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When I’m writing a blog post and creating content for, I’m NOT Disordered, I always try to think of both sides to it – to consider whether someone could see the title and think or believe the exact opposite or at least view things from a different angle. And this post was no different; I recognise that the title might sound as though I’m ungrateful or being contradictory because I chose to create my blog and to become a Blogger, so to then say anything bad about it? Well, it might appear to some as though I have no right to do so because I’ve basically put myself in the situation and I’m pretty much choosing to stay in it! I’d like to think though, that regular readers of I’m NOT Disordered will recognise that I almost always talk exclusively about all the benefits and positive elements to being a Blogger and so to confront the difficult bits is a refreshing change and implies my recognition that there are definitely two sides to it...
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I’ve always said that there are a lot of things that have come up in my blogging career which I wish I’d been better prepared for, but when I first created, I’m NOT Disordered in 2013, there were only really three well-known mental health blogs, and none were written by a sectioned psychiatric hospital inpatient. There was one from a former inpatient, one from a Police Officer with a keen interest in mental health law, and one by a psychiatric Nurse. So, I really had no sources to enable me to really research what blogging might actually entail. I mean, blogging wasn’t even really a ‘thing’ back then – and it certainly wasn’t an entire industry which you could forge a whole, full-time career out of it!
Being deprived of mental health Bloggers to draw inspiration, expectations, and knowledge from; meant that I looked to Bloggers of different topics and other genres. The two key Bloggers I drew inspiration from in those early years were Zoe Sugg; known online as ‘Zoella,’ and Victoria Magrath whose blog was named ‘inthefrow.’ If you’ve read I’m NOT Disordered for some time now, you’ll know that I’m actually still a huge fan of Victoria’s (you can read a recent blog post about how she is my greatest female blogging inspiration, here) and feel massively encouraged and influenced by her work ethic and the content she produces.
One of the two largest benefits to looking to these two Bloggers of other topics (Zoe mainly created content around lifestyle which included beauty tips and clothing shopping hauls, and Victoria’s blog and content is centred around fashion and beauty – with a bit of travel and lifestyle thrown in!) as sources of inspiration, was that it really encouraged my creativity! I mean, it was actually kind of a necessary quality for me to have if I was going to feel so determined and eager to somehow draw ideas from their content. The largest inspiration I took from their content – especially Victoria’s – which I translated and edited to fit and be relevant to my own, was the idea of collaborations in producing content in partnership with others.
Over the years, I gained expectations from watching Victoria go from collaborating with high street stores and online clothing stores like BooHoo, to now being gifted items from brands like Louis Vuitton and Dior! The fact that I love fashion and beauty, meant that initially, I considered how to approach such brands to collaborate with, but I quickly arrived at the conclusion that would really be kind of a ridiculous notion and that it wasn’t at all realistic. So, it ended up leading me to consider the equivalent of those companies in the mental health industry – like, which organisations or charities were smaller – equivalent to BooHoo and River Island – and more likely willing to work with I’m NOT Disordered in its early days with its smaller statistics? And which could I consider to be almost equal to ‘couture’ and view the thought of working with them as some sort of goal?
I was incredibly fortunate though when, in 2014 (just one year after creating my blog) Young Minds and Time To Change – two enormous and well-known organisations in the mental health industry at the time – both agreed to be the first two to collaborate with I’m NOT Disordered (my first post with Young Minds is here, and the first with Time To Change is here). As grateful and lucky as I felt though, I still had a couple of organisations in my head who I considered larger and viewed working with them as an ultimate, more long-term career goal. But I’ve always been mindful of ensuring that I really effectively illustrate just how fortunate, grateful, and honoured I feel to work with organisations outside of the ones I consider to be goals. I want collaboration partners to know that I consider them to be real teaching opportunities too! That with each partnership I feel I learn something new that means I can better both myself and I’m NOT Disordered, and I know they’re so influential in increasing my blog’s audience and bettering its chance of helping readers.
As a result of the fact that I had made the idea of collaborations into something that was relevant to my blog and something that was do-able for myself as a Blogger, I didn’t ever feel as though I had unreasonable expectations in terms of collaborations and the inspiration and knowledge I’d taken from Zoe and Victoria. And I think that would have been a lot different if I’d transferred my observations of their collaborations more directly and literally and deemed the companies and brands, they were working with to be the only option in collaborating with an organisation. If I hadn’t used my creativity, then I might have felt more disappointed and like a failure upon the eventual discovery that I – and my blog – simply weren’t capable of partnering with Dior and Louis Vuitton!
Leading on from that, aside from those regarding collaborations, the other large expectations I gained from Zoe and Victoria, were actually around popularity and publicity. This was derived from the fact that they were two of the first few Bloggers who really ‘took off’ in terms of these two qualities or elements to having a blogging career. Zoe actually posted a vlog (which you can watch here) where as well as gaining five million subscribers and recording her reaction – which was so wholesome – she also did a live TV interview on the ITV show, Loose Women. So, in the vlog she briefly mentioned that she hoped she’d made other YouTubers and Bloggers proud because she had felt like she was kind of representing them! I really liked that sentiment because it’s something I’ve experienced numerous times in giving speeches and presentations where I’ve felt that I’m representing or speaking on behalf of other users of mental health services. Like I’m standing up for ‘us’ and keeping everyone else in mind when I’m using the opportunities I have where I can really make a difference.
I think that having this belief – that publicity would be helpful – really aided in my recognition that this was something I could and perhaps should be doing for I’m NOT Disordered. From almost the beginning of my blogging career, I have recognised the benefits of having a large readership. There was once, in the psychiatric hospital where I began blogging, that I was celebrating a reader milestone (I think it was reaching either 50 or 100) and another inpatient asked why I was so bothered about the size of my blog’s audience. At the time – and knowing this girl and what she was like – I found it a bit of a dig and some sort of hint that I was perhaps being superficial about things, but ultimately, I was grateful for the question because it led me to really thinking about my answer so that I’ve always felt prepared if I were to ever be asked that again. So, my two largest motivations for my gratitude with my readers are that as they increase, this increases the chance that I/I’m NOT Disordered’s content is helping someone. And second, the more readers a blog has, the greater the chance you can secure amazing, one-of-a-kind opportunities that – for me, at least – have really helped my mental health and my passion and determination for life in general.
So, the idea I took from Zoe and Victoria around publicity was enticing and something which I began putting effort into making it happen. I researched how to write a press release and looked for different, local media sources to track down connections and contact information for the best, most appropriate people. Then I began putting the press releases together and writing about my journey and my progress (up until that point) with I’m NOT Disordered and I – and my blog – had our first publicity appearance in my local newspaper and on their website, in January 2015 (you can read about it here)! The experience of being interviewed and then the photo shoot with the Paper’s Photographer was strange because I stupidly hadn’t thought of the fact, they’d have to do those things! I didn’t think about how awkward I would feel in being asked to do all these poses (including “hold that empty mug and stand against the sink in the kitchen and just look thoughtful”) for a complete stranger(!) and having to answer questions to bits of the journey that I hadn’t thought to include in the press release and its accompanying email.
I think that the only real unrealised expectation I’d gained from Zoe and Victoria when concerning publicity, was the idea as to what impact it would have on, I’m NOT Disordered and on my blogging career as a whole. I had come to imagine – yet through no real, direct fault or explicit cause of Zoe and Victoria – a huge increase in the statistics of my blog’s readership and a ton of collaboration requests filling my email inbox! Like I said, it wasn’t as though Zoe or Victoria had said or done anything to have given me this expectation… I just sort of put together the fact that they’d featuring in the media and had all these followers and partnerships with big brands so perhaps they were a direct result of each media appearance. It meant that when this didn’t exactly happen for, I’m NOT Disordered, I was left feeling and believing that I had done something wrong. That my content wasn’t good enough. I was thinking that if it had been, then surely my feature in the Evening Chronicle, would have had the impact I’d come to expect? It must mean I was doing something wrong. Or I’d said something wrong in the interview…
To cope with notion of failure… Well, it wasn’t exactly a feeling or thought process that I was a stranger to, so I think that helped because I wasn’t completely thrown by it. Also, by the time of the article publishing in 2015, I had actually been discharged from the psychiatric hospital for just over four months, so my mental health was more stable, and I was in a much safer place in terms of how I would cope with any thoughts and feelings around failure, disappointment, and rejection. And so, I didn’t have to put a huge amount of time and energy, into coping with the notion that my expectations had been wrong or unmet in everyway possible. I think though, that one helpful quality in this, was to focus on the mindset of turning this into motivation and seeing it as just fuel to work harder at bettering my blog and the content I was creating so that not only would I earn some responsibility in the views rising, but it would also earn some attention to perhaps be invited to feature in other media appearances that might prove to have the result or impact that I had expected. You know, thinking on it; this was actually quite a positive and productive way to look at things and, looking back, I’m quite proud of it now and I hope that it’s an encouraging mindset for others to take into account if faced with feelings of failure and unmatched expectations, for whatever reason, throughout their own blogging career.
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Following on from that mindset development to improve my content, I thought I’d discuss how this thought process can actually be quite difficult to cope with in your blogging career. It’s actually also well-suited to being after that first difficulty because I find it linked to what I have observed of Victoria and Zoe’s blogging careers too…
I think it’s fair to say that at first, Zoe seemed to be the most busy in terms of events, media appearances, and branding opportunities such as creating her Zoella Beauty range in September 2014 (you can actually watch her vlog of her launch event for the range on YouTube, here) and writing her first book in November 2014 (you can watch her going to see her book being printed here). Within a few years however, she seemed to wind down on her public appearances and releasing ‘Zoella’ branded products. Now, I say this as though I know her… But from my position it felt as though she’d made her fortune and achieved such a huge number of followers that perhaps she felt that she could lay back and either let things come to her or just take a rest from things entirely. Whilst it’s obviously admirable to be in such a privileged position at such a young age, I don’t feel like I can relate to that mindset and so that’s why I became a more dedicated follower of Victoria and her blog/brand; inthefrow.
Growing up, my Mum always worked as hard as she could at everything in life – not just in terms of a job and career – and I’d like to think this attitude has been hugely inspirational and influential on my own worth ethic and the part it has played within my blogging career. I – similarly to what I feel I’ve observed in Victoria’s blogging and content creation – have a huge passion and urge to work my hardest to maintain improvements on every single element of I’m NOT Disordered. Whether that means the graphics, the colour scheme, the general aesthetics, the logo, the font, the size of the font, the theme of the content, the regularity of the content, the length of the content, the partnerships and collaborations, the guest posts featured, the events blogged about… I mean, the list literally could just go on and on!
It’s actually something Victoria has spoken about in recent years in her YouTube videos and in blog posts. In 2022 she wrote a blog post titled ‘What Does Success Really Mean?’ (you can read it here) and in the piece she talks about being asked if she’s experienced a moment where she’s felt like she’s been successful. Victoria wrote: “I consistently move my own goal posts and that’s kept me striving for that little bit more, so much so that I’m not sure that ‘moment’ will ever exist for me” and I don’t think I’ve related to something more accurately or found something truer – especially when it comes to the blogging world and my career in this industry! I mean, I don’t think I would have phrased it as accurately and in such a lovely way, but it’s something l 100% do as well – though I’ve never thought of it in context with never experiencing a successful moment. After reading the post though, I can completely appreciate the truth in this being a result of the attitude I also have in constantly changing my aims and goals.
Thinking about it though, it’s kind of like in mental health and I wonder if this is where I get the mindset from. Because professionals can ask you to consider a goal you could work towards e.g. going without self-harming for as long as possible or using a particular Therapy skill ten times… Something like that! And then, once you reach those goals, you’re asked to pick something else that’s perhaps ‘harder’ or ‘more challenging.’ It’s kind of like building your strength up in seeing just how robust you are and how much you can achieve if you put your mind to it. It’s also powerful to illustrate the importance of it being you who sets the goal and how that can make it a lot more attainable (because you have a better idea of what you’re capable of) and attractive (because it’s something you want and have willingly chosen, and not something you’re forced or persuaded to label as a goal by professionals).
When I first began blogging, I’d say that I really had no goals in mind because I think I had no real expectations in terms of how long I’m NOT Disordered would last or how helpful I would find it. I mean, I know I talked about expectations in collaborations and media appearances, but they came a lot later in my blogging career. When I first created my blog, I did so with really two motivations:
1. To better communicate with my family and friends who were over 100 miles away from the psychiatric hospital I was in at the time. I hoped that in doing this, they would be better placed to help and support me because they would have a better understanding of what I was going through, how I was feeling, and why I would do the things I did to try to cope. But I also hoped that it would encourage them to also speak up if they found themselves struggling with their mental health too. I wanted to make them feel like they weren’t alone and that there was hope.
2. To document my journey in a way that I could look back on it. I created I’m NOT Disordered immediately after a really positive and productive 1:1 with my Key Nurse where I had agreed to write a little bit about the abuse, I had experienced every evening and then let the staff read it. It felt like a huge step forward on my road to recovery and with the hospital stating from my admission that they were a ‘long-term psychiatric hospital’ and that the ‘average length of admission is 12 – 18 months’ and I had been there around six by that point, I knew there would be many more steps before discharge and thought it would be interesting to document those for myself. I hoped that in re-reading posts, I would be motivated to keep going by seeing how far I’d come and how hard I had worked. Having also found writing therapeutic previously, I expected blogging to be helpful for my mental health too.
I think that the first goal I can remember setting in my blogging career, was actually around reaching a particular number of readers! And this really goes back to what I said earlier about that other inpatient in the psychiatric hospital and how she had made that comment asking why I found my blog’s reader statistics so important and special. And whilst I’ve considered that question a lot over the years and arrived at the two answers I talked about earlier (that it opens opportunities for me and that it means I might be helping more people), in the very beginning of I’m NOT Disordered I think I honestly saw the number of readers as a plain and ultimate sign of achievement and success. I mean, back then, with blogging not even being a ‘thing’ so much, when it did start becoming more well-known, it was mostly because bloggers and YouTubers – like Zoe Sugg – were reaching huge numbers in their following. No one was printing articles or featuring them on the news because they were helping more people… And the next thing started being that the following was earning them social standing that put them in a position where they were starting to be offered branding opportunities and the chance to contribute to large, well-publicised projects.
So, whilst in the immediate few months after creating I’m NOT Disordered, my goal was to continue increasing my readership, that did become so much more meaningful when I started earning huge opportunities too and I recognised the impact they were having on my own mental health. Attending huge events (usually in London – like the SoMe Launch in 2015 which you can read about here) and speaking at large conferences (like the Multi Agency Partnership event in 2016 – which you can read about here and here) were fast becoming hugely influential on my emotional wellbeing and safety levels. I mean, to the point where one of my best-friends actually said (in 2016 – I wrote a blog post about it, which you can read here); “you have one of those lives that other people want to live!” and I honestly couldn’t have felt more accomplished!
It was an incredible feeling to have gone from being in a psychiatric hospital – when I started blogging – for two and a half years (until 2014) and living a life which I don’t think anyone would have been jealous of, envied, nor wished they could live it too; to then – just two years later – having a life that those whose lives I had actually once been jealous of, were making comments like this! Complete reversal! And it gave me hope – to see how my blog had started to then all that it has become – especially now in being at over 1.4 million readers! It strange though, after almost twelve years of blogging on I’m NOT Disordered, I sometimes struggle to think of things that I would really like to do next – it’s like sometimes I’m running out of ideas and inspiration! Which, I think, is normal after so long! But that feeling never lasts long before I think up another blog post or venture or goal.
I think that the largest question for this difficult part of blogging about the need to always improve, is; “does it not get tiring?” And if you’ve read, I’m NOT Disordered for some time – or even if you’ve only read this post in fairness, you will likely know that I’m all about honesty – even when it hurts to say it and be that way! – so in honest answer to that question: “yes.” So, why keep doing it? Because how could I not? How I could I possibly give up something that still brings so much light, passion, love, success, happiness, faith, pride, hope, and fun to my life? If a day comes that those things are no longer a result of my blog, then I’ll say “I’m finished.” But, for now? I think that your tiredness should be taken on by all the positivity and benefits you get from blogging. So, let my tiredness be beaten by the 1.4 million readers, events, collaborations, projects, media appearances, books…
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So, having just speeled off about how much I love blogging, I felt that this point, was an obvious and sensible next one to write about. I’m actually going to include a couple of other bits that were written down in my notebook as separate points, but which I feel are all relevant to this general label of feeling pressured to stay positive in your blogging and the content your produce. So, the other bits I’ll include in here (which I’ve sort of mentioned in the subtitle) are measuring what you can and can’t say online (particularly due to concerns of trolling and online bullying) and managing readers thoughts and assumptions on just how accurate any positivity or negativity is.
From the beginning of I’m NOT Disordered I feel I have prided myself on staying honest – sometimes, perhaps brutally so! My very wise Mum always brought me up that she’d rather find out an upsetting truth than discover she’d been lied to, and I think that not only do I adopt that into my own attitude on relationships with friends and professionals, but I also use it in my blogging and content creation! I’d so much rather write a blog post that’s somewhat ‘negative’ and talks about me struggling, feeling suicidal, or self-harming in some way than pretend I’m happy and feeling positive and excited and then write a blog post about how fake that had been and explain to all my readers (who I’d feel like I’d let down) why I’d been dishonest about it.
Of course, in mental health in general I think there’s a level of dishonesty; especially around something unsafe. I mean, if I was planning to self-harm or make a suicide attempt, I would lie my socks off to try to make sure it happened and evade anyone who might – even unintentionally – be getting in the way of it! And after I’d done something, the worst part – more so than the physical impact even! – was dealing with the lies I’d told to people who I often cared about and any fall-out that they/I’d caused.
Recently, in the UK at least, I think it’s fair to say that there’s been a number of terrible incidents in the news that have then reported that the offender and person responsible has actually had mental health problems. Almost always, the mental health professionals have reported that either they asked the person if they had violent thoughts and the person said no, or the person said they were taking their medication when they actually weren’t. And as wrong as I recognise that it is, I also recognise just how hard it is to be honest about medication (I have no experience of dishonesty around violence). A huge reason for me lying about self-harm, suicide attempts, and medication, is usually the fear and terror of what the person I’m lying to will do if I tell the truth. I mean, nine times out of ten – when I would tell the truth, an Ambulance or Police would be called, and I’d be admitted to Hospital. And once you’ve experienced those things – even just once! – it can stay with you as a negative memory that you don’t want to repeat.
Some might say, “well don’t attempt suicide, self-harm, or stop taking your meds then you won’t have to lie about it!” But the difficulty is – and I wish I didn’t have to say it; I wish people just ‘got’ this – it’s actually a vicious cycle because you do something like self-harm and tell someone what you’ve done and end up on hospital or with an ambulance or Police and you have a terrible experience that you never want to repeat. So, that experience is likely terrible because you didn’t feel like it benefited you in any way, so you do it again, but this time you tell a lie… But that lie then stops the chance of you going to hospital and actually possibly getting help on that occasion so that it doesn’t happen again! And when you can’t get yourself out of this cycle – when your mental health is so poorly, you have Depression, or you’re having hallucinations which can’t be controlled by you – you need someone else to, but by lying to everyone; you’re pushing them away and stopped them from having the opportunity to do that.
There might still be people saying “well why lie? Why risk it, if telling the truth could help?” Those people, I’m assuming, might have never been in a terrible experience with their mental health, an Ambulance, the Police, Hospitals, and mental health professionals – like the Crisis Team. They might not know how that feels. How it feels to be accused of manipulating the system. I mean… The frustrating thing is, if you do self-harm and then tell someone, all you hear is “you can’t have really meant it because you’ve asked for help” and you feel dismissed and let-down. But then you do it, and you lie about it; and professionals will say “we can’t help you if you don’t tell us.” I’ve had a Police Officer once tell me “if you really wanted to kill yourself, you’d go into the Woods in the middle of the night when no one can see you and hang yourself.” When someone I knew did this (whether because an Officer made a similar comment or not) everyone was wringing their hands like; “why didn’t they ask for help?!”
Then, the other school of thought is, ‘why don’t you ask for help before you do self-harm or make a suicide attempt?’ Two answers:
1. If you ask for help and are completely safe, not only are you regarded as less of a priority in terms of being called back or having someone come see you, but you might also receive the comment “you can’t be struggling that much if you haven’t done anything!”
2. If you do ask for help without having self-harm or without feeling unsafe, and you’re hospitalised or emergency services are still called, that can be so incredibly difficult to accept because you almost end up thinking “I did nothing to deserve (in both good and bad ways) this!”
According to statistics, the emails I receive, and general research, the majority of readers of I’m NOT Disordered have some sort of experience of mental illness and so, I think that a lot of people won’t be at all surprised to hear of professionals making the comments I’ve mentioned, but for those who are shocked; this isn’t just me in the UK. This – professionals making comments and treating people like this – goes on all over the world and happens to all sorts of people! All sorts of desperate, poorly, unsafe, and undeserving people. And telling you all of that, leads onto the other point in this bit about having to be mindful as to what you don’t and don’t say online or on your blog in particular… I mean, in all honesty, I typed all of that without really pausing to consider whether I should. And as I wrote it, I recognised that perhaps I need to be making a larger deal of giving a trigger warning on this blog post because a lot of the examples I’ve given of comments from professionals can be hard to read and – as I said that I’m not the only person to have these experiences – they might also be painful reminders of similar statements made to readers too.
With experiences like that, it might be difficult to appreciate how I can stay positive in a lot of blog posts, that’s because I’m 100% honest in the not-so-positive ones! I find writing/blogging so therapeutic that by being totally upfront and open in a lot of my posts that might be deemed more negative and upsetting or difficult to read, I feel a sense of relief that allows me to maintain positivity in other pieces of content. It helps that I’m, actually, also quite a positive person! I mean, you can ask any of my friends or my Mum and they’ll tell you I always look on the bright side and try to find positive in absolutely anything and everything that goes wrong. I’m the person who’s always saying, “at least it wasn’t…” Always looking for the silver-lining and a reason to remain grateful, happy, and optimistic. So, am I really that pressured into staying positive?
And this lends itself to my mindset or thought process when it comes to considering whether I should blog about something that needs a trigger warning – because surely you shouldn’t publish content which holds a risk of triggering someone (especially when you know how it feels to be triggered in this way!). I always think to consider the benefits that will come from it too. It’s like people talk in mental health all the time about weighing everything up and considering the pros and cons to an action, attitude, thought, and/or an emotion. Doing that (pros and cons), was actually a skill I learnt in the Distress Tolerance module of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) which I did for over two years in the psychiatric hospital because it was the recommended ‘treatment’ to my diagnosis at the time (Borderline Personality Disordered; now known as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder). And it worked! It taught me so much about alternative methods to coping and managing the thoughts, feelings, and memories I was struggling with so much at the time. I remember being given diary sheets so that between DBT sessions, you had to record which skills you used on which days and why and how they worked etc. We were taught that you only do that for so long because eventually, you don’t know which skills you used or when you used them because they just come naturally to you; and that’s definitely been true for me too.
In considering what you should and shouldn’t say online, my method or vow to myself and my readers/followers has always been that I don’t speak about a controversial issue unless I feel so strongly and passionately about it that voicing it is worth potentially triggering a tirade of negativity from those who don’t agree. I mean, I never talk about politics – mostly because I have no real interest in them(!), but also because I don’t feel I know enough to be able to argue my point on something. As an example, the King’s speech this year talked about the 1983 Mental Health Act and the government making it fit for the twenty-first century and I felt that I had enough personal experience and general knowledge to be invested in this issue and so I felt confident expressing my support of this move. I felt that I was prepared with rationale and motivation for my opinion which I could call upon if it was challenged or disregarded in some way.
I think this is a bit sad; the thought that speaking your mind online could trigger online bullying and an onslaught of hate and abuse from cowards hiding behind they keyboard to say things they would never in real life. Freedom of speech is supposed to be a thing! However, I also recognise the importance of knowing what you’re talking about when you are ‘freely speaking!’ It can already be incredibly easy for the sentiment or purpose of online content to get lost in translation and for someone to misinterpret it and be offended by something which you don’t fully understand. So, to post something that might do that and then find yourself feeling at a complete loss on how to support what you have said, is a bit of a mess to be in! And it’s a mess which can, quite frankly, cost you followers – and therefore support and opportunities!
A little while after I created, I’m NOT Disordered, I received a couple of horrible comments and with my discharge from the psychiatric hospital on the cards anyway, I decided to close the blog down. However, after around a month and numerous emails from readers, I found myself missing the therapeutic aspect to it and the sheer enjoyment of being creative in the content creation, so I opened it back up and got back to it! I’m glad I took that time out. I mean, I’m all for not letting horrible, spiteful people ‘win’ and defying those who try to chase you away from doing something you enjoy (like using social media), but at that time, having those weeks to really re-charge and consider my decision thoroughly was just what I needed. It helped me to avoid providing any comeback I might have potentially regretted, or which could have ended up exacerbating things with the bullies. I also think that the greatest thing you can give a bully like that is your attention. Nine times out of ten, that’s what they want is for you to get all riled up and to cause some kind of drama, so ignoring them and continuing to create your content and express your thoughts and experiences in whichever way you want, is really the best response!
Finally for this part (and almost for the entire post – because let’s face it, this has been a mammoth one!), an importance in staying honest and open on social media stems from the impact it can have on your readers thoughts on your life. And yes, this sounds unimportant – that you shouldn’t care what others think of you – but stay with me… In this respect, however, it can really matter whether your followers or readers are thinking that your life is absolutely perfect and is full of nothing but happy and fun events, exciting collaborations, positive media appearances, and a journey full of hope, dedication, recovery, and determination.
If you don’t show all the sides to your life and your mental health in particular, this can also impact your readers to feel abnormal and alone where their lives are different, and they experience negativity and positivity. When my mental health first deteriorated, there was literally next to no media coverage regarding the topic and so I had no real knowledge or understanding of what things meant. And, when I was discharged from the psychiatric hospital being told I was ‘in recovery’ I was led to believe that this was it – life would be full of stability now! This isn’t the case. Recovery – particularly mental health recovery because that’s what I have experience of – isn’t linear. It isn’t just one steady line through life where there are no dips and challenging moments that make you struggle so much that they leave you questioning whether to go back to former, unsafe, coping mechanisms. And not having this realistic awareness of the ups and downs to life, can leave you feeling like a complete failure and rid you of all the hope you’ve worked so hard to build, grow, develop, and cement in your life.
Over the years that my blogging career has spanned across, I’ve come to recognise that there are bits of my life that I don’t want to be up for complete public consumption, there are bits I want to keep between myself and my friends and family, and so I have a Facebook profile that’s completely private. I like that it means I still have a little space in the internet world where I can post something that’s perhaps more… Not more personal because I get really personal on my blog(!), just more confidential, than the content which I publish on I’m NOT Disordered or on my Twitter and Instagram accounts (@aimes_wilson on both!).
In a sort of… Equivalent, more physical form of this; I also find it immensely helpful to stay accurate and positive that I have a best-friend who is a Blogger too (Martin Baker who co-blogs with his best-friend on: www.gumonmyshoe.com)! For so long, I felt like I had no one in my entire life (not just my close circle of friends!) who understood what I do with the majority of my time, and with I’m NOT Disordered being so massively important and special to me and my mental health, it’s important to me to have someone who appreciates this. I love having someone I can really bounce ideas off of… I mean, I do this a lot with my Mum too actually! But Martin can really understand and have knowledge and experience of the more technical side to content creation and making decisions – which might seem ‘small’ to someone who doesn’t get it, but they’re actually important to those of us who do! – on various aspects of some blog posts.
Are you a Blogger with something that hasn’t been mentioned which you struggle with in your blogging career, and you’d like some advice and support? Drop me a DM on social media or an email to my inbox: