WHERE IS MY MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK CONTENT? | IN COLLABORATION WITH LEAPS, NATIONAL TRUST, & ENGLISH HERITAGE | AD

We all want quiet. We all want beauty… We all need space. Unless we have it, we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently.

Octavia Hill, Co-founder of the National Trust

Happy Mental Health Awareness Week!

This year is a bit different; I’ve been so busy recently that I honestly didn’t have the time to dedicate to producing an entire week of content for I’m NOT Disordered AND for LEAPS (the support group for the unwaged which I am Chair of). So, when I managed to secure a bit of a last-minute collaboration with National Trust and English Heritage, I decided that rather than add to my blog’s huge roster of collaborations(!), I would use the collaboration for LEAPS. To keep you interested in still paying a little visit to www.leapsonline.co.uk I thought I’d use this blog post as a chance to tell you my favourite bits of each section of my Mental Health Awareness Week post for LEAPS (which you can read here: https://www.leapsonline.co.uk/2021/05/a-chat-about-nature-mental-health.html )…

‘Children & Nature’ – Favourite Bits:

Anyone who has read I’m NOT Disordered before or who knows me personally, will know how much I dote on my godchildren so it felt sort of obvious that I would somehow manage to incorporate them into the nature theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week.

So honestly, just having the opportunity to talk about my godchildren is thrilling; but I think my favourite part of that section was when I got the chance too do a bit of research into different locations under the care of English Heritage and National Trust which are child-friendly. Finding these places has given me a lot of inspiration for activities with my godchildren.

‘Nature with National Trust’ – Favourite Bits:

In writing this section about National Trust, I went through their website to create a little overview of the organisation for any readers unfamiliar with them. I also went on to look up the National Trust sites I’ve visited and then listed them alongside the places I’d love to go to.

I think my favourite bit of doing this was that it was so lovely looking through photos of the different locations. It had me debating looking up train fayres and hotel prices to each place!

‘Running Away & Nature’ – Favourite Bits:

In this section, I really think that it was useful to think back over the time in my life when I was my most erratic and unpredictable; the year or so when I seemed to constantly run away to towns and cities all over the country. I hadn’t really thought of this being relevant to ‘nature’ but it turns out that in my running, I came across my safe place.

‘Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills & Nature’ – Favourite Bits:

There’s a few things in life which I would attribute my mental health recovery to, and one of those things is Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). Being grateful for three of the key skills (self-soothe, distract, and mindfulness) means that I’m really eager to talk about them publicly in the hope that someone might read this and be encouraged to give the Therapy a try.

‘Nature with English Heritage’ – Favourite Bits:

I decided to keep this section quite simple and enjoyed doing a bit of research to form the brief overview of English Heritage before looking through their site to find locations I’ve visited and places I’d love to go to.

Favourite graphic: