WHY I’M SPEAKING AT ANOTHER EVENT WITH CUMBRIA, NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | AN AD FOR THE WOMEN’S MENTAL HEALTH CONFERENCE

“When it comes to improving care for women and girls with mental health problems, there is no substitute for listening to those with lived experience. Not only about the complex life problems they have faced, but also their views about what has helped, and hindered their recovery. That’s why I’m so pleased that Aimee will be joining us, because she has lived and written about her life and has a very powerful story to tell.”

Linda Gask, Emerita Professor of Primary Care Psychiatry at the University of Manchester

Earlier this year, on February 27^th, I gave a speech at the Emotionally Dysregulated Young Person: Neurodevelopment, Mood, Trauma and Personality CPD Event for Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). The Trust’s Deputy Medical Director; Doctor Hermarette Van Den Bergh was also at the event and as a result of my input, she contacted me afterwards and asked me to speak at the upcoming Women’s Health Conference at the end of June. It was such an honour and filled me with pride at the thought I must have done a good job at that first event! So, I wanted to discuss the main reason why I’m going to speak at the event – to share experiences that professionals may not often hear…

MY ULTIMATE GUIDE TO STARTING OFF IN THE COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING INDUSTRY | MARKING 2.7 MILLION READERS!!!

“It is better to do little things with love than big things without love.”
Lailah Gifty Akita

When my mental health was really terrible (2009 – 2013) a huge mindset which exacerbated my suicidal thoughts and feelings – which led to very genuine attempts – was around the idea that my purpose in life was to kill myself young so as to bring attention to the failures in mental health services. For at least four years, I honestly believed that’s why I’d been put on this earth. And it made me feel hopeless, uninspired, and unmotivated to try to do anything different with my life. Finally, as a sectioned psychiatric hospital inpatient, I had therapy around the mindset (I blogged about it at the time too, you can read it here) and having started blogging just over one year earlier, I found myself able to overcome the mindset and replace it with the notion I’d slowly developed; that my blogging career – and all the good I was achieving with it – was why I’d survived everything. Communications and marketing, that was my passion and my purpose and having that opinion of the industry has led to me being passionate, dedicated, and determined to do well in it. So, as I’m NOT Disordered reaches the 2.7 million readers mark, I thought I’d finally share some of my knowledge and experience in the form of advice about starting off in this industry…

HOW TRAINING, EDUCATION, & RESEARCH HELPED ME TO PREPARE TO WORK AT A HUGE NHS EVENT

"Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning."

Thomas Edison

On a bi-monthly basis, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW), host a Service User and Carer Reference Group (which you can read more about on their website; here). For October’s, I attended as a Lived Experience Reporter for the first time and with the idea that I’m NOT Disordered probably has hundreds of readers who attend big events, I have put together this blog post, where I’ll talk through all the ways – emotional and practical – in which I’ve prepared for this NHS event, as well as some advice…

EVERYTHING BLOGGING HAS DONE TO ME | CELEBRATING TWO AND A HALF MILLION READERS!!!

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."

Zig Ziglar

In a recent career opportunity, I found myself having a lot of moments where I was thinking ‘I know that because of my blogging’ or ‘I learnt how to do that through blogging!’ And it is these moments and in celebration of I’m NOT Disordered reaching two and a half million readers, which have inspired this blog post where I’m going to chat through all the influences and the ways in which blogging has impacted me and changed my life…

TURNING 34!!! | EVERYTHING I THOUGHT I’D BE BY NOW

You shoot me down,

But I won’t fall,

I am titanium

David Guetta ft. Sia: Titanium

In a recent blog post for I’m NOT Disordered’s 12^th Birthday, I was going through my archives of old blog posts, and I happened across one from my 26^th Birthday (which you can read here) where I made a bit of a huge statement about where I’d like to be by the age of 33 and it’s something that I definitely haven’t achieved. It’s also something which I no longer even strive towards. So, it got me thinking about all the things I thought I’d be or have achieved by now and about how much life can change and develop and sometimes, rather than feel let-down and disappointed, we just have to grow and change too. We have to recognise that maybe it wasn’t meant to happen and that because something else has come along, it doesn’t at all mean that you’ve failed in some way. It’s about being accepting of change and recognising the potential opportunities and strength it can bring to you rather than zoning in and concentrating on any negatives and feelings of being unprepared or unwilling to take on something new and unexpected. I feel these are skills and mindsets which I’ve managed to gradually develop over the last decade, and I wanted to share with you how things around education and career have changed for me and how I’ve coped with these shifts in my life…

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…

BLOGMAS 2020 WITH I’M NOT DISORDERED | RECOMMENDATION SEVEN: ONLINE COURSES | IN COLLABORATION WITH CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE | AD

Hello and welcome to recommendation number seven of Blogmas 2020 with I’m NOT Disordered!

Today, I’ll be talking about the importance of education and recommending some of my favourite online courses that you could be taking… with a little help from the Centre of Excellence!

A lot of bad things happened to me at High School, and sadly, it really shaped – in a negative, debilitating way – my thoughts around education and being in a classroom environment. The experiences left me uncertain about being in School, but I’d only ever been taught that after your GCSE’s, you do your A Levels, and then go to University, and then get a job! Teachers didn’t explain that you could do Apprenticeships, or even that you could do your A Levels at a College and didn’t have to stay at High School.

So, it meant that I had no idea how many options I had when staying at the horrible School became no longer appropriate! And instead of looking into what was available, I transferred to another High School and joined their Sixth Form to do my A Levels. I was determined that what had happened to me wouldn’t stop me building a future, but the conviction that Sixth Form was the only way forward meant that I didn’t even give myself time to consider whether I would cope being in a classroom again, or being surrounded by people who had the potential to abuse their position of power.

A LETTER TO YOU | I’M NOT DISORDERED’S UPCOMING BIRTHDAY!!

With I’m NOT Disordered’s seventh Birthday just around the corner (January 6^th), and the blog post to celebrate scheduled, it felt only right that I write a little something for you all!

To those who use my blog to feel less alone,


I’m so, so, sorry that you’ve felt alone in the first place – I know what an awful feeling that can be, so I really appreciate that I’m NOT Disordered helps you to feel understood and validated.


Loneliness in mental health is – sadly – a common feeling because our thoughts often lead us to believe that no one else has ever experienced what we are going through and in doing so, we’re left thinking that no one could ever understand how we feel.


When I was abused in 2006, there was very little in the media about rape and sexual abuse and the little sexual education I’d done at School, had been the traditional teaching of how-to-put-a-condom-on-a-banana! So, when the abuse began, I didn’t even know what it was called; never mind know that anyone else had ever been through it! And not knowing others had experienced abuse, meant that I didn’t know it could be survived – that you could come out of it ‘ok’. I didn’t realize that it would end; never mind that it could impact your mental health – let’s be honest, there wasn’t a whole lot in the media about that either – or that you could also come out of it stronger than ever! Perhaps if I’d known this, I might have felt better placed in speaking up against the abuse and reporting it the second it started and not two years later!

WHEN DO YOU NEED TO ‘GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER’?

The other day, at my Digital Marketing internship with Docere and SS Healthfoods, I was talking to one of the Marketing Executives about my long-term goals and all things Universities and careers. It made me think about how long it has taken for me to finally have those dreams/goals, and then I started to consider why I felt there should have been an age for me to have all these things decided. 


I don’t remember even thinking about a ‘dream job’ when I was younger until Middle School when a teacher told my Mum that she thought I’d end up being a Journalist (do you think ‘Blogger’ is close?) but I never really held onto that so much. When I came to the point of choosing my GCSE subjects, I didn’t really have a career in mind then either; I just chose the ones I was interested in – History, Media Studies, and Textiles. Then, when I was excluded from High School, I met a Lawyer specializing in Education and that became my goal – to be like her. I wanted to help children avoid experiencing everything that I had, when I was at School. 


So, at A Level, I took Law, Philosophy, and History, and with the abuse having ‘finished’ months before Sixth Form started, I threw myself into my schoolwork in a desperate bid to block out the memories of it. I also started working at my local Primark store in Newcastle city center but in the end, my mental health deteriorated to the point where there was no blocking anything out and I missed all of my final exams and quit my job because I attempted suicide. Even though I had an offer to study Law at Newcastle University, being sectioned under the Mental Health Act, I instantly didn’t want to work in anything to do with the law and after two weeks in a psychiatric hospital I decided to pursue my other interest; fashion and enrolled on a Summer course. Before I had a chance to attend the induction session, I was sectioned again. After my second longest admission in October 2009 to February 2010, I became interested in the notion of helping others and attempted to enroll on a childcare course but when my DBS came back with notes of my interactions with Police (occasions when I’d been sectioned or had ran away from Hospital), I was denied access to the course. In the end, I developed the belief that if I couldn’t look after myself then I shouldn’t attempt to look after anyone else.

THE TEN BIGGEST IMPACTS ON MY PERSONALITY | IN COLLABORATION WITH FUTURE LEARN AND MONASH UNIVERSITY | AD

I wrote recently (here) about my thoughts on personality after beginning the Monash University course (via futurelearn.com); Introduction to Psychology: The Psychology of Personality. On completing week two of the course, I got thinking about all of the things that can impact a person’s personality. I mean, I talked in my first post about how I believe that ‘personality’ is who you are but that doesn’t mean that I think it’s ingrained in you – that it’s natural or always stable throughout all kinds of circumstances and situations. I 100% believe that your personality can be shaped by external events and how you internalize these, how they change your views on the world and the way you react in different situations. 

MY THOUGHTS ON PERSONALITY | IN COLLABORATION WITH FUTURE LEARN & MONASH UNIVERSITY | AD

I recently started a new course with Monash University via futurelearn.com – Introduction to Psychology: The Psychology of Personality and it, inevitably, got me thinking a lot about personality, what it means to me, how it is developed and how it can become ‘disordered.’ 


A while ago now, the powers that be, renamed the diagnosis Borderline Personality Disorder to Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder. I laughed when I was told – it was just further evidence that the ultimate people to make such huge decisions don’t actually know all that much about the things they make decisions about. If they did, they’d know that, for the majority of service users, the biggest problem with the phrasing of BPD was the ‘Personality’ part and not the ‘Borderline’ bit. Yes, people unfamiliar to the diagnosis will wonder what is meant by ‘borderline’ but that can be answered. I know there are varied rationale behind the use of the word in the diagnosis; with the most common one being that it means borderline between sanity and insanity but if someone were to ask what is meant by ‘personality’ then it’s a different story – personality is subjective. Everyone has their own definition of it and their own belief on what shapes it. I mean, William Sheldon (1940) believed that personality was determined by your body shape and size (somatology)! He held the assumption that larger people (endomorphs) are more likely to be bold and assertive whereas smaller people (ectomorphs) are more likely to be intellectual and introverted. Once upon a time, I’m sure this theory was regarded very highly and agreed upon by many but these days? I know I can’t speak for anyone else, but I felt like laughing when I heard that this was a serious theory!

THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT TAKING ON TOO MUCH | FUTURE LEARN | AD

Recently, during my relapse, I’ve found that a lot of professionals and those who care about me (mainly my Mum) have talked to me about how much I take on in life.

They have helped me to realize that before the relapse, I was doing a lot of different things at once; from courses with Future Learn, to the problems of others, to projects with different organizations.

EDUCATION

There’re so many courses on Future Learn that I’d like to do at the moment, but I’ve learnt to do one at a time and to add the rest to my ‘Wishlist’ on the site. Now, I’m doing ‘Beyond Diagnosis:Is Psychiatric Diagnosis Helpful?’ which is a module facilitated by the University of Liverpool so it’s degree level learning. Considering the highest level, I’ve ever done was my A Levels in 2009…

EXCLUSIVE DISCOUNT CODE!!! | THREE FUTURELEARN COURSES I'D RECOMMEND | FUTURELEARN | AD

I'm beyond excited to offer you all a discount code of 15% off a* FutureLearn course!

*this code only applies to courses that are available to upgrade and not for degree's or paid-for courses

Aimee_Wilson_15

(This code will only be available for the first 80 people to use it!)

For the Writer:

1.     Start Writing Fiction

This course eight-week course is developed by the Open University and you’re advised to spend three hours a week on it. It’s also completely FREE but for £42 you can ‘upgrade’ to have unlimited access (which means there’s no eight-week limit) and a certificate. In this course you will hear from established writers who will talk about how they first began writing, and you’ll learn how to keep a journal and use it as a tool to develop your ideas and document your inspiration.

HOW EDUCATION HAS AFFECTED MY MENTAL HEALTH | FUTURE LEARN | AD

I’m honoured to announce that this post is in collaboration with Future Learn.

At school I excelled at English – from a young age I’d enjoyed writing (granted, back then it was for writing short stories on having my own horse) and one of my Middle School teachers predicted that I’d end up being a Journalist. But from as young as I can remember; we were taught at school that we do our GCSEs in High School, stay on for Sixth Form to sit our A Levels, and go to University to get a degree to get a job. We were never taught about Apprenticeships or alternative qualifications like Access to HE, BTEC, and vocational qualifications.

I'M NOT DISORDERED TAKES PART IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD RESEARCH STUDY | AD

The University of Sheffield have developed a questionnaire called ReQoL (Recovering Quality of Life) to help understand feelings and monitor the progress of recovery and quality of life for people who have different mental health conditions.

The research is being carried out by the University of Sheffield and is funded by the Department of Health.

It involves a quick (5-10 minutes) multiple choice questionnaire that does not affect your care.

For more information on the study please contact Dr Anju Keetharuth at the University of Sheffield by email at reqol@sheffield.ac.uk or by telephone on: 0114 222 0884

You can also read about the findings of the study and more details on the website: http://www.reqol.org.uk

HOW IT FEELS TO HEAR VOICES

‘A common form of auditory hallucination involves hearing one or more talking voices. This may be associated with psychotic disorders, and holds special significance in diagnosing these conditions.^[2] However, individuals without any psychiatric disease whatsoever may hear voices.’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_hallucination

Recently I’ve been struggling so much with my mental health and a huge reason for that has been that my auditory and visual hallucinations have come back.

I feel as though I’ve been battling the visual hallucinations for a while now… I think it started last year in around May or June because I can remember finally telling someone (my Mum) about them whilst holding the Rabbit I ended up buying (Pixie!)

But the auditory hallucinations seemed to suddenly come back, and with vengeance… It was like they were angry for being gotten rid of for so long. As though they’d still always been there but I’d been ignoring them. It’s like when you fall out with someone and stop speaking to them then you finally confront them… They’d be a bit riled; to say the least! Having been gone for so long, the voices had some pent-up energy and… volume, that they needed to get out of their system.

WOMEN'S MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS UNDERESTIMATED | PRESS RELEASE

Nine out of ten people do not realise women are more likely to have poor mental health than men, a new survey has shown.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is also more likely to be seen as a male condition than female, according to the poll from Agenda and Opinium.

Agenda, the alliance for women and girls at risk, is raising awareness about mental health as part of its Women in Mind campaign.

Katharine Sacks-Jones, Director of Agenda, said: “There is growing evidence that more and more women and girls are facing mental health problems. 

“But despite greater awareness of mental health in general, women’s mental health is still underestimated and misunderstood. 

#NURSINGANDCOPRODUCTION WITH CYGNET HEALTHCARE | AD

I was honoured, this week, to attend another Cygnet Healthcare event: ‘Cygnet Nursing Conference: IsCo-production the answer to reducing restrictive practice?’

Being invited to conferences, I like to make sure that I:

1. Understand the topic,

2. Have an interest in the topic, and

3. It will be relevant to readers.

When friends and family were asking what the event was about, I simplified it (not to sound patronising or condescending) with ‘talking about how working together can result in less restraints and forced medications and things(!).’ Number one? Check!

Co-production is the buzz word of the mental health industry right now; professionals are all promoting working alongside service users to create; a better experience of services, a safer environment, and a better understanding.  My personal experience of mental health services (as a whole) has been that staff would tell service users the rules and there were ‘punishments’ when they weren’t 100% adhered to. As my mental health improved, I began to see that what would be easier, is to work together; there could be no understanding without equality. Number two? Check!

The conference was centred around mental health. Number three? Check!

It was an early start - as most events/conferences are – but refreshments in the registration room and Rafik(Raf) Hamaizia’s cheerful, and positive Welcome speech seemed to have everyone eager for the day ahead!

COPING WITH MY ABUSER'S PROMOTION

I know already that this is going to be a hard post to write. And not because it’s deep, or emotional. But because I need to talk about something to do with my trauma, and as most of you (although there’s been a lot of new readers recently! – Welcome to I’m NOT Disordered!!) know; ‘due to legal reasons,’ I can’t give much information about the sexual abuse and rape that I was subjected to.

I could understand not being allowed to tell you the person’s name, but it’s that I can’t even tell you the basics. For example, what profession this person is in, or where the abuse happened. Apparently, just by saying those two basic details, and if you knew me during the years the abuse happened (2006-2007) then you could put it all together; and make a reasonable assumption of the identity of the person. Apparently, that wouldn’t be fair on him because he was never proven guilty.

Cygnet Healthcare #ChangeStigma Event | Ad

Stigma in Mental Health: The role stigma plays and strategies for positive change

Date: Tuesday 8th May 2017

Venue: Village Hotel Leeds South

www.cygnethealth.co.uk

Raf Hamaizia - About to have dinner with @CygnetNurses and @wayne2183ac but they don't eat as much as me so I have had snack beforehand

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Wayne S - and look who's just joined us, its @aimes_wilson

Raf Hamaizia - Having a catch-up with my @aimes_wilson after annoying @JulieKerry6 a little over dinner! Looking forward to tomorrow Anti-Stigma conference

Kicking off DAY TWO of #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek #MHAW2017 with @cygnethealth 's #changestigma event