YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED...

You may have noticed a ‘slight’ change to I’m NOT Disordered! This change would be the logo and colour scheme!

There’s going to be a full blog post about the decision to do this, but in the meantime, there’s some lengthy, detailed content about it on my social media…

Twitter: @aimes_wilson

Instagram: @aimes_wilson 

BLOGVEMBER 2024 | DAY NINETEEN | HOW & WHERE TO PUBLISH IT

 

BLOGMAS 2020 WITH I’M NOT DISORDERED | RECOMMENDATION TWENTY-TWO: FAVOURITE SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS | IN COLLABORATION WITH LEAPS & GUM ON MY SHOE | AD

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

Today, I’m pairing up with Listening Ear And Positive Support (LEAPS) Social Media Manager and Martin Baker from the blog Gum On My Shoe, to bring to you our favourite social media accounts.

We’re going to start with the Social Media Manager of the support group I Chair; LEAPS, who has created a list of ten favourite Twitter accounts…

Hello, I’m the Social Media Manager for LEAPS and I manage their Twitter Account. Aimee has asked me to write about 10 followers from the LEAPS Twitter for her Blogmas Series, but you could always look through our amazing followers and choose for yourself who to follow!

@leapsonline are a support group in the North East who offer help and support to anyone over the age of 18 and who are unwaged. We provide support with employment, interviews, training, benefits and mental health and we are funded by @TNLComFund.

The 10 twitter accounts are:

TRUST & MENTAL HEALTH | MY SUNDAY TWITTER TAKEOVER WITH TALK & SUPPORT | AD

By chance, the Social Media Manager for LEAPS (the support group I Chair) noticed a call for individuals to take over the Twitter account for Talk and Support (https://twitter.com/TalkandsupportJ) and kindly nominated me for the role! When I was given the login details, I felt a true honour in that moment from the realisation that I was being hugely trusted – not only with the account’s reputation, but also trusted to produce content which will be of interest to their followers. And it got me thinking about trust in general, why it’s so important to me, and what it means in mental health…

The first instance which I feel massively affected my thoughts around trust, was the abuse I experienced from November 2006 to April 2007. Since CPS determined there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute my abuser, I’m now unable to disclose his identity; but what I can say is that he was in a position of power and therefore was trusted by a number of people (including professionals). He was trusted to do the exact opposite of what he was doing to me – he was supposed to be helping, supporting, and caring for myself and others.

Instead, he took that trust and used it as an opportunity to hurt me because it instilled in him the belief – maybe even ‘knowledge’ because he was arrogant like that – that he’d get away with it. I mean, he frequently reminded me during the abuse that even if I did tell someone what he’d been doing to me, they wouldn’t believe it of him. They would never be able to even imagine the person they knew and trusted doing something so awful (massive understatement!).

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.