THE THINGS A SUICIDE ATTEMPT COULD STOP

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.

WHY MY PETS HAVE A SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT | IN COLLABORATION WITH FLUFFY CREATURES LTD | DISCOUNT CODE INCLUDED | AD

*This piece is in collaboration with the Etsy store: Fluffy Creatures LTD and features photos of their products which weren’t gifted, though there is a discount code below!)*

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/FluffyCreatureLtd

https://www.instagram.com/fluffycreatureltd/

Discount code (20% off when you spend £10): NOTDISORDERED

So, you may have missed it, but I got a new mini lop lionhead bunny (Luna) on September 1^st (you can read about her arrival here) and it almost felt inevitable – to me – that I created a joint Instagram account for her and my little calico rescue cat; Emmy… 

https://www.instagram.com/big.pawslittle.paws/

A FRESH START

The reason I had to make the decision to even just get Luna was because my previous lop Lionhead bunny; Pixie was put to sleep in April (you can read about her death here).

PART TWO OF THREE | EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ABUSE

Having thoroughly enjoyed writing the ‘everything-you-need-to-know’ style posts in the past, when I checked through previous posts about abuse, I noticed they all seem to be in pieces… Bits of information, parts of my experience, a few tips; all just separated into so many different posts. Of course, they are that way because up to the date they were published, they were the things I knew. The things that had happened. And I’m not suggesting that I’m at a point where I now know absolutely everything about the subject, but I do feel that I’m at a pretty good stage in my mental health recovery to feel I am now able to collate all that I have learnt, and all that I know. Unfortunately, abuse is a subject where I’d argue you will never fully understand unless it’s something you’ve experienced, so posts like this – media content by survivors – can be the best resource for those who want to learn more…

PART ONE: http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2021/02/everything-you-need-to-know-about-abuse.html

 

Reporting It: Introduction To Deciding To Speak Up

I think the two most fundamental points to reporting abuse are who you tell and when you tell them. I don’t like to have ‘regrets’ in life, but I do question my decision to have not reported the abuse immediately after the first instance of it. I say ‘decision’ and there might be some people out there who feel that reporting the abuse isn’t even an option – that they have so many reasons not to tell someone that it just became less of a choice and more of a ‘must.’ I can understand that… I mean, if I had drawn up two columns, the disadvantages or risks of speaking up would’ve made for a longer list than the one for bonuses or positives. Yet, I was still very aware of making a conscious decision between the two columns.

Now, I’ve debated about whether to write about all the reasons for me to have not spoken up… On the one hand, it might reassure others who have experienced these to know that they are not alone and to give them courage to defy anyone who attempts to devalue their rationales. On the other hand, what if I was to write something that a person hasn’t considered to be a reason but who believes it would apply to them too? It’d be as though I’d given someone reason not to report abuse and that is obviously absolutely the opposite of the message I want to get across in this piece!

WHY MENTAL HEALTH IS TAKING A BEATING WITH THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC | IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CUMBRIA, NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

This post is in partnership with the wonderful mental health NHS Trust for my area; CNTW (Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust) so at the end I’ll be including all of their links and one of their most important articles produced during this Pandemic.

I’d like to think I’m a pretty fair and balanced kind of person in that I can usually see a disagreement from both sides, so when I write blog posts and posts on social media I try to imagine the other side to it… You know, in my last post: ‘WHAT I WANT YOU TO KNOW DURING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC,’ I talked a little about how people are feeling that they can’t talk about how the pandemic is affecting them because they’re sure that there’s someone ‘worse off.’ And I absolutely get it; I mean, there’s tweets about Grandmas dying alone because visiting in hospitals is suspended and people having their lives genuinely turned upside down to coincide with the UK lockdown regulations (which you can read here).

I think that the one common impact that the Coronavirus Pandemic is having on at least the majority of people, is on our mental health. People often make the mistake of thinking that to be struggling with your mental health, you must have some sort of diagnosis, but this isn’t true. Everyone has mental health in the same way that everyone has physical health, and you can struggle with your thoughts and feelings without it being you must have an official ‘label’ or disorder. Someone can feel sad without having a formal diagnosis of Depression. You can feel anxious without it needing to result in a panic attack for it to be worth talking about. And you can struggle with your mental health without needing to feel suicidal for it to be deserving of asking for help and support.

BLOGMAS 2019 – POST TWENTY : BRINGING LIGHT TO MY LIFE | CHRISTMAS AT CRAGSIDE | NATIONAL TRUST | AD

Thanks to a poll on my Twitter back in November, my wonderful followers decided that I should publish a blog post and film a vlog every day for the entirety of December! 

So welcome to December 20th…

I really struggled to come up with content for this post with me never doing the basic ‘today we went here, and we did that’ kind of posts so I enlisted the help of fellow Blogger; Martin Baker!

Cragside, a National Trust site in Northumberland, was the first home to be lit by hydroelectricity which made the Victorian House years ahead of its time with its ingenious gadgets and modern conveniences. This has inspired my post – featuring photos from my visit there – to be about what brings light to my life when things get dark! I won’t lie, I struggled to avoid saying the same things as in post nineteen about what makes me happy, so I’ve been a bit more general…



Love

When my mental health was poorly, I didn’t - for one minute - think that I had the capability to love someone the way I knew that my Mum loved me; I’ve always been very lucky in that way - that I’ve always felt loved by someone special. My Mum has always said that she’d walk over hot coals for me, and I’d always nodded and smiled and felt all warm inside, but I’d never really understood that feeling or felt it towards another person. Of course, I love my Mum and my family but when I was poorly it felt as though I couldn’t love them properly. It was as if there was a range of 0 to 10 but my love could only reach 7 and not because I chose to, but because that’s the most I was capable of. And it wasn’t just love, it was happiness, excitement… all of the positive emotions; as though my mental health had deteriorated so much that I could only experience negative feelings to such an overwhelming degree as a ‘10’.

BLOGMAS 2019 – POST ELEVEN : POSITIVE INSTINCT | ETSY COLLABORATION | AD

Thanks to a poll on my Twitter back in November, my wonderful followers decided that I should publish a blog post and film a vlog every day for the entirety of December!

So welcome to December 11th…

Today is all about my collaboration with one very special brand on Etsy, in this post I’ll be reviewing the products they sent to me and on December 23rd you can enter a competition to win these products and the remaining five that I’ll be reviewing every other day this month!

 

So, at first, I had no clue how I was going to write an entire post about a cup and then I realized that maybe I could use the company’s name (Positive Instinct) as inspiration instead! So, I thought I’d talk a little about positivity, how I lost it, how I got it back, and how I maintain it…





I think that after the abuse positivity became very hard to come by because I honestly believe it made me into a different person. I think it’s inevitable that a trauma – of any kind – will change things for you and will have an impact on your personality, your ethics, morals, and all of the little things that make you who you are. I mean, before the abuse started when I was fifteen, I had had a very innocent and sheltered childhood and when you’ve experienced very little adversary in your life, it leaves you feeling pretty positive and trusting of others. So, the abuse was such a shock to the system that it felt as though it completely wiped away my personality and replaced it with an angrier and more negative one. By the time the abuse ended – after six months – I didn’t recognize myself.