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…

THE TEN BIGGEST INSULTS IN MENTAL HEALTH

In my previous post, I talked about acceptance in connection with hallucinations and something I said has inspired this post: ‘…people reading this who have never hallucinated might not understand…’ It’s quite a common belief in mental health service users; that those on the ‘outside’ looking in will never understand what they are going through. I think that in fairness, those on the ‘inside’ might never understand what it is like for the people looking in. I’m not going to lie, it’s taken me a long time to be able to see it from both sides because I was so caught up in what was happening to me that when it/I was misunderstood, I’d get angry and defensive. Natural though, right? Like, anyone would be like that if they felt insulted… no matter what the situation.

I really hope that this post does a couple of things: I hope that it doesn’t just tell ‘outsiders’ what not to say but that it also tells them why they might be met with a certain reaction when they do say these things; because I don’t believe they always mean to be offensive. I also hope that it offers some assurance to the ‘insiders’ that they aren’t the only ones these things are being said to, and that they aren’t the only ones to feel insulted by them.

1.      “Shake it off”

"WE THOUGHT YOU WERE THE RINGLEADER" | MY THOUGHTS ON ENCOURAGING SELF-HARM | TW

“Do you know anyone in your town who self-harms?”

“Not in my town… nearby; why?”

“There’s a group of young girls encouraging each other to self-harm and for a while now, we’ve thought you were the ringleader!”

And that little quote, ladies and gentlemen, came from a Northumbria Police officer once he’d detained me under the Mental Capacity Act.

Now, does anyone remember #Cut4Bieber? If not (I wrote a post on it!), came off the back of a photo surfacing online of Justin Bieber taking drugs and his fans somehow interpreted it as a cause to feel hopeless and therefore a reason to self-harm. I think that when that occurred in 2013, it was the first time that I’d witnessed/experienced someone encouraging another person to do such an act.

But then as I spent more time in Hospital, I gained a whole new insight into the workings of the ward. When I was first admitted in 2012, I kept myself to myself and didn’t make the effort to get to know the other inpatients because I really didn’t think I’d be there that long (two and a half years in the end). When I realized I was in it for the long haul, I made friends with all of the girls and with one in particular. The upside to this was having someone to talk to who could identify with and understand me. The downside? I became part of the ‘club.’ Adopted the ‘us versus them’ mindset. It was this new insight that introduced me to the dark side of service user relationships with one another. Rather than supporting one another and bonding over our similar experiences and mutual thoughts, feelings, and coping mechanisms; some of the girls were encouraging one another to copy their own unsafe, and unhealthy coping skills of self-harm.

ABUSE IN FIVE LOST QUOTES

I love writing posts like this! They’re so simple yet so enlightening. It’s comforting to have the ability to relate to someone or something. Even if it is a TV show and the quotes are scripted! And when they enable you to talk about thoughts and feelings in a way that is easier for others to understand. And that’s what this blog is all about; gaining a better understanding on all the different sides of abuse.

Quick thanks to Becky for lending me the DVDs!

Something I’d say to those who were in my life at the time:

1.     Hurley: “I thought it was kind of obvious. I mean, who couldn’t see that coming?”

WHY WE NEED TO STOP THE BLAME GAME IN ABUSE

blame

[blām]

VERB

1.     assign responsibility for a fault or wrong.

"the inquiry blamed the engineer for the accident"

synonyms:

hold responsible · hold accountable · hold liable ·

[more]

NOUN

1.     responsibility for a fault or wrong.

"his players had to take the blame" ·

[more]

synonyms:

responsibility · guilt · accountability · liability · onus ·

[more]

I first experienced blame when the abuse began. That sounds obvious. But actually, the things that were said to me by my abuser led me to blame myself for its occurrence. Maybe I deserved it. Maybe I was such a terrible person that I deserved it. It’s so much easier to blame yourself for all of the bad things in your life than it is to blame another person. And by easy, I mean that it doesn’t take much thought; you don’t have to think about whose fault it is. It was yours. And that’s it. And when numerous bad things seem to be happening to you it’s easy to get it into your head that since you are the common factor in all of these things then maybe they’re your fault. I guess it’s all about where you are in the life lesson that it’s not always bad things that happen to bad people. In fact, it’s more common for bad things to happen to good people and for the bad people to have good things.