“Nobody
counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.”
William
Bernbach
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TO THE WAYTHROUGH NEWSLETTER!!
A couple of months ago, I’m NOT Disordered reached the milestone of having 2.5 million readers and as a result of this, I put together a press release (I blogged about my advice on writing one of these, back in 2021 and you can read it here) and circulated it around my local and national news outlets. It’s resulted in a few features and the most recent, will be in the November issue (released November 28th) of Waythrough’s newsletter: Coming Together and on speaking with the Communications and Marketing team, I had the idea to create this blog post promoting the newsletter because it’s actually not necessarily internal, anyone can subscribe (just click the link above or here!). In publicising it and having had numerous other appearances in the media, I thought I’d discuss how it feels to do this sort of work in the hope that it provides insight, and that budding Influencers or Bloggers feel more prepared in being offered or seeking publicity for their content creation…
My Vision & Expectations on
Publicity in Creating I’m NOT Disordered
Around nine months after I created, I’m NOT
Disordered on January 6th, 2013, the Sun newspaper printed an
article titled: ‘1,200 Killed By Mental Patients!’ As I was still a detained
(under Section 3 of the 1983 Mental Health Act) psychiatric hospital inpatient
at that time (and for almost another year after that too!), I found out about
the article online through all the negative publicity it received –
particularly from mental health charities I was following on social media.
One, specifically, Rethink released a statement
about it where they very rightly and gratefully, pointed out that the number of
murders by someone with a mental health diagnosis had actually reduced! I was
inspired by this point and so, in my blog post addressing the article, I
included additional, different statistics e.g. the number of people killed by
Police during that same period of time as the statistic on the article’s title
was actually 569 and that five people per day are killed in road
incidents/crashes. I pointed out that these just obviously weren’t considered attention-grabbing
‘enough’ to warrant being front page or huge articles on the outlet’s website
and social media. However, I’m sure there are people out there in the world who
would disagree. People who may have lost a loved one in a car crash, would
likely deem the five people per day statistic as more than worthy and deserving
of press and attention.
Writing that blog post (which you can read here)
twelve years ago, I never would have thought that just over one year later – in
January 2015 – I would feature in my local newspaper and be in a position where
the title of the article was so much more personal and debatable on its
accuracy and appropriateness. In all fairness though, so many things have
happened in my blogging career that I would have never foreseen or have even
considering aiming towards when I first created, I’m NOT Disordered. Things
that I didn’t envision as being anywhere near possible. And I think a huge part
of that was that back then – 2013 – blogging was only just taking off and starting
to become an entire career and industry. I’d pinpoint those who caused it
becoming this way as Zoe Sugg (whose blog etc was branded ‘Zoella’) and Alife
Deyes (whose branded YouTube and social media was Pointless Blog) who, back
then, were starting to do a lot of publicity (my favourite – mostly because it
included her very real, humbling, and familiar reaction to reaching 5 million
followers – vlog of Zoe’s from back in June 2014 actually featured a
behind-the-scenes of her appearance on Loose Women too, you can watch it here)
and had platforms that were rapidly growing in terms of popularity and success
in so far as collaborations and partnerships with huge brands and companies.
When I first created, I’m NOT Disordered though, it
was with the intention of documenting my recovery journey… I’d just had a
productive 1:1 with my Key Nurse where I agreed to begin writing about the rape
and abuse, I had experienced and then show my writing to the staff so that they
could better understand what I’d been through to put them in an improved
position to help and support me and to be able to understand my actions and
attitude. Going back to my room afterwards, I had the distinct feeling that I had
taken a step in the right direction and wanted to have a record of my progress.
So, whilst I didn’t really consider it, I think that even from Day One, my
understanding was that the blog would end the moment I was better and
discharged from the psychiatric hospital. And when I had staff telling me that
blogging was a waste of my time and that I’m NOT Disordered would literally
amount to nothing? Well, that did absolutely nothing to serve as support or
encouragement to keep going or to put more determination and passion into
creating the content for it.
I think that their attitude – in case you’re
wondering why they would be so unsupportive about something that was surely
only positive because I found it incredibly therapeutic – was mostly born from
their fear of being mentioned and that I was disclosing things they didn’t want
the wider public to know… And this was validated when there’d been some
incident on the ward and the Ward Manager came into our communal Reflection Meeting,
but another inpatient asked him something and he said, “I have a really good answer
for that, but I won’t say it because it’ll end up on Aimee’s blog!” I hated
that because it actually turned some of the other inpatients against me and
against my blogging because they were left with the thought that because of it,
they were being denied an answer to something they wanted to know. And it made
me feel like he thought of I’m NOT Disordered as a gossip column or something
and didn’t recognise its importance and significance to my mental health and my
recovery.
I think that this lack of support and encouragement
really contributed to my decision after I received two horrible comments from
readers to end the blog and close it down. I think if I’d felt that I had more
back-up and motivation, perhaps I’d have battled that negativity and really
weighed up how detrimental it was against how beneficial my blogging was.
Because the comments were absolutely in no way worthy of me stopping blogging.
Like, they were horrible and nasty and spiteful and ignorant, but they weren’t
deserving of my losing that lifeline that I had in being able to vent my
thoughts and feelings in my blog posts.
Deciding to Forgo My Privacy: The
Importance of Control
It turned out that closing I’m NOT Disordered down on
my discharge from hospital in September 2014 for over one month, was the best
decision I’ve ever made in my entire blogging career! It provided me with the real
and genuine opportunity to realise just how much I was gaining from my blogging,
to recognise that I needed it in order to continue my recovery. That I needed
it in order to experience comfort, reassurance, and in order to have somewhere
to really consider my experiences and evaluate how they were affecting my
thoughts and feelings too. How they were impacting my mental health. And these
qualities were especially important when I was being discharged from the
hospital and undergoing the process of adjusting to being in a rehab unit where
I had a lot more freedom and a lot less intensive or frequent and readily
available support open to me.
Having that period of time to realise that I needed
to blog and that I really did miss it, meant when I resumed I had a whole ton
of new passion, determination, and dedication to it as a commitment and finally
began to see myself as a Blogger (something which I blogged about back in 2015,
you can read it here).
So, at the beginning of 2015, I found myself developing some motivations and
rationale to begin working to gain publicity for my blog…
1. I
had discovered that my reader count was really contributing to my mental health
because I recognised that every ‘number’ was a person. A person I now had the
opportunity to help – in some way – through my blog’s content so of course I
wanted to better the chance that I could help more and more people.
2. In
recognising the benefits of having a large audience, I’d come to realise that
in pitching ideas for collaborations and partnerships, my emails were far more
likely read and acted upon if I mentioned my blog’s statistics asap in it!
Organisations massively prioritise the publicity impact in working with a
Blogger, so hearing that I had a big audience already, helped to secure some
really special and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and experiences for me. So,
I realised that publicity would only serve to really increase this chance.
3. I
wanted for my story to provide people with hope – to hear or read or see
someone go from being on life support as a result of a suicide attempt to spending
over two years in a psychiatric hospital to now having their own home and a
popular blog might help others to see that you can come back from that point.
4. I
wanted to prove all those staff and people who said my blog was a waste of time
and that it would amount to nothing, wrong! I wanted to show that I had made it
into something and that it was helping others too and I hoped that in doing so,
it would not only show them they were mistaken and shouldn’t make such
comments, but that it would give others who receive little to no support, the
strength and encouragement to continue regardless.
5. I
also wanted to publicise blogging as an activity or a hobby because I
recognised how beneficial it was for my mental health and that it had been
instrumental in my recovery, and I wondered whether there were others out there
who could actually also find those same gains from it.
Against my motivations, I did honestly, genuinely
also consider the potential consequences or downsides to having my story and
blog feature in the media. I didn’t get caught up in thoughts of fame and
attention! Like, I knew that if I was going to share my journey on that much
larger scale, then I wanted it done rightly because I wanted it to help all the
people it could reach who my blog wasn’t yet getting to. In having this drive
and goal, I realised that the most helpful quality to reaching out the media
was ‘control.’ I needed to be in control of what they were told and what they
then produced and published about me or about my blog.
That first bit was obviously easy because I was
approaching the news outlets myself, so I was in complete control of what they
were told and how they were told it. It wasn’t as though they’d heard about me,
or I’m NOT Disordered through gossip or rumours. They weren’t needing to be
corrected and set straight and they wouldn’t need me to do that because I was
the one telling them what I wanted them to know! It was quite empowering to be
honest, but it also felt strange and awkward sometimes too because I had become
so accustomed to keeping everything about the rape and abuse a secret and not
speaking out when I started struggling with my mental health. So, to suddenly
spill the beans was a little unusual and daunting at times for me; but I tried
to battle that with the idea that it was sort of like a ‘finger up’ at my
abuser for all the threats and promises he made in order to silence me for so
long. Me suddenly now talking and telling my journey, was like saying he no
longer had that power or control over me. And that was incredibly healing and
cathartic.
Something I recognised in deciding to begin telling
people my story was that I was forgoing my privacy and that I was really
agreeing to the deprivation of it. Like, I felt it was really important to
accept that not only could talking lead people to believe they own the details
for the rest of my life, but that it could very also lead to them believing
that they had the right to know more. That they had the right to know
everything. And I think that taking this into consideration, really helped to
prepare me and make me feel confident, safe, and secure in my decision to tell
my story to the public.
My Reputation & The Media’s
Attention-Seeking Way of Working
With those motivations in mind, I contacted my
local news outlet: The Chronicle (named the Evening Chronicle back then!) and
told them my story – everything from a brief bit about the abuse (for legal
reasons I can’t disclose identifying details about my abuser so it was
difficult to write too much about it for them) and then everything from my
first suicide attempt to being on life support to starting my blog and being on
over 62,000 readers. A Journalist: Sophie
Doughty, emailed me back to say that they wanted to go
ahead and run the ‘story’ and that they wanted to arrange to have a
photographer come out to take some images for the article!
Until that point, I’d never had a photoshoot before
for any of my collaborations so it was a new experience to me, but I recognised
that if I wanted to work in the communications and marketing industry and if I
wanted to be a Blogger, it was something I should become more accustomed to! Fortunately,
it ended up being quite fun – if a little embarrassing: especially those shots
of me outside (there’s one on the article on the website here
and then another on the photo of the actual print article on the wall in my
sitting room!) … So, my front door is actually on a foot path and I’m on a
little row of bungalows then opposite the footpath is a strip of grass with a
few trees then another footpath and another row of bungalows with their front
doors directly facing those on my row too. This meant that when the
photographer wanted to take some shots outside, I was literally in the middle
of my street with all my neighbours twitching their curtains, peeking through
their blinds, or just outright coming to their door to watch! And when the
photographer said, “pull your hood up a bit around your face and look at me and
smile!” (which ended up being that large photo in the print article) I don’t
think I’d ever felt more embarrassed in front of my neighbours! And I don’t
want to sound too dramatic about it, but it did leave me questioning how worthy
the article was of me being this awkward and embarrassed in front of the people
I could be living by for years to come.
But then it got funny! Back in my home, the
Photographer had a look around and said that the kitchen window was quite a
nice place, so he had me lean against this bench and then said, “pick that cup
and then just look thoughtful but into the distance, not at me.” I remember
laughing a bit; firstly, because that cup (which is in photos on both the
website article and the print piece) is actually empty! And then the thing
about ‘looking thoughtful’ just really tickled me… Like it’s something you’d
think would be said but also something which you don’t think actually would be!
Like, you’d think there’d be some sort of more professional phrase or
description or artistic direction for it! Something that, at least, didn’t
sound so cheese ball and fake! And that made me laugh too – that it felt so
fake!
To be honest though, I just remember standing there
and doing to facial expressions and looking ‘off into the distance’ (but
actually – another piece of behind-the-scenes insight for you: I was really
just staring at the clock on the wall opposite me!) and starting to
second-guess my decision to do all of this. I was beginning to panic that it
was making me look fake now too. That people would realise the cup was empty or
that they’d just have the opinion that the photos were cheesy and stereotypical
for stories of this nature in the media. And however, the article turned out…
Well, that was part of my reputation now too. Like, there was going to be a lot
of people (especially at that point in my blogging career when my reader count
was less than 100,000) where this story was the first they’ve heard of me.
First time they’ve seen me and read about my blog. So, how the article is
managed and how it ends up looking and reading, could be instrumental in a lot
of people’s first impressions of me – both as a person and as a Blogger too.
These concerns were magnified and validated when I
saw the headline in the newspaper article: ‘my battle is now helping others out
of the darkness.’ I couldn’t believe it! I had never – and would never – say
something like that! I mean, I don’t ‘disagree’ with it perse – I recognise
that the difficulties and traumatic experiences I’ve been through have ended up
helping others in various ways but not only is that not something which I
wouldn’t want as a title, I also would never phrase it the way their title made
it look as though I had. It read as though they’d quoted me saying that! And I
mean, I honestly believed that if my friends and loved ones and just anyone who
knew me well, saw that; they’d be confused because they’d know I would never
talk like that or use sort of wording to describe what it was referring to. And
that meant a lot to me – for those people to see a media article about me and
think ‘that’s not like Aimee.’ I’d so wanted for this to be a true, reliable,
trustworthy, and accurate portrayal or representation of me and of I’m NOT
Disordered.
In opposition to this – or at least, something
which helped me to put my thoughts on accuracy and my reputation, into
perspective – was the recognition that the media ultimately needs to attract
attention to their articles and work. And that this often means
sensationalising things, exaggerating something, or just telling a flat-out,
blatant lie in order to increase readers and – where their article is online or
on social media – engagement and comments etc.
I think I could recognise and accept this quite
easily and quickly because it’s something I just discussed myself somewhat doing
with my blog when I talked about how when I’m pitching a collaboration, I
discovered it’s best to reference your statistics as early on as possible in
order to receive a positive response. It’s also something I do with the titles
of my blog posts too – not create ‘quotes’ out of thin air, mind – but rather,
word it in a way that will be most effective in obtaining curious or passionate
readers wanting to know more. And it’s like the whole clickbait thing with
Influencers giving their content dramatic captions just to capture attention
because then you read or watch the actual content and it’s not even relevant to
that very dramatic caption!
In the end though, aside from that title being
written as a quote I never would have said and the photos featuring both my
embarrassed face and the empty cup; I did like the article; again, you can read
it here
or I copied and pasted it into a blog post here.
And it must have been really good and popular because a few other news outlets
took it up too:
The Mirror: 'I
took 60 overdoses - but my mum's love saved me' - The Mirror
Daily Mail: Former
suicidal woman Aimee Wilson wants to help others with depression | Daily
Mail Online
Social Media Response & General
Responses to My Journey
Funnily enough, it was only in doing this blog post
that I discovered the Chronicle had posted the link to their article on their
Facebook page with the caption: ‘Blyth Blogger Aimee has shown real strength and
heart after she came back from the brink to help others coping with mental
illness. Amazing work Aimee.’ The post had 200 reactions (mostly likes, but
also some of the ‘shocked’ emojis), 15 comments (most of which are in the
screenshots above), and 10 shares.
I was really nervous to start reading the comments
because by that time, I’d had those horrible comments on my blog that had led
to me closing it down for just over one month so I was more than aware that
people could say some horrible things in response to content around mental
health, suicide, self-harm, abuse, and rape. But there wasn’t a bad one in
there, was there?! There were sad ones with someone saying they’d been in a
similar position before too, but having been blogging for a few years, I was
also prepared for people associating with my story and expressing similar
experiences.
One concern I had, to be honest, was that the
usual, basic response to any parts of my journey is around sympathy, and the
number of times I’ve felt I needed to say to someone: “I didn’t say it for you
to feel sorry for me!” – Well, let’s just say it’s been a lot of times!!! I
actually wrote a blog post around it back in 2018: “I
DIDN’T TELL YOU SO THAT YOU’D FEEL SORRY FOR ME” | SYMPATHY, EMPATHY &
CONDESCENTION and in it, I wrote that it was
difficult because I didn’t really have an ‘ideal’ response in mind. Like, if I was
asked about what I wished or wanted someone to say when I told them, I honestly
don’t know what my answer would be to that! I guess that empathy, compassion,
respect, and kindness, are my largest qualities that I feel I benefit from when
someone exemplifies or illustrates them in their interactions with me and in
reacting to hearing any part of my journey.
Why Another Appearance Made Me Miss My
Nana
After the Chronicle feature, I received a call from
a Media Agency who asked if they could circulate my story to an outlet who
would pay to print it and then they would claim a percentage from that as commission.
I agreed, and shortly afterwards, the magazine Take A Break actually asked to
print it (since it was in print, the only way to read it now, is if you take a
look at the photos of the two-page article on the blog post about the
appearance, here)!
I hate to say this because the last thing I want is
to sound ungrateful or hypocritical, but hearing it was Take A Break made me
quite sad. Just a few years earlier than it, we lost my Nana. And my Nana not
only was the glue to the family and the person who would rectify any arguments and
bring everyone back together, but she was also one of (my Mum being the other)
the biggest fans of my writing.
When I was little, I used to write short stories –
typically about animals (mostly horses because I used to go horse-riding) going
on adventures because I loved the Sheltie book series (a set of children’s
stories by Peter Clover about a little girl and her Shetland Pony). Sometimes,
I even made them into little ‘books’ by tearing a piece of paper into even
pieces, writing the story across them, and then sellotaping them all together! My
Nana used to absolutely love them though, I remember seeing her laugh and smile
at one bit and my Mum told me not too long ago that on her daily calls with my
Mum, she’d always ask when the next one was coming!
In addition to my own stories, my Nana also used to
love reading magazines – including Take A Break – to the point where she had
her own drawer at our local W H Smith where the staff would keep all the ones
that she wanted to one side every time a new issue was released. One of the
saddest things that had to be done after we lost her was to tell the staff that
she no longer needed that drawer.
Losing a loved one can never come at a good time,
but her passing was at a particularly hard time because my mental health had
started to deteriorate just a year so earlier, and it meant that I was actually
detained under section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act and an inpatient of the
local psychiatric hospital. When I was told she had been hospitalised, my
Consultant Psychiatrist wouldn’t grant me any leave (being sectioned means you
have to have any time off the ward permitted by a Psychiatrist) and by the time
he eventually agreed to let me visit her, my Nana had passed away. It meant
that I was one of the two family members who didn’t get to say goodbye (my Aunt
was on her way back from Dubai) and I don’t think I could have held any more
resentment against the staff than I did in that moment.
So – years later – finally being well enough and
successful enough to be featured in one of her favourite magazines and not
having her here to see it? Well, it was hard to accept and really challenging
to want to celebrate it, to be honest. But my Mum was a huge help and support
then, she really encouraged me to think that my Nana is still sort of here,
watching down on me, and that she’ll still know and be proud of all my
achievements with both my writing/blogging and my mental health recovery.
I’m really glad my Mum managed to talk me around in
that way and help me to be grateful and to want to celebrate it as an
achievement because it turned out to be quite a different article to that of
the Chronicle, Daily Mail, Free Library, and the Mirror. Take A Break took on a
whole new angle (as you can see in the photos) and focused on my relationship
with both my family cat; Saffy, and my own cat; Dolly. They talked about how
Saffy had been really calming and soothing for me and that I’d talk to her all
the time when the abuse was happening and my Mum was at work or out, I’d just
pour my heart out to the cat because for one million and one reasons, I felt
that I couldn’t report it properly and tell a person.
Then, Dolly was significant because getting my own
cat had become a recovery goal whilst I was in a psychiatric hospital for over
two years. My Mum had the genius idea of getting a collar for her whilst I was
still in hospital and hanging it up in my bedroom to remind me of why I needed
to keep working hard in therapy and engage and cooperate with the staff. You
can’t see it in the photo but in the one of this article on the sitting room
wall, Dolly’s collar is actually hanging from it because she passed away a few
years after the article was printed.
I was really glad that they’d chosen this different
angle or theme for my story though, because I recognised that it was a lot more
creative, and I honestly actually felt like it was more honest and better
captured things the way I wanted them to be seen or heard. I felt that it made
the entire journey a lot easier to read – abuse, rape, self-harm, suicide, and
mental illness are all incredibly difficult and upsetting topics, and so to do
something that makes reading about them any easier is good because we shouldn’t
not talk about them purely in case, they upset you or someone else. I honestly
believe that silence and avoiding discussing or thinking about these topics
hugely contributes to all the discrimination and stigma around them.
The other reason the cat angle meant a lot was because it was kind of like a throw-back to the stories I used to write about animals, and this meant even more because it just happened to be in one of my Nana’s favourite magazines! It was like a complete full-circle sort of moment!
In The Media For Others
All my media appearances haven’t always been purely
about my story or my blog’s journey, I’ve also featured in articles a few times
for the sake of events or projects with others!
The first of these was in September 2016 when,
after co-facilitating mental health training for a huge cohort of new recruits
for my local Police force, I was asked to give a speech at a huge event between
the Police and the NHS. The event was titled ‘Enhancing Multi-Agency
Partnerships’ and the focus was on how mental health services and the Police
can work together and better communicate to work jointly in helping someone in
a mental health crisis. It was a topic I was not only personally experienced
in, but also very passionate about, so I was honoured and eager to give my
speech to the hundreds of staff at the event in this huge Hall at the Discovery
Museum in Newcastle!
I actually ended up writing three blog posts about
the actual event (as well as a ton of pre-event promotional content!); you can
read them here,
here,
and here
but whilst I was there, I was interviewed by a few news outlets and so I also
had the following feature in the Chronicle again: Police
and NHS partnership sees fall in the number of people with mental health issues
detained | Chronicle Live and then an interview on MADE in
Tyne and Wear (which is what is being filmed in the photos above the subtitle
for this part!). The Chronicle actually also ran the story in their paper too
and it was very awkward… They used a photo of me from that photoshoot with them
the previous year on the front cover (it’s at the bottom left of the frame in
the photo below)! I remember apologising to the Inspector because they had the
photo of him and the NHS staff too which was then used (alongside another
bigger photo of me!) on the page our feature was on, and he said: “whatever
attracts the readers!”
My other feature in the media for others was
actually only in February of this year and it was after two years of working
with the Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH) on their
brand-new Mental Health Strategy. Over the years, we did a couple of blog posts
in collaboration/regarding the Strategy too:
From
Intensive Care to Collaborations
Everything
I’m Learning From My Work With Newcastle Hospitals On Their Mental Health
Strategy
Why
NHS Trusts Need To Be Following in Newcastle’s Footsteps!!
Why
Hospital Can Be Stressful & How To Get Through It
The
Red Flags in Communication Around Mental Health
An
Inside Look At Creating A Mental Health Strategy for An NHS Trust
Everything
That Went Into Creating A Service User Approved Mental Health Strategy
So, at the end of the Strategy, their Communications and Marketing team got in touch and asked whether I would write a contribution to the press release they were releasing to announce the creation of the Strategy. I wrote a little paragraph and fully expected for it to all be edited out, but when the Chronicle and the Journal via Press Reader published the story, they actually included the vast majority of it: Half of people discharged from Newcastle's hospitals have both mental and physical health conditions | Chronicle Live! I felt really proud because I thought that if it was being kept together, that made it seem as though it had been somewhat ‘good’ or at least good enough to be worthy of being included in full! And that provided me with confidence in writing my own press releases – something I’ll talk about in a little bit!
When It Got Really Surreal: ITV Tyne
Tees News
In February 2017 – a year after the Police/NHS
feature – I received an email from the Communications and Marketing team of my
local NHS mental health Trust: Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne, and Wear NHS
Foundation Trust (CNTW) saying that ITV had been in touch with them, and they
were looking to run a piece on self-harm. They explained that apparently newly-released
statistics showed the number of people being admitted to hospital due to
self-harm has massively increased and so – in addition to speaking to professionals
in the Trust – they also wanted to interview someone with personal experience
of self-harm and the team asked if I’d be up for it! Of course, I said yes – in
all honesty, without putting a whole lot of thought into it…
I had a Producer and Cameraman come to my home to
interview me and to take shots of my scarred arms and to do some ‘B roll’ (the
shots which play when there’s a bit of a voiceover or you can hear the person
talking but what you’re watching isn’t them talking) of me with my cat – Dolly
got pretty famous in her little lifetime! With the piece being about self-harm,
I had prepared myself for having to show my scars so that wasn’t a problem or
upsetting.
The difficult bit was actually watching the piece
(I have a link from back then to the piece, I don’t know if it’ll still work
for everyone but, you should still be able to watch the segment here
and they also quoted me in an article on their website about the piece, which
you can read here).
I talked in my blog post about the appearance (which you can read here)
about feeling vulnerable when I saw it because
- without informing me, but it was publicly available – the news team
ended up taking parts from one of my YouTube vlogs to add to the segment too. In
this clip I was walking the streets late at night/early in the morning and
talking about how I was struggling with auditory hallucinations. Now, to me, yes,
my hallucinations played a huge part in my self-harm, but it started because of
the abuse so in my opinion that was the most fundamental rationale or
motivation to shed light on.
I think I was also a bit embarrassed because I’d
never claim to be a YouTuber or to have any talent or real knowledge of filming
and editing videos. I have enjoyed making videos on YouTube (my channel is: Aimee Wilson - YouTube)
but mostly because I find them to be brilliant ways of not only making and
recording memories, but also ways of being able to look back over those things
too! However, I have no real education or training in how to properly film for
YouTube or using the editing tools you can utilise to bring clips taken from
different moments together so I’m not exactly ‘proud’ of many of my old videos
on my channel. I honestly think that if I’d been asked whether they could take
a clip from it and shown which clip they were taking, I’d have said ‘no.’
Either way though, seeing myself on ITV News (the
second time I’ve seen myself on TV – the first being the MADE in Tyne and Wear
interview for the Police training event) was actually really surreal… Before
that, the other notion of surrealism I’d experienced with my media appearances
was in being on the front cover of the Chronicle that first time in 2015 and
with that smaller image for the Police event in 2016. But ITV News?! Well, it’s
quite a popular and well-known media outlet so I did feel really proud but also
surprised and shocked to see myself featured on it! I think that two huge
reasons for that was that it’s something I’ve watched myself and admired some
of the people featured, and the other reason was just the thought of how far
I’d come with my mental health journey. Like, to think of watching the News in
a psychiatric hospital whilst sectioned after a suicide attempt, and to now be
on it talking about recovery and how possible it can be anyone and everyone…?
Well, how could that not come across as surreal?!
But Which One Am I? | Having A Dual
Identity In The Media
That feature on ITV Tyne Tees News, really
contributed to these thoughts around my identity because until then, I felt
that a huge part of my featuring in the papers and Take A Break, was in
relation to my recovery and my blog and how much better I was in comparison to
how poorly I’d been. Whereas ITV, seemed to focus on my poorly-ness and how bad
my mental health – and obviously, self-harm in particular – had been.
This difference actually, honestly brought out a very
conflicting set of emotions… I mean, with the papers and their focus on my
recovery and improvements; I felt empowered. With the ITV feature though, I
felt objectified. I felt like my journey was being ‘used’ purely as an example of
something bad rather than in the papers etc where it felt like it was becoming ‘influential’
and taken or viewed in a much more positive and motivational light.
But, in addition to how my input was framed by the
news teams, some of these thoughts on how it comes across, can also stem from
the words used in the features too and I noticed a difference from the paper
articles to the News programme where there was a much more frequent use of
‘patient’ and ‘victim’ (I much prefer ‘survivor’ when talking about those with
experience of rape and/or abuse). But the largest difficulty was that I had to
recognise that actually, the articles in the papers and in Take A Break were
about me and my story. Whereas the ITV feature, was purely about self-harm and
just my experience of that one coping mechanism. And I think that this is
likely why there was such a difference in how I felt I – and my experiences –
were represented or illustrated.
My Chance To Speak Out Against Facebook
on The BBC & Channel 4 Dispatches
A few months later, in May 2017, I missed a call
from a Lived Experience professional working for the private healthcare company
who had owned the psychiatric hospital I’d been in for over two years. When I
returned the call, I didn’t think it would be to be asked to appear on a piece
for BBC News at 10 that night!
The piece they were
running was specifically in response/to cover the Guardian recently leaking
Facebook guidelines around the mental health, self-harm, and suicide related
content that can be reported but would not be taken down. The largest, most
disagreeable being that live streams of suicide attempts will be left running
as long as the person is engaging with viewers as Facebook believes it enables
or provides the opportunity for them to be helped…
"The documents also tell moderators to ignore suicide threats when the 'intention is only expressed through hashtags or emoticons' or when the proposed method is unlikely to succeed. Any threat to kill themselves more than five days in the future can also be ignored, the files say."
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/21/facebook-users-livestream-self-harm-leaked-documents
This piece actually meant more
to me than the private healthcare company realised because I had personal
experience of Facebook sending me a warning message about my content when I
posted a photo of my self-harm scars with the caption: ‘IT’S TIME TO TALK
#endmentalhealthstigma p.s. I’m sorry if some find this upsetting, but it has
to be done. Mental health problems ARE real!’ But I then also once posted a
picture of me on life support after a suicide attempt with the caption: "Tomorrow will be
six years since my 'trauma' ended. But it wasn't the end. In fact, in many ways
it was the beginning of a whole new one. This photo is of me on a ventilator
with a central line giving me treatment for an overdose. It wasn't that the
overdose was that bad, it was that I felt that bad, so I refused treatment. I
wanted the memories to stop. This photo reminds me of how far I've come, it
tells me to keep going too. I don't want the picture to upset people but
inspire people; you can be at your very lowest and come back. Come back
fighting." Two different photos with very similar messages and points to
publishing them, and Facebook took issue with the first of my very white and
faded scars.
The BBC Producer I
spoke to asked me a lot of questions (which I wrote more about in the blog post
about the appearance, you can read it here), but particularly about how I felt on these
guidelines being leaked and what they meant to me, and this led me to feel as
though I was giving more of a professional opinion than being a service user or
a patient or whatever and talking about my experiences. That was nice. It made
me feel like I had progressed somewhat in my ‘career.’ And I think that this
feeling or notion was really beneficial when, as a result of the Facebook
guidelines leak, Channel 4 Dispatches sent a reporter undercover at Facebook
and then, one year later (in July 2018) asked to interview me for their episode
about the reporter’s findings. I think it contributed to how I managed to stay
so calm – something which lots of people commented on after watching the
episode – during the questioning in my interview. It meant that I had the
confidence and knowledge and experience to feel comfortable and capable of creating
an advisory blog post: TOP
FIVE TIPS TO TALKING TO THE MEDIA | MY FEATURE ON C4'S DISPATCHES | AD (unfortunately, the link at the end of
that blog post to watch the episode I featured on, no longer works… probably
because it’s like, seven years later!).
How Dispatches Impacted My Body
Image/Confidence
Unfortunately, around the time I was on
the Dispatches documentary, I had gained quite a lot of weight through my
mental health medication, a lack of exercise, and poor diet. It meant that when
I asked one of the film crew to take some photos whilst filming, there was only
one that I sort of liked and even then, I had to do lots of editing to it to crop
bits, slim bits, and blur bits! And I hated not liking or being confident in my
body image because for the Channel 4 filming, with it being an actual programme
(Dispatches is a documentary series – you can see their more recent episodes: Dispatches |
Stream free on Channel 4), it meant that there was a film crew in my one-bedroom bungalow!
The funny bit from the whole ordeal though, was when they put foil over my sitting room windows and explained it was so that they could regulate the amount of light coming into shot. And I explained/joked that if my neighbours who – having been in that home for four years at that point – were really aware of my mental health saw foil on the windows… Well, there’d likely be some calls going into Ambulances, Police, and likely the Crisis Team too! The film crew laughed and said I was probably right and joked that they’d stay prepared for some knocks at the door or for it to be broken down completely! And it was nice to have that bit of joking/laugh when I was actually struggling with feeling so unconfident and self-conscious about my body image. It was a really good and positive distraction.
Influencer Representation Pressures
Now, my final appearance/article prior to
the most recent one; was in 2021 and it was to mark the publication date of my
first book: Everything Disordered: A Practical Guide to Blogging (which you can
buy on Amazon here). The article was actually though, taken
from a press release I had circulated around numerous news outlets – including
the Northumberland Gazette… Who picked it up and printed it both in their
actual paper (which you can see photos of above and in this blog post) and on their website (which
you can see here).
I used the blog post sharing the article,
to provide advice on writing press releases as this was the second one, I’d
written and the second to be printed! Doing that meant that, in the blog post,
I actually included the entirety of the press release I’d created/circulated
alongside what was actually printed/featured. And I actually thought this was a
really insightful piece of content because it gave a lot of people a preview
into a world that they probably have a lot of curiosity over and questions
about.
But I think that with this article being
about my first book and then my most recent article in the Northumberland
Gazette (which you can read here) being about reaching 2.5 million
readers, these two pieces were really the first time I experienced any sense of
representing a group of people. And that group of people I felt I was
representing in those two pieces – at least – was Influencers. It was a title I
had only just adjusted to being labelled myself and that adjustment had come
with reaching this number of readers. I now felt ‘I can’t deny or minimise having
this many readers – especially when I’m celebrating reaching these milestones
with full-on press releases!’
Eventually owning that label of an ‘Influencer,’ meant that in featuring in the media, I was really very reasonably representing that group of people. I could be the first Influencer that one person reads about, or I could be the fifth! Either way, it mattered how I was represented. It mattered how I – as an Influencer – was portrayed because it really just genuinely reflected on the rest of the industry. On everyone else in it. And that can be stressful and pressurising, but I looked on it as the reality of being in this industry and having this responsibility and I literally loved everything else about it so how could I back out now just because this one bit of it was difficult and challenging?
Reader Statistics Impact
After my most recent appearance in
Northumberland Gazette for the 2.5 million readers milestone, I decided to
check my reader statistics on I’m NOT Disordered and evaluate whether there had
been an increase or a decrease as a result of that feature. I’m now incredibly
relieved that I did that because if I hadn’t, I’m afraid I might have missed
realising that I’d had over 100,000 readers in five weeks! Now, for some
perspective as to why this is huge – when I first started blogging in January
2013, it actually took me/the blog, over two year and a half years to reach the
first 100,000 readers (I wrote a blog post to celebrate it in August 2015, and
you can read it here)!
I couldn’t believe that difference – 2.5
years to 5 weeks?! Like, what?! How is that even a possible or practical
improvement and growth?! I mean, it’s certainly not something I would have
thought to make my goal back in 2015 – like I honestly never would have thought
of it as anywhere near it being reasonable to say: “I eventually want to be
able to reach 100k readers in 5 weeks!”
4 Things I’ve Learned/Want You To Know & Advice on Confidence
1. Even if you created and sent out a press
release, you don’t have a whole lot of control over the eventual, published
feature.
2. Media outlets aren’t obliged to tell you
if they’re going to use or print a press release, even if you request that they
do alert you.
3. Get the ultimate, professional advice on
literally everything you need to know about press releases: PR Academy.co.uk: Media
Relations, Press Releases, & Effective Media Management
4. How special and important you feel after featuring, is typically down to your own mindset, attitude, and experience, rather than a general thing.
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