels.
“One door closes, and another one
opens.”
In June
last year, I founded the media campaign; Shake My Hand (you can read the blog
post about its launch and my journey to creating it; here) and a couple of weeks ago –
for a number of different reasons – I ended it. In announcing my decision on my
social media, I added that I wasn’t going to say ‘unfortunately’ or label it a
‘failure’ because I actually found myself experiencing a level of relief after making
the decision… At the time, I had around 10 tabs open in my internet browser
window, and I began closing all of those which were to do with Shake My Hand
and with each one (there ended up being eight!), I actually gave a sigh of
relief!
When I
was talking to a best-friend recently, I said that I had found myself feeling
less stressed and realising that the campaign had almost begun to resemble a
full-time job! A hugely contributing factor to the reduction in my stress
levels has been that I’d realised I’m NOT Disordered was sort of falling by the
wayside and creating content for it, was becoming less of a priority. And this
made me quite sad because I recognised that I wouldn’t have even created the
campaign if it weren’t for the popularity and success of my blog, so it felt
almost as though I was being disrespectful and ungrateful! So, in closing the
campaign, I made the decision to turn all my attention to my blogging career
and dedicate my time and energy to improving and creating content, pitching new
and exciting collaborations, and seeking new and productive opportunities. In
focusing on I’m NOT Disordered; I made the decision to create Understand with
IND.
The
main role or service of the Shake My Hand Campaign was to facilitate Training
Packages for Police, other legal personnel, medical professionals, and mental
health services but in the – around – eight months it was operating, it had
secured no training contracts. It also had a small social media following and
we had no uptake on the press releases the Communications and Marketing
Director volunteer was creating and dispersing to various media outlets. So,
when I closed the campaign, I realised that I was really still eager to pursue
the whole training idea and considered whether the lack of contracts and
interest was perhaps due to the fact the campaign had a very small public and
online presence. Since, even with the campaign, I was going to be the sole
facilitator of the Packages, I realised it would make sense to refresh those
and then utilise my blog’s huge and very well-established following to market
and promote them.
One
useful tactic in fighting back thoughts of failure and/or regret in closing the
campaign down, was to focus on all the things I’d learnt through it, and how a
lot of these could actually still be applied and even helpful(!) for the
creation of the new Training Programmes and their overall branding: ‘Understand
with IND.’ For all of those who may be curious, the main lessons which I’ve
found useful for this, have been utilising search engines to research guidance
and templates on how to create formal and professional documents. For the
campaign, I used this tactic in the creation of the various policies it had,
particularly the Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults Policy and the Date and
Confidentiality Policy because I had literally zero knowledge or prior
experience in creating such documents!
An
additional lesson learnt through the campaign and which is helpful now, is that
I’ve learnt a heck of a lot about different functions on Canva. Now, Canva is something
which I only learnt about in my Digital Marketing Internship in 2019 and I
actually wrote a blog post around the Internship fairly early on in it (which
you can read here) where I mentioned that I’d
already learnt how to use Canva to create memes and graphics in general. And,
fast-forward five years to 2024, I wrote a blog post (which you can read here) about just how game-changing
Canva had been in my blogging career and content creation. But I’ve always said
that I feel like every time I use it, I learn something new! I figured out it
can do even more than I’d known before that. And so, I’ve utilised Canva a
whole lot in creating Understand with IND.
Finally,
Understand with IND is here!
Understand
with IND | I'm NOT Disordered
