HOW TO HELP SOMEONE FEEL LESS ALONE & RELEASING THE FIRST PRINT | MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK: DAY TWO | IN COLLABORATION WITH THE DESIGN PARLOUR & ETSY UK

Welcome to Day Two of Mental Health Awareness Week, today I’m collaborating with the Design Parlour from Etsy UK to bring you something very special…

A few months ago, I was searching for gifts for two of my best friend’s Birthdays, and came across this personalised illustration from the Design Parlour: Birthday Gift for H
er Best Friend Birthday Gift Birthday | Etsy UK. And from there, Ciara (the Design Parlour’s owner) and I got talking and put together a collaboration piece (THE ULTIMATE BIRTHDAY GIFT GUIDE | IN COLLABORATION WITH ETSY | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)) and then – as with so many things in my blogging career – it snowballed into something so much bigger…

So, this post is inspired by our first print we’ll be selling only on the Design Parlour’s Etsy store, and in honour of MHAW, we’ve kept it connected to the ‘loneliness’ theme and will be donating 10% of sales to the mental health charity: Mind. Using the phrase ‘you are not alone’ inspired me to write this piece about how you can help and comfort someone who is feeling lonely…

Relate, but don’t start a competition

When someone you know or care about – or sometimes, even complete strangers – voices a thought, feeling, or experience that you can relate to in some way, it’s incredibly hard to resist saying “I understand.” It can even be difficult to stop yourself from explaining why you believe that you ‘understand’ what they’re going through. But it’s important to recognise that one of the biggest dangers in talking about your own experiences can be a sense of competition. It can leave the person comparing what you’ve been through with their own situation and feeling somewhat minimised and unimportant.

THE IMPORTANCE OF VALIDATION IN MENTAL & PHYSICAL HEALTH

So, if you follow my Twitter you’ll have seen why this topic is so relevant in my life right now. So here’s why validation has had as great an impact on my mental and physical health as painkillers have(!)…

Back in late 2006, after the abuse began, I started having crippling tummy pains and was constantly being rushed to hospital for pain relief and tests but only on two occasions did they find something – cysts on my ovaries. I ended up having surgery one time to drain one of the cysts but for all of the times I was taken to hospital and they found nothing, I worried that soon the Doctors and Nurses would grow sick of me and that there could be one time when something was seriously wrong and they wouldn’t believe me. But the pain felt as real and as genuine as the keyboard feels while I type this.


Since my mental health has been completely stable after my medication increase earlier this year, I’ve noticed that I’m more in-tune with my body and physical health. I’ve occasionally had tummy pains still, but they’ve always found something; and I’ve actually been diagnosed with Poly-Cystic Ovaries. So, when I slipped on the ice on November 30^th (this year), I thought straight away that my wrist was broken but when I was sitting in the Minor Injuries waiting room, I was so scared that my X Ray would come back normal that I worried what it would mean to be told that nothing was wrong and be left doubting myself and my instincts again. But instead, the Nurse came along and said that it was ‘no wonder’ I was in so much pain because I had a Buckle Break right the way through the Radius in my wrist. I remember thinking ‘and if the X-Ray had come back ok then my pain would have been disingenuous?!’ But I guess that’s why validation is so essential; because otherwise, there’s the danger that you feel as though no one believes you – that they think you’re lying.