THREE QUARTERS OF A MILLION READERS!!! | EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING A BLOGGER

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try

John F Kennedy

I cannot believe my little blog has reached three quarters of a million readers! I mean, from starting this thing in my hospital room over 100 miles away from home, to now having over 750,000 readers?! Reaching this milestone, I wanted to use it as an opportunity to give people a look into the life of a Blogger, what it means, and my tips on how to succeed in this industry…

Starting off small

I’ll never forget the day I started I’m NOT Disordered; January 6^th 2013. I had been an inpatient in a specialist hospital for over a year and had just had a 1:1 with my Key Nurse, Debbie. She asked if every evening, I would start writing little bits about the abuse I had gone through when I was 15. I agreed that I would show a member of staff the writing to give them all a better insight into what I’d been through and why it has affected me so much. 


Making this plan felt like a really big step toward recovery and I wanted to document my progress for myself and my friends and family who were so far away that I think it was really hard for them to understand what was going on for me. My decision to use a blog to document that progress was completely random – in fact, it wasn’t really a decision! I just… did it!


So, in the beginning my target audience was literally about ten people, which meant that when I reached 100 readers, another inpatient and I screamed with joy and excitement. We screamed so loud that the hospital staff came running down the corridor pressing their assistance alarms because they thought someone was ‘kicking off!’

I’VE BEEN DISCHARGED!!! | EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

June 12^th 2020, I was discharged from my Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) after being under their care (on and off) for eleven years! Now, I’m very aware that with my audience being so big there are readers who don’t have a lot of insight into mental health services and therefore may not appreciate just how big an achievement discharge is. And that is the aim of this blog post – to provide insight and to educate readers about mental health services…

You can be referred to Services in various ways…

I was eighteen when I was first allocated a Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN); I was sort of lucky in the way I first came into contact with Services because I didn’t have to be referred and sit on a waiting list for months on end. However, I was definitely unlucky too, in that I was only put under the care of the CMHT because I had attempted suicide and been sectioned under the 1983 Mental Health Act, and apparently the automatic aftermath of being sectioned is that you’re allocated a CPN upon discharge.

I recognize my luck in the situation because I know of the many instances where people have been referred to their CMHT through their GP and have then had to sit on a lengthy waiting list. The saddest thing about the waiting lists is the fact that all too often, the person’s mental health deteriorates to the point where they attempt or succeed at committing suicide. This happens for a number of reasons, but the main one is that there’s often the development of feelings of hopelessness and a conviction that Services don’t care enough about the person to rush through their referral through.

TIME TO CHANGE STORYCAMP 2020 THEME ONE: WHY I BELIEVE IT’S IMPORTANT TO TALK ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH

You've got the words to change a nation
But you're biting your tongue
You've spent a life time stuck in silence
Afraid you'll say something wrong
If no one ever hears it how we gonna learn your song?

…
You've got a heart as loud as lightning
So why let your voice be tamed?
Maybe we're a little different
There's no need to be ashamed
You've got the light to fight the shadows
So stop hiding it away

Read All About It – Emeli Sande

Every two weeks from June 1^st until August 24^th 2020, Time To Change will be giving those who have signed up to StoryCamp, a theme to use as inspiration to create content on. This fortnight, the theme is ‘why I believe it’s important to talk about mental health.’


When my mental health first began to deteriorate in 2009, I couldn’t even consider the prospect of telling someone or asking for help. For me, it wasn’t an option. Back then, there was really no talk of mental health – no one told us about it in School, there was very little in the media, and my friends didn’t ever mention if they were struggling. I assumed this meant that it was taboo and a bit of a forbidden subject that was something to either be ashamed of or to just deny was occurring. 


So, when I started experiencing auditory hallucinations aged 18 (two years after the abuse had ‘ended’) I was so terrified at what it meant and the worry that I was ‘going crazy’ left me convinced that I’d be locked away in the local psychiatric hospital that I’d heard horror stories about! Looking back, had I known what I know now about mental health and services, if I’d gotten help when the hallucinations first started, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up attempting suicide two weeks after they’d begun. Unfortunately, though, it took taking an overdose and being sectioned under the 1983 Mental Health Act before I finally opened up and talked about my mental health.

VOLUNTEER’S WEEK | TIPS TO GET A VOLUNTARY JOB, WAYS TO THANK YOUR VOLUNTEERS, HOW ST OSWALDS SUPPORT THEIR VOLUNTEERS, & MORE! | IN COLLABORATION WITH ST OSWALD’S HOSPICE | AD

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted”

Aesop

It’s Volunteer Week!! And to mark the occasion – which is a special opportunity to thank those who really are the bread and butter for a lot of charities and organizations – I’m collaborating with St Oswald’s Hospice to bring you this blog post full of tips to get a voluntary job, ways to thank the volunteers in your organisation, and information on how St Oswald’s are supporting their Volunteers through the Coronavirus Lockdown! Enjoy!

So, quite a while ago I made the decision to apply for a new voluntary role with St Oswald’s Hospice; a charitable Hospice based in the North East of England who provide outstanding, specialist, and expert care to adults and children with life-limiting conditions. I saw the position as a Digital Comms and Marketing Volunteer on the www.do-it.org site (a platform where charities and organizations can post volunteer vacancies) and after reading the job description, I immediately hit the ‘apply’ button and was so happy when I received the offer of an interview with some of the Digital staff at St Oswald’s.

WHY I’M NOW A COLUMNIST FOR CATS PROTECTION | CALICO CATCH-UP | IN COLLABORATION WITH CATS PROTECTION TYNESIDE ADOPTION CENTRE | AD

https://cptynesideac.business.blog/blog/calico-catch-up-2/

Now that Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) has finished (for links to all my posts and to watch my vlog of the entire week visit here) I’m free to commit to other projects, pieces of work, and collaborations! Don’t get me wrong; I thoroughly enjoyed this year’s MHAW and producing all the posts for it, but I also missed being able to dedicate time to creating more varied content. 



The planning for the MHAW content actually began a while in advance to the week itself so this is the first chance I’ve had to talk about Calico Catch-Up (which launched May 1^st!). The brand new monthly column on Cats Protection Tyneside Adoption Centre’s blog; The Daily Mews, was a genius idea brainstormed with myself and the Centre’s staff. The original plan was to write a one-off guest piece for their blog about how huge an impacts cats have had on my mental health; but I was really interested in the idea of making the opportunity into a bigger commitment. Being unable to work in a fulltime role right now because of my mental (and in parts physical) health means that I obviously have a lot of time outside of my support sessions that needs filling. As it was, my only real long-term, regular commitments were to my blog and to the support group that I Chair; LEAPS, and I felt as though I could manage an addition to those. At the same time though, I stayed reasonable and practical and knew that I wouldn’t have the time to be able to commit to writing a weekly column, so we agreed upon Calico Catch-Up publishing monthly.