THE ULTIMATE Q&A WITH A RAPE AND ABUSE SURVIVOR FOR THE SEXUAL ASSAULT AWARENESS MONTH'S DAY OF ACTION 2026

After everything you've done
I can thank you for how strong I have become

'Cause you brought the flames and you put me through hell
I had to learn how to fight for myself
And we both know all the truth I could tell

Ke$ha – Praying

In a huge and random scrolling session on Instagram, I came across a post about Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) 2026 by an Actress (Sasha Pieterse from Pretty Little Liars) – which you can view here – that I shared to my Stories (@aimes_wilson). A while later, my best-friend and fellow Blogger; Martin Baker of www.gumonmyshoe.com messaged and said that it had inspired him to look back at his guest post for a project I was doing back in 2024 about supporting a survivor of sexual violence – you can read it on his blog (the project’s website it was originally published on was deleted): I Believe You. It wasn't Your Fault. You Are not Alone. Being There for a Friend Who's Survived Rape or Sexual Abuse. And from that, I began to consider ideas for creating I’m NOT Disordered content about the topic/for the awareness Month, and I came up with the idea of a Q&A. Finally, just three little side notes: Firstly, the questions below were all created by AI (Chat GPT specifically). Secondly, please be responsible when reading this post in terms of being triggered by this content and using safe coping skills. Finally, if you’re struggling with the topics discussed in this post/regarding this awareness Month, please see this old blog post which includes a ton of helpline contact details and supportive information: JOIN A RAPE & ABUSE SURVIVOR AT A HUGE GYNAE APPOINTMENT | VLOG & A COLLABORATION WITH AMAZON UK INCLUDED! | I'm NOT Disordered. Without further-ado, for the SAAM’s Day of Action, here’s the Q&A…

35: AN AGE NO ONE THOUGHT I’D REACH | HOW REPORTING MY TRAUMA WAS MORE LIFE-SAVING THAN MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES | IT’S MY BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!

“The best revenge is the massive success.”

Frank Sinatra

It sounds dramatic to say that I can’t believe I made it to 35, but when I tell you that, on numerous occasions, even the professionals – mostly Psychiatrists, but also two ICU Doctors – made comments that they couldn’t envision me making it to my ‘next’ Birthday (mostly between the ages of 18 and 23!) … perhaps now you’ll see the rationale to my surprise that I’m still here?! It meant that I was originally going to centre this Birthday blog post around reasons why I believe I managed to make it to this age, but I found out that I’d done something incredibly similar for my 28^th Birthday (you can read it here) and my 31^st (which you can read here)! In thinking about the reasons, I made it, I realised that I’d list reporting my trauma as the first one – even though I had interactions with mental health services before that which most would probably assume should getting help and support, should have been the first life-saving thing to happen. So, I decided to focus on that…

THE ULTIMATE SIGN TO REPORT YOUR TRAUMA: FIVE REASONS WHY I’M GLAD I REPORTED MY RAPE & ABUSE TO THE POLICE & HOW DBT CAN HELP YOU TO REPORT YOUR OWN

It’s a goddamn blaze in the dark,

And you started it,

You started it,

So yeah, it’s a war

It’s the goddamn fight of my life

And you started it

Taylor Swift – Ivy

At first, this blog post was just going to be a post on the blog’s Instagram (@imnotdisordered) but, in all honesty, I found that I had too much to say than would fit on Instagram! So, I wanted to talk through the story behind me reporting my experiences of six months of sexual abuse and – during that time and by the same perpetrator – one instance of rape to the Police and then I’m going to share why I’m so glad that I did that. Reporting crimes like these can be controversial and can lead to a lot of mixed feelings for survivors, but I think one key concern for those who are yet to report their experiences, is that they’ll regret it. So, I want to properly answer the question I’m often asked when people hear that despite reporting the rape to the Police, CPS made the decision not to prosecute him (with the claim that there wasn’t enough evidence) … I have no regrets and – if anything – it’s the exact opposite because the impact reporting the rape and abuse has had on me, has actually given me motivation to encourage others to report their own experiences…

JOIN A RAPE & ABUSE SURVIVOR AT A HUGE GYNAE APPOINTMENT | VLOG & A COLLABORATION WITH AMAZON UK INCLUDED!

 

I found a strength I've never known
I've been thrown out, I've been burned

When I'm finished, they won't even know your name

You brought the flames, and you put me through hell
I had to learn how to fight for myself

Ke$ha – Praying

On May 2^nd, I had to attend an appointment with Gynaecology to discuss having my smear under a general anaesthetic. I decided to film the day for two reasons: the first, was to provide empathy and advice to other survivors and those in a similar situation. The second reason was to give insight to those who judge people for not having this procedure. My general message from this? Don’t judge a person’s journey, when you haven’t walked in their shoes. In case there are people out there who are interested in this experience and don’t want to or can’t watch videos, I thought I would write a quick blog post about it too and managed to get a collaboration with Amazon UK for it! At the end, however, I’ve still also inserted the entire vlog from YouTube…

THE FIRST THREE MONTHS OF THE SHAKE MY HAND CAMPAIGN

You might remember, I wrote a blog post launching my brand-new media campaign; Shake My Hand on the date of its website reveal; June 17^th (if you missed it, you can read it here), and now – over two months later – I thought I’d give you all an update. I actually really enjoyed myself when I was going through all the social media posts, website articles, emails, and documents that have evolved and been created in the time since that blog post on the 17^th! It was pretty amazing to see just how much has been done and accomplished in that space of time, so this feels like a nice little post to hopefully highlight the power of hard work, passion, dedication, and determination…

HOW STAYING PRODUCTIVE WITH THE SHAKE MY HAND CAMPAIGN IS SAVING MY LIFE | WORLD SUICIDE PREVENTION DAY 2024

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…

A COLLABORATION TEASER: WHY IT’S OK TO REWARD YOURSELF | COME ONLINE SHOPPING WITH ME ON WARDOW

“Shopping is a way of life. It’s the way I treat myself.”

Sarah Jessica Parker

As you might know from a two-part series (part one is here and part two is here) I published recently with St Oswald’s Hospice, I’ll be working on a huge collaboration with the charity that will be published on July 15^th 2024 and you’ll – hopefully! – be excited to know that across these three weeks prior to that, I’ll be publishing a couple of ‘Collaboration Teasers!’ With a huge part of the St Oswald’s Hospice collaboration being centred around the opening of the charity’s new retail store in Blyth (you can find all the details of that store here), I thought I’d make these Collaboration Teasers themed on retail and, more specifically, online shopping! So, for this Collaboration Teaser, I’ll be chatting through why it’s absolutely fine to reward yourself and then there’ll be some bits of my shopping on Wardow scattered throughout…

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH & LEARNING ONLINE | INCLUDING ALL THE COURSES ON MY WISHLIST

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

Dr. Seuss

I actually began my first distance-learning course way back in 2014 when I was a sectioned inpatient of a specialist psychiatric hospital in Bradford. Since then, I have completed a whole range of courses online too and after having recently enrolled on another one (which I’ll talk about later in the post); I was inspired to write this blog post. So, I’ll be talking about all my thoughts on learning, the benefits you can experience when you’re learning online, some tips for both completing your course and managing your mental health whilst you learn, my education journey, my Wishlist on my three favourite online learning sites, and so much more…

PICKING APART FOUR ABUSE POSTS | MARKING SEVENTEEN YEARS SINCE THE ABUSE ‘ENDED’

“It is through that brokenness that we find courage and strength. It is what empowers us to do great things.”

K. S. Ruff

In deciding to once again mark the anniversary of the ‘end’ of the abuse I experienced (April 20^th but I thought I’d put this post up now), I knew I’d set myself a challenge because with I’m NOT Disordered now being over eleven years old(!), there has been ample amount of time to have created and published numerous posts about the abuse. Which, for thinking about this post, had me asking myself: ‘will there even be any angles left that I haven’t written from?!’ And, when I searched ‘abuse’ in my post archive, I wasn’t at all surprised – and felt completely validated – to see an enormous list of blog posts of various points of view, using different approaches, and with numerous inspirations! As I scanned through them and found myself developing thoughts, feelings, and opinions on each, I finally thought of the idea for this post… I’m going to start with a few tips on how to cope with reading about abuse (for obvious reasons!), and then I’ve chosen the four abuse posts I remember most, and I’ve picked them apart – talked through my favourite bits, parts I’d like to change, any differences between their publication date and today, and things I’ve learnt from the posts…

I’M TURNING 33!!!

*This post is a bit of a follow-in from my previous post where I picked apart some of my Birthday blog posts, you can read it here*

Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you look at it – there’s a huge mental health awareness date (Time To Talk Day) taking place on my actual Birthday of February 1^st, and since I have a really special piece of content already lined up to mark that date; I thought I’d post my Birthday blog posts beforehand. Now, a genuine ‘unfortunately,’ is that due to a new commitment (which I can’t quite talk about just yet) I’m unable to complete the thought behind my Birthday posts which was to split all my Birthday blog posts up and go through each of them talking about the bits that stand out, what has changed, what’s stayed the same… So, in addition to the previous blog post I’ve linked at the beginning of this one, I managed to write about my 26^th Birthday blog post and then I’ve put together a little reel at the end of the post…

HOW I’VE MADE IT THIS FAR | MY NEW BOOK IS AVAILABLE TO BUY NOW!!! | PART 1 OF 4

Buy You’re NOT Disordered NOW!!

*This post is the first of 4 which will be published every day for the following 3 days!*  

If you’ve read I’m NOT Disordered for a while or have seen the cover graphic to the left of the blog posts, then you’ll probably know that I released a book a few years ago called Everything Disordered (which you can also buy on Amazon - just click on the cover!) and I was honestly worried that having already written a book, the importance and meaning would be taken away in publishing another. Fortunately, the entire process of YND – from having the idea for it to the publication party and everything in between! – has (for so many reasons) felt massively different from that which I experienced with my first book. And one of the largest differences has been the sense of achievement and the notion that it really is a true testament to the progress I’ve made; both in my blogging career and in my mental health recovery journey…

RE-EVALUATING MY ENTIRE LIFE

“Evaluate yourself and your calling worthily enough, and be proud of it.”

Sunday Adelaja

Even if you only really ‘know’ me through, I’m NOT Disordered or via my social media (@aimes_wilson on Instagram and Twitter), then you will likely be aware of the massive mental health relapse I’ve been going through for around a month. What you likely won’t know – because even those who actually ‘know’ me don’t all know! – is that this relapse is the result of a ‘psychotic episode’ that has mainly evolved around me having these two ‘delusional beliefs’ that have massively impacted my safety on far too many occasions and to far too great a degree of severity. In the last three weeks alone, I’ve had to attend my local A&E several times, have ended up in resuscitation, have been sedated, I’ve also even required surgery because my conviction of these beliefs has been so great, powerful, and overwhelming. These instances – and numerous other situations I’ve found myself in recently – have resulted in me engaging in some very difficult conversations with a variety of people, and it was one of these, that has led to this blog post…

#HEREFORTHEKITTENS | PENULTIMATE POST | WEEK THREE: THE TWO LARGEST CHANGES RUBY’S THIRD WEEK HAS MADE TO MY MENTAL HEALTH | IN COLLABORATION WITH CATS PROTECTION & FEATURING AN ETSY DISCOUNT CODE | AD

This post and the next/last one is part of a series named Here For The Kittens and are all in collaboration with Cats Protection, the UK’s largest feline welfare charity…

You can find all the links for their social media here: Cats Protection’s LinkTr.ee

You can find the first post of this series here: http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2023/05/hereforthekittens-series-intro-managing.html

The second post is here:

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2023/05/hereforthekittens-week-one-all-emotions.html

The third post is here:

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2023/06/hereforthekittens-week-two-unseen-baby.html

After wanting to thank you all again for the attention, empathy, passion, and dedication you’ve all shown to this series and therefore to Cats Protection – we are all incredibly grateful for your support. After a chat with my Mum, I found the inspiration for this post in the series and so it will be focused on the improvements I’ve seen in my mental health since getting Ruby three weeks ago…

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO INTERACTING WITH ABUSE SURVIVORS | (THE FINAL) PART THREE

You can read the first part of this series: 

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2023/04/the-ultimate-guide-to-interacting-with.html

You can read the second part of this series:

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2023/05/the-ultimate-guide-to-interacting-with.html

I’m proud of who I am,

No more monsters, I can breathe again,

And you said that I was done

Well, you were wrong and now, the best is yet to come

Kesha – Praying

Almost every time I’ve told someone I was abused there has been a comment along the lines of “I’m so sorry…” and in all honesty, no matter who the person or what the situation, it’s never really something I want to hear. I don’t tell people about it because I want them to feel sorry for me. I totally recognise that this comment or attitude is typically meant with the best intentions and is usually absolutely genuine; it can just still feel a bit condescending and patronising… I think it’s kind of similar to one of those things where sometimes the context of it doesn’t matter; it’s like you just almost automatically react/respond.

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO INTERACTING WITH ABUSE SURVIVORS | PART TWO

You can read the first part of this series: http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2023/04/the-ultimate-guide-to-interacting-with.html

‘Cause you brought the flames and you put me through hell,

I had to learn how to fight for myself,

And we both know all the truth I could tell

I’ll just say this is ‘I wish you farewell’

Kesha – Praying

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO INTERACTING WITH ABUSE SURVIVORS | PART ONE

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”

Laurell K. Hamilton

I’ve recently found myself in a few mental health crises that have really ended up resulting in a lot of instances where I’ve felt like I have been treat poorly by psychiatric professionals and I’ve found myself remembering when I used to help an Inspector of my local Police force and a member of staff from the mental health NHS Trust in my area, to deliver mental health training to new Police recruits. Aside from it filling me with hope that I could shape the understanding these Officers had and therefore the quality of their response to anyone with a mental illness, it also taught me the importance of do’s and don’ts in the mental health world. And, more specifically, the importance of those do’s and don’ts coming from someone with actual personal experience of being shown these various responses or given such treatment in relevant situations, because in psychiatric care, experience could/should mean a whole lot more than a certificate…

THE REGRETS & MOTIVATIONS IN REPORTING ABUSE | MARKING 16 YEARS SINCE THE ABUSE ‘ENDED’

“So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialised, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: ‘this did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault and responsibility of the adult. I was – and am – innocent.’”

Ellen Bass & Laura Davis

April 20^th is one of those anniversaries where it alternates each year with either feeling like what happened on this date in 2007 (the ‘end’ of the abuse) occurred just the other day or an entire lifetime ago! Ironically though, this post is something I’ve actually wanted to write for a long time, but I’ve always been really aware that if I even hover towards using the wrong words, it could be a disaster. Now that I’ve ‘relapsed’ in my mental health though, I feel more capable of taking this risk…

If you’ve been reading, I’m NOT Disordered for some time now, you’ll probably know; but because I have so many new readers every day I didn’t want to risk not starting at the beginning. So, in 2006 a person who was of massively high standing in the community and my life and who was seen as trustworthy and respectable began abusing me. He managed to start doing it under the radar because I was attacked on my way to school one day in the November and began having panic attacks. My abuser offered to provide 1:1 support where I could go and sit with him when I was struggling or upset and so when he first hurt me; and it became the other way around (him calling me into his office) no one even batted an eyelid.

BRAVERY & MENTAL HEALTH | FAVOURITE BRAVERY IMAGES | IN COLLABORATION WITH PINTEREST

So, if you’re lucky, you may not remember; but in July 2022, I broke my wrist in a number of places after falling down some stairs (you can read more about the accident here). And it’s been an incredibly long and rocky road since then with the original surgery on the Radius break failing, and then the second surgery to remove the hardware from it, and to add more to the Ulna break because it wasn’t healing. Now, well over one month since that second surgery, I’m still in so much pain on the Ulna break and an x-ray on the 16^th January has showed that despite the pins they’ve put in, the break still hasn’t repaired – apparently it’s called a ‘non-union’ – and so I’m facing the prospect of a third surgery. This time, my incredible surgeon plans to remove the metal in there, add some wires, and do a bone graft from my hip into the break (which I think just sounds painful never mind how it might actually feel!). Needless to say, I cried a lot, and it is that which has inspired this blog post, where I’ve chosen my five favourite images from Pinterest that – for me – inspire bravery…

EVERYTHING ALL OF YOU MEAN TO ME | I’M NOT DISORDERED’S 10TH BIRTHDAY PARTY

For the third time in my blogging career, I hosted another party to celebrate a milestone I’m NOT Disordered and I have reached (the previous two were for reaching 100,000 readers and then reaching 1,000,000), and I have to admit, I think it was actually my favourite one of them all! With the previous two events being quite large and formal, I wanted to do something more informal and intimate. I mean, at the 100k party, I had 100 guests and a few were merely plus one’s for the people who I did know! And then not many people were able to come to my one million party because of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown. So, keeping in mind that nothing ever goes perfectly, I decided to host this party at a local café (Dolly Dimples) for nine of the most important people in my life and it’s that which has inspired this post about how much all of the party attendees, and you (as my readers) mean to me…

GOODBYE 2022, HELLO 2023

Happy New Year!

You’re probably inundated with blog posts celebrating the New Year; and they’re probably all from a very similar angle – as is probably the case with my doing a whole new logo and theme for I’m NOT Disordered… So, this year, to mark the beginning of 2023, I’ve decided to do something a bit different (hopefully!) on here; and I’ve picked out a few random – but memorable – bits and pieces from throughout 2022. There’s no real order to it, I wanted it to be kind of similar to opening a memory box in that everything is in a bit of a jumble, and you just ruffle through it to pick bits out and talk about them…