A TREASURE TROVE BLOG POST: MAID OF HONOUR INSIGHT INTO THE BEST-FRIEND’S PRE-WEDDING WARM-UP!!! | IN COLLABORATION WITH TURTLE BAY NEWCASTLE

“There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it’s now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it’s simply the way things are.”

Tammy Baldwin

For more info and to make a booking:

Turtle Bay Newcastle | Caribbean Restaurant & Bar - Turtle Bay UK

I’m very pleased and proud to say that this blog post is in collaboration with Turtle Bay Newcastle – the venue for my best-friend’s Wedding Warm-Up! To determine where to host it, we – the Best Man; Jesse, and I made some enquiries and in talking to Turtle Bay Manager; Abbie, about a booking, they allowed us to come to the restaurant early to decorate the table etc and gave us an extra half an hour at the table (typically you’re given 1.5 hours at your table) in return for some mentions on I’m NOT Disordered and on my social media (@aimes_wilson on Twitter and Instagram - please check them out for the videos from this event!). So, I’ve put together this blog post which is basically a little ‘treasure trove’ of memories, photos, advice, links, and ideas…

WHY HOSPITAL CAN BE STRESSFUL & HOW TO GET THROUGH IT | NATIONAL STRESS AWARENESS DAY 2023 | IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

 

To mark Stress Awareness Day 2023, I’ve teamed up with The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH) to talk to you about how their upcoming Mental Health Strategy can help to tackle why it can be so stressful to visit or be admitted to hospital. I’ll also be providing some tips and advice for both those struggling with anxiety in this way and those staff who are caring, helping, and supporting these people…

How Do You Define Stress If It’s Different for Everyone?

WHY NHS TRUSTS NEED TO BE FOLLOWING IN NEWCASTLE’S FOOTSTEPS!! | IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

Our first collaboration: FROM INTENSIVE CARE TO COLLABORATIONS | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST TO MARK THEIR BRAND-NEW MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)

Our second collaboration: EVERYTHING I’M LEARNING FROM MY WORK WITH NEWCASTLE HOSPITALS ON THEIR MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)

So, I’ve been working with the Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH) for over a year (you can read all of our previous collaboration posts above) on their upcoming Mental Health Strategy and spending so long on this project, has really opened my eyes to so much that I thought I might confront, and so much that I hadn’t even imagined would come up from doing this! The main experience and huge benefit from this project, for me though, has been the recognition that in working together, so many thoughts and feelings I’d held against the Trust for saving my life when I made a suicide attempt were completely changed; and for so many different reasons…

Going through abuse can really leave you quite vulnerable in so many ways, but particularly when it comes to your thoughts, feelings, and opinions on hatred and resentment, and this can go on to affect so many instances and relationships in your future… So, for me – in the beginning – I held a lot of anger and hatred towards my abuser and was 100% confident of both the fact that he was worthy of it and that it was completely fine for me to feel this way. I didn’t foresee anything bad arising from it. If anything, to be honest, I thought it was a good thing – a healthy thing. I thought that anyone and everyone would be full of this amount of anger and spite if they had gone through what I had.

ALL THINGS TRAVEL & MENTAL HEALTH | IN COLLABORATION WITH LONDON NORTH EASTERN RAILWAY | AD

The Post Inspiration:
A little while ago, I was travelling to London when a cabinet above the sink in the train bathroom swung open and hit me on the head. As an apology, London North Eastern Railway (LNER) issued me with complimentary first-class tickets to any destination on their route! When I got talking to the Communications department though, and they heard about I’m NOT Disordered, we agreed to turn it into a collaboration, so the bestie and I decided to go to York for the day!

It was actually when we were waiting to come home though that we had the conversation which – along with the actual trip - has inspired this blog post. There were no tables outside the pub in York train station so we ended up sitting on a table with a man (Tony) and lady (Nikki). It turned out that Tony worked for Network Rail, so we got talking about my LNER collaboration and the benefits travelling has on your mental health…

Benefits of travelling: 

For a lot of people with a mental health illness, I think that there’s a level of expectation in society that if you behave in a particular way then that must mean you have this diagnosis or if you do that then you must have that diagnosis. This can be especially exacerbated when surrounded by people you know; not just friends but professionals too - there can be pressure in appointments when you feel that you need to seem more well than you feel so as to avoid particular responses from professionals. This pressure from all these different places can obviously become overwhelming and can result in a huge amount of stress which could be slightly alleviated by travelling somewhere different to be surrounded by people who don’t know you… or your mental state! When I temporarily moved down South (where I was born) it felt like a fresh start because was there no one feeling that people were thinking ‘it’s her again.’ I could start new relationships and determine just how much of my mental illness they saw.