DAY TEN | A SECRET BLOGMAS 2025

“We have to be careful in how we use this light shined on us.”

Melinda Gates

Welcome to A Secret Blogmas 2025!

Today is Day Ten and this tenth post is all about the beneficial impact there is if you – as a content creator - are careful when creating content that concerns sensitive topics. As a mental health Influencer, there are sensitive topics everywhere and so this is something I’ve learnt the importance of massively over the years. Keep reading to find out why and how being careful with sensitive topics can impact the success and popularity of your content and/or your platform…

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…

DBT, PRACTICAL ITEMS, & BRAVERY IN HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS | MY FINAL TENDON SURGERY

So, I was recently admitted to the Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) – a hospital under the Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – for a final surgery on my thumb and it made me think and realise all the different elements you need when being admitted to hospital. And that they don’t have in evolve around packing a toothbrush and chargers for your phone!

Why I was admitted…

Unfortunately, I broke my wrist in November 2019, and apparently that injury can lead to what happened with my thumb on Boxing Day (December 26^th) 2019. I was using my thumbs to try to wiggle the cork of a bottle of Prosecco loose when all of a sudden, I couldn’t move my right thumb (you can read my first post about the injury here)!

It wasn’t as though it was sore, and I couldn’t move it because it’d hurt, I just genuinely couldn’t move it. It was so frustrating because I could feel my brain telling my thumb to lift up, but it just hung there, powerless, limp and lifeless. It was definitely one of those things where you don’t appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone! I really hadn’t recognised just how important my thumb was to my general movement and ability to do things until I couldn’t use it.

HOW THE ABUSE HAS CHANGED MY LIFE

So, the inspiration for this post came after I first submitted the manuscript for my soon-to-be-released book; Everything Disordered, to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). There were a few changes and corrections needed in terms of the sizing and layout of the book (it has already been proofread by Emma Wharfe from St Oswald’s Hospice) and one of the biggest and most obvious change was the design of the books cover. Having made a little song and dance about the original cover design in using social media posts to build up the release of it, I was dubious about making the change. I was so worried that others would see me as inconsistent and unreliable. After speaking about my worry and think about it a bit more, I came to the conclusion that to feel the need to make changes in this way, shouldn’t be discouraged or belittled. At the same time, having been a completely intolerant person to change of any kind, I could understand others struggling with this…

HOW THE ABUSE HAS CHANGED ME:

1.    My childhood impression of the world was destroyed

I think the first big change in my life was a combination of my trauma – the abuse – and growing up. I had an idyllic childhood that was full of love and safety. I can’t remember anything ‘bad’ ever happening until I was fifteen and the abuse started. I’d love to give my children (if I have any!) a very similar childhood, but with one difference: I’d make sure that their schooling gave them better education around trauma and mental health.

2.    The self-harm response

I think whilst it’s more than understandable, for abuse and rape to have a hugely negative impact on a person’s mental health; I can imagine a factor to increase the risk of this happening, is when the victim (or survivor depending on which way you see it) lacks the knowledge to even determine the abuse to be wrong and to know what to do about it. I mean, I’ll probably always wonder whether knowing those things would have provided a level of stability in some way. As though knowing the words ‘rape’ and ‘abuse’ would aid me in the aftermath for my mental health. That maybe I’d have coped in a much safer way.

HOW TO COPE WITH TRIGGERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

“Is there any way that you can stop it from happening?”

“I’d have to delete my entire Twitter!”

I like to think of myself as quite a fair and balanced person so that whilst I stand by the fact that I’m NOT Disordered has been hugely life-saving in many different ways, I’ll also talk about the fact that social media can sometimes be very negative and harmful. And it is my recent experience of this that has inspired this blog post…

A few accounts I follow on Twitter, follow an account that is largely connected to my abuser and so occasionally that account’s content will appear on my newsfeed. Last week, a photo appeared. It was of my abuser back at work and in a position where he could re-offend. So many difficult emotions came to the surface; ones that I hadn’t felt in a very long time and I reverted to old coping mechanisms. I felt frustrated that no matter what I – and others – say, he seems untouchable. Invincible. I had to go through so many obstacles and challenges in order to finally report the abuse to the Police; and the fact that CPS are refusing to prosecute, just makes it feel so frustratingly pointless. It was like: ‘why did I bother working so hard if it was all for nothing?!’ I was so blinded by these overwhelming thoughts and feelings that I didn’t stop to consider how I was responding to them. I didn’t use my Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) skills or ring someone to talk it through; I just turned all of the frustrated anger on myself. I knew I wasn’t the right person; I’ve learnt that I don’t deserve to be in pain or to be going through everything I have experienced; and that suicide isn’t the best revenge. My Nana and Mum always brought me up to believe in karma and that what goes around comes around, and if this is true then I want to – and need to – be alive to see him get his comeuppance.

COMPLETE A WELLNESS RECOVERY ACTION PLAN WITH ME

“When the group developed WRAP, I was so impressed that I went home and wrote one for myself!”

– Mary Ellen Copeland

As someone who regularly puts almost her entire life out there for the general public to consume, I’m so interested in hearing/reading about the lives of others and seeing inside the most mundane of things! As someone who really struggles with completely mixed feelings of loneliness - sometimes all I want is to be surrounded by people and other times I can only tolerate the company of my pets – I mostly enjoy the YouTube ‘Get Ready With Me’ videos or ‘Speed Clean My Flat’ or ‘Come Shopping With Me’ because they enable me to have control over the company and how long it lasts! The important thing is the impact loneliness can have on a person’s mental health and so, in a desperate bid to help others experience the same positive things I feel when I watch similarly formatted videos. Though, of course I had to make my version mental health themed… Ever since I was discharged from the specialist psychiatric hospital in 2014, I’ve heard so many good things about Wellness Recovery Action Plans, but it wasn’t until recently that I – and my Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) – realized that I’ve never done one! And as with most documents in mental health, it has the chance of triggering negative thoughts and feelings by making you think back to hard times so I thought that maybe it’d also be helpful to me to feel that I sort of have someone with me while I complete it...