MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST THREE | SPENDING TIME WITH OTHERS

“If you live to be one hundred, I want to live to be one hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you”

Winnie The Pooh

The abuse started whilst I was in High School and when I began acting out at School because of the pent-up frustration of keeping it a secret, I quickly lost my friends. To them, I was either being a drama queen (a phrase I hate!) or a rebel. Either way, they found my attitude and behaviour annoying and I began getting bullied by the people I had once called my friends. Unlike a lot of people, I spoke up about the bullying straight away and unlike a lot of occasions, the telling off they had from a Teacher actually got through to them and the bullying stopped. 


When it did, I felt so alone and was desperate to build new friendships, but I was also very cautious too. I had the thought process that I didn’t want anyone getting too close to me because it would make it harder for me to hide the abuse from them and it felt as though – for so many reasons – telling someone wasn’t an option. I was also worried because the person who abused had built a relationship with me first and I’d trusted and respected him (the Police labelled this grooming), so I was nervous that building that sort of friendship would make me vulnerable for them to hurt or upset me. 

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST TWO | READING AS KINDNESS

“Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.”

Louis L’Amour

Welcome to the second post in the Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) series of blog posts. Today, I want to talk about how reading can be an act of kindness towards yourself and in connection with that, I thought I’d share with you my favourite books which cover kindness…


I’ve always enjoyed reading – to the point where my teacher at First School wouldn’t give me reading books for a long time so that the other pupils could catch up to my level! When I was little, I really loved the Sheltie book series because I was absolutely obsessed with horses, so I saw reading as a way to indulge in my hobby and passion. Seeing reading as a brilliant and enjoyable way to learn about something I was interested in, really motivated me to continue to read when I was younger. 

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST ONE | THE IMPORTANCE OF KINDNESS

“Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.”
Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

For the first time since they began hosting Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) twenty years ago, the Mental Health Foundation made the decision to change this year’s topic in response to the Coronavirus Pandemic and subsequent lockdown. Originally, the theme was set to be ‘sleep’ but it has now been changed to ‘kindness’ with the Foundation’s Chief Executive saying that “now more than ever, we need to re-discover kindness in our daily lives.”

Originally, for the ‘sleep’ topic, I’d planned to feature a questionnaire with a number of different people every day for the entire week and although the change in theme meant having to scrap my brainstorming and ideas, I was pleased with the decision to focus on ‘kindness.’ I mean, in all honesty, I think it would have been a bit ridiculous if the Foundation hadn’t responded to the Pandemic which is having a horrific impact on a lot of people’s mental health. There’s always the possibility of three different attitudes with negative things; you can either block them out and pretend they aren’t happening, or you can accept them as real and put all your attention and focus on them, or – finally – you could find the balance and recognize the negative whilst also refusing to forget about the positives in life. I think that in their decision to change the theme, the Foundation got the balance right and acknowledged the impact the Virus is having whilst also putting focus on something positive.

“YOU’RE JUST GOING TO CUT AGAIN!” | THE IMPORTANCE OF BELIEF & HOPE IN MENTAL HEALTH | MY RECENT SURGERY

For those who are new here or have missed my previous posts on it, in December 2019, I tore my EPL tendon in my thumb while opening a bottle of Prosecco on Boxing Day(!) and had to have emergency surgery. I then accidentally tore the repair and have been set to have a tendon transfer surgery (where they take some of the tendon from my index finger and use it in my thumb) ever since -  you can read about how I’m coping with the prospect of more surgery here.

My second surgery hasn’t just been postponed because of the lockdown though, my Surgeon is of the mindset that they need to get my thumb into as good a condition as possible before operating on it. So, until the surgery, I’ve had to learn how to cope with the pain and until the night of the 7^th (of May), I was managing with painkillers and my physiotherapy exercises. On the Thursday night, though, I got the most incredibly overwhelming pain in my thumb and out of pure desperation, I decided that I literally wanted to just cut it off! Looking back, of course that seems like a… ridiculously stupid idea but at the time, I was just so sick of the pain that I was willing to do whatever it took to make it stop. I’ve been in physical pain before and have never self-harmed because of it, so I just hope that this illustrates just how bad that initial pain was. On the other hand, I’ve self-harmed a lot as a result of psychological and emotional pain so maybe I shouldn’t be all that surprised that I had turned to it as a coping mechanism for this physical pain.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE MIND | A Q&A WITH THE AUTHOR, A BOOK REVIEW, & THE LAUNCH OF THE COMPETITION | IN COLLABORATION WITH KERRY DAYNES

“All crimes are committed by – and happen to – people. Forensic psychology is about them.”

Kerry Daynes

Those who follow my social media (the links are to the right!) will know that I’ve started a Forensic Psychology course with Centre of Excellence. I’m only onto Module Two and have been so fascinated that I started looking for books on the subject on Amazon and I came across Kerry Dayne’s book, The Dark Side of The Mind. I immediately bought it and searched for her on Twitter and I was over the moon to see that her direct message inbox was open. When she replied? I was even happier! A little bit shocked too – I mean it’s a little surreal to have someone who’s name is on a book you’re holding message you on social media!


So, here’s the result of our conversation – my favourite parts of her book, a Q&A with Kerry Daynes, and a competition to win a signed copy of her book!

To win a signed copy of Kerry’s book, all you have to do is go to my Twitter (here) and share the pinned tweet! (Each person will be given a number in order of when they shared it and an app will randomly choose one number!) 

1.     Have you always wanted to work in Psychology? What did you want to be when you were really little?