.png)
“Believe
in yourself. You are braver than you think, more talented than you know, and
capable of more than you imagine.”
Roy
T. Bennett
When I’m NOT Disordered reached around 2,950,000 readers I realised I should start deciding/planning/preparing to write a celebratory blog post and then I made a bit of a mistake of asking AI (namely Chat GPT) for ideas on a theme or angle for it… Why was it a mistake? Because I loved almost all of its ideas! So, in this post, I will be chatting through a whole mix of bits and pieces about this achievement; reasons why I started, reasons why I temporarily quit, reasons why I kept going and the lessons I learned throughout those moments...
Why I Started
Sometimes I feel I have told the story of why I
started blogging a million and one times – or perhaps I should say three
million times! – but I have to recognise that with the size of I’m NOT
Disordered’s audience, it’s very practical to think that it is gaining
brand-new readers all the time and that not everyone will visit the About page (About | I'm NOT
Disordered ) or see a previous post that tells the story of
how and why the blog was created. So, for the benefit of new readers or readers
who are yet to know or hear this story, and also because it feels very
important to – at this pivotal point and achievement in I’m NOT Disordered’s
journey – talk about the beginning of it…
In early 2012, whilst a sectioned inpatient of my
local psychiatric hospital, the Psychiatrist recommended to my Community
Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) that I be referred to an out-of-area psychiatric
hospital that specialised in my diagnosis at the time of Borderline Personality
Disorder (BPD but now referred to as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder
or EUPD). He explained the rationale for this suggestion was that he believed
my local NHS mental health Trust were unequipped to help and support me due to
the wide recognition that those with BPD really need specialist treatment and
my NHS Trust literally had no Personality Disorder services nor did they even
have any staff trained in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT – which is the
recommended treatment for someone with BPD).
Whilst I was an inpatient, I was assessed by staff
of the nearest specialist hospital, but they deemed my flight risk to be too
severe for their low secure BPD ward. So, after being discharged, I had another
assessment with the Ward Manager and her Deputy of a medium secure ward in a
privately-run psychiatric hospital over 120 miles away. In the assessment, I
learned that the ward was incredibly structured with a wake-up call, a communal
Morning Meeting, therapeutic groups and DBT sessions (both individual and
group) back-to-back for the entire day, a communal Reflection meeting in the
evening, and then a lights-out time too! Having runaway numerous times by this
point, I was honestly terrified by the idea of my life being so regimented and basically
completely controlled by staff. So, despite the assessors offering me a bed on
their ward, I refused to go and it was decided that I couldn’t be forced to be
admitted.
But that changed in a matter of months… In the
Summer of 2012 and just over three years since I made my first suicide attempt
in early 2009, I made another attempt and after refusing the life-saving
antidote treatment, Doctors ruled I didn’t have the capacity to do so and I was
restrained, sedated, put on life support, and then transferred to Intensive
Care. My Mum told me that whilst I was unconscious, she was in a huge
discussion with the Psychiatric Liaison Team in the Hospital about the next
moves if I survived the attempt. Eventually, the Community Mental Health Team
(CMHT) applied for – and were awarded – funding to have me admitted to that second
hospital.
When I was woken up and weened off the ventilator, I
saw my Mum and her first words were “even if you hate me forever, you have to
go to that hospital!” But I agreed to go. In all honesty, I had two reasons for
that, and neither of them were healthy: they weren’t about wanting to get
better. They weren’t about believing the hospital would help. They weren’t
about scaring myself at how close I’d come to dying. They weren’t about wanting
to stay alive. The reasons were actually…
1. I
had scared myself at how traumatic it had all been… Like, I could remember
being wheeled into Resus where all these staff were waiting and I remember
Security restraining me and an Anaesthetist came and leaned over the railing of
the bed and she asked; “do you know what’s going to happen?” and I nodded but
she continued to tell me anyway(!) “you’re going to be put to sleep and
there’ll be a tube down your throat and you’ll put on a machine that will
breathe for you while we give you the treatment. Are you sure you don’t want to
just have the treatment?” And my reply – the last thing I said before they
sedated me was; “I hope something goes wrong and I die anyway.” I think that
was all they needed to seal their plan and my next memory was waking up and I
remember a few things: I could feel the tube down my throat and it was nipping
my lip (when I was woken up; I had a blister on my lip), I could feel my chest
rising and falling, I could feel someone inserting a catheter, I couldn’t move,
and I could feel something keeping my eyes closed (they’d put take over them).
I remember hearing someone say; “I think she’s waking up, her pulse is going
up!” And waking up, I remember thinking ‘if I don’t go to that hospital, this
is only going to happen again and again until I do die.’
2. Knowing
how far away the hospital was, I believed that if I went and I didn’t feel any
better and if I thought that they weren’t helping or supporting me in any way,
I could just run away and make another attempt. I believed that if I went along
and agreed to going, it would look good and as if I had at least tried. It
would look like I’d wanted to get better and that I’d given the hospital and
the staff a chance to help and that it was them who had failed and not that I
had given up or that I had been wrong in any way at all. I felt certain that
because the staff wouldn’t know me at all, I could easily manipulate them and
lie to them so that I would be able to escape. And I also just had this really
bizarre, unfounded, and irrational belief that the physical distance between my
Mum and I would make my death easier for both of us.
Within days of leaving Intensive Care, I had packed
two suitcases (DBT is typically delivered over a twelve month period and the
average length of admission of this hospital was stated as being 12 – 18
months, so I knew from the offset that if it was going to help and I was going
to stay there, I was going to be there for a long time) the staff from the
psychiatric hospital were at my Mum’s home in a large car and putting my
belongings in the boot. I remember there was two of them and obviously one was
driving, but I honestly can’t remember if the other was in the back with me or
in the front passenger seat. I think this lack of exact memory was partly due
to me blocking it out a bit because it was such a horrible time, but also –
more practically – because it was just literally so long ago!
I spent the following six or seven months trying to
adjust to all the ward rules, the therapeutic timetable, the slowly-developed new
medication regime I was prescribed, the staff and their personalities, and – of
course – all the other girls on the ward who obviously all also had a diagnosis
of BPD. Upon my admission, I was assigned a ‘buddy’ which was basically another
inpatient who gave me a tour of the ward and told me some of the rules and I
remember trying to get out the ward, but it turned out they lock the ward doors
when they get a new patient (usually, there is an air-lock so that when it is
locked it’s secured but the ‘medium secure’ bit of the hospital was the main
entrance – which was right next to the ward I was on – where there was also an
airlock and doors that were always locked). I remember refusing to move from
the doors and two of the other girls actually got really angry at me because it
meant that the staff wouldn’t let them go on their leave off the ward.
After a matter of hours on the ward, I was detained
under section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act and after almost one month as an
inpatient I was moved to a section 3 (because section 2 is only valid for 28
days, before you have to determine whether a person is discharged or moved to
section 3 which is then valid for three months and if the person is kept on it
after that point, the reviews can become every six months: the mental health
charity Mind have more information – which is probably better explained and
clearer than what I’ve just stated! – on these sections and the legislation here).
Finally, on January 6th, 2013, I sat
down with my Key Nurse for a 1:1… For a number of weeks or a month or so, I had
started to write letters and notes to the staff about my thoughts and feelings
and experiences because I found this so much easier than trying to find the
words and actually say those things. So we talked about how we could use that
to support my recovery, and we eventually decided that every night I would
write a little bit about the rape and six months of sexual abuse I had
experienced when I was 15 until I was 16 and that I’d then give the notes to
the staff. We agreed that this would help them to better appreciate and
understand me and my mental health. As I walked back to my bedroom, I had the
distinct, clear thought that I was finally taking a step toward recovery and
toward discharge from the hospital and I remember thinking ‘I need to document this
journey and the progress that I make throughout it.’
When I got to my bedroom, my laptop was sitting on
the bed – I came to see this as a ‘sign’ because typically, our laptops were
kept in a secure room and every shift, one member of staff was designated to
hold the keys to that room, so you had to ask them for permission to have
access to any items in there (mostly those items were razors and technology
devices such as laptops and phones because you actually weren’t allowed your
phone on the ward – I can’t even imagine how I’d cope if that happened these
days and I think that the fact it didn’t phase me that much back then is just
evidence of how poorly I was and how caught up I was in my mental illness). There
was also a specific time of day (I think it was 7pm on a weekday) when you
could ask for something from the security room and I had been in the 1:1 during
that time so I hadn’t been able to request my laptop.
So, the fact it was sitting on my bed after the 1:1
– yes, it realistically and practically meant that the member of staff knew
that I always asked for it and so she kindly took it out anyway – but I also
thought ‘what were the chances it would be her doing it?’ and ‘what were the
chances anyone else would think to get it for me without me asking?’ And the
reason for seeing it as a ‘sign’ was because already, by the time I reached my
room, I had come to the conclusion that a diary or journal wasn’t going to be a
good enough method of documenting my journey and the progress I assumed I would
make by doing these notes for the staff.
In all honesty, it was just those couple of minutes
that it took to get from the 1:1 room to my bedroom at the other end of the
ward, for me to decide to record things online. I literally put no further
thought into it as I opened up the laptop, turned it on, logged in, and Googled
‘websites for blogging.’ I found WordPress
and – even long-time readers may not know this – I did actually create an
account on it before I quickly discovered (by trying to create a blog) and came
to the conclusion that it was a bit beyond my skill level around computers/the
internet and so I turned to the second Google result I’d found; Blogger!
And the lack of thought or preparation I put into all of this, went on so far
as to not even putting any consideration into the name of the blog! I mean, I
say ‘consideration’ but I did have a think about what I wanted to get across
with the name; I’m NOT Disordered… Well, I actually had two messages I wanted
it to interpret or reasons why I branded it this…
1. I
wanted it to be a method of teaching people my belief and mindset that no
matter what mental health diagnosis a person may be given, that isn’t all that
they are. It doesn’t – and shouldn’t – define that person.
2. The
‘NOT’ was actually intentionally put as capitals from Day One, and that was
because typically, capitals online and in text are meant to be a sign that something
is shouted or at least that it is empathise the word or multiple words or even
entire sentences! I thought – and hoped – that perhaps it would get across the
anger and passion behind that first point of a diagnosis or a person’s mental
state not defining them.
In all
honesty, I talk about this lack of thought and consideration in my creation of
I’m NOT Disordered but I never want it to come across as being proud of that or
that I’m advising and recommending others put no thought into it too. In fact,
I would – and I do at any opportunity or relevant point to do so (like when I
delivered a Blogging Workshop at my local Recovery College or when I’ve given
speeches and actually, I’ve done so in some blog posts too!) – recommend the
complete opposite! This is mostly because I’ve come up against some huge
challenges and negatives in blogging and in being an Influencer, and I
sometimes wonder whether, if I’d put more thought into this, I’d have been better
prepared or would have coped better with those instances if I’d thought things
through from the very beginning. Well, from before the beginning! But then, I
do wonder or worry that if I had put more consideration into it, would I have
actually still created I’m NOT Disordered? Or would I have been deterred from
considering the risks and the potential negativity I might come up against?
Would I have thought that I wouldn’t be able to conquer them? Would I have
doubted my strength or thought it not even worth risking coming up against
those instances?
So, ultimately – and probably understandably – I’m
glad it all happened the way that it did. I also really love that because I
started blogging off the back of this 1:1, it meant that my first ever blog
post (which you can read in its entirety here: The
One Where I Begin Blogging | I'm NOT Disordered)
actually included – word for word – the ‘Management Plan’ my Nurse went on to create
off the back of our agreement:
'Aimee has requested support whilst she makes an
attempt to disclose sensitive information to staff. The format she will be
disclosing information to staff will be by writing things down on an evening in
her bedroom. Aimee will let staff know when she is writing so that they
are aware that her mood may change and they are able to offer support if
needed. Aimee will require support from staff at this time and will try to
approach staff herself and utilise time by playing board games with staff to
distract herself. Aimee may at times not feel able to approach staff due to
feeling distressed, can staff please be vigilant and increase observations
should Aimee present as unsettled. Aimee would like her bedroom door left open
when struggling as she is able to manage herself in her room and finds time
alone soothing. Her door however will be locked at nursing teams’ discretion.'
In conjunction with wanting to record the journey,
I also felt sure that in doing this, it would enable me to better communicate and
convey my thoughts, feelings, and experiences to my family and friends who were
so far away from me. I believed that if they had an improved knowledge and
understanding of those things, it would mean they’d better appreciate my
actions and unhealthy coping strategies and that this would result in them also
being better equipped to help and support me through the journey I envisioned
and believed I was going to end up documenting – and believe me, it’s turned
into a far different journey than I had thought or assumed it would be!
Everything I Learned From It
ü How
therapeutic and beneficial writing is for me
ü My
strengths and skills in getting across so many complicated things in writing
ü How
powerful words can be for those who can’t truly identify with your experiences
ü The
benefits of research
ü Why
it’s important to put thought and consideration into big decisions
ü That
there’s a big difference between reconsidering something you did and regretting
it
ü My
Nana was right: everything happens for a reason
ü That
the hospital staff might know me better than I think they do
ü Trust
my Key Nurse’s ideas and judgments, knowing she always has my best interests in
mind
ü Different
and more creative methods and techniques in considering pros and cons
Why I (Temporarily!) Quit
There was actually two reasons why I – temporarily
– quit blogging in September 2014… One of them though, was something which I
actually believe, had I put more thought into what blogging would mean, I might
have realised it was something I would come up against it. And if I’d had that
sense of foreboding for this, I might have felt prepared and I may have
considered, researched, or thought of all by myself, coping methods for if it
happened.
And what was ‘it’?
Negative and spiteful comments from complete
strangers.
When I first started blogging, I actually allowed
comments to be posted beneath the blog posts and so the first horrible one was
after a post that largely and basically, moaned about the staff on the ward.
The person who commented pretty much called me a horrible person and said I was
‘unappreciative’ and ‘disrespectful’ and ‘rude.’ And I remember thinking ‘you
don’t get it!’ I believed – and still do – that if you aren’t and never have
been in someone else’s shoes, then you shouldn’t pass judgement on them or
anything about their situation, their attitude, or their behaviours etc. Like,
what right do you have to do that? What makes you think that you’re – even in
the most remote of ways – entitled to voicing an opinion on any of those
things?
I didn’t respond to the comment because I didn’t
want to start any sort of argument and, in all honesty, I wasn’t confident
enough and I was so afraid that if I did speak up, I’d end up facing a whole
ton of backlash from anyone who agreed with the original comment I was disputing.
I also wondered, ‘is it worth it?’ I couldn’t really find enough reason to make
responding to that person worth risking then receiving a ton of criticism or
abusive messages. I also, wasn’t confident back then in my blog’s potential and
that was partly because it didn’t have a huge following but also because the
hospital staff were actually very unsupportive of my blogging! One made the
comment “why do you waste your time doing that?” and another said, “it isn’t
going to go anywhere!” And regardless that I had immense support from my loved
ones, it’s typically – and I feel like this isn’t true or applicable just to me
– the lack of support that sticks with you and feels more important and
influential than the positive, heartwarming, and reassuring support. Bizarrely,
this can be especially true even when there’s more positive support than there
is negative!
In resisting the urge to respond – because I won’t
lie, I did actually really want to! – I found that the comment ended up
contributing to the already-established consideration to quit blogging…
That original thought to do so – and so the second
reason why I temporarily quit – was because, my discharge from the specialist
hospital (after almost two and a half years!) and transfer to a step-down unit
at my local psychiatric hospital back home, was planned to happen on October 1st
– after a successful Discharge Meeting at the end of August – which I also
blogged about: My
Discharge Meeting | I'm NOT Disordered. So, I actually published
a blog post (which you can read here: A
Massive Decision (that I shouldn't make alone) | I'm NOT Disordered)
asking readers whether they had any thoughts on me ending I’m NOT Disordered.
My blog post the day after that one, was marking
World Suicide Prevention Day (you can read it here: World
Suicide Prevention Day | I'm NOT Disordered) and in it, I
discussed my three suicide attempts (after the two I mentioned earlier – the
one in 2009 and that life support one in 2012 – despite being an inpatient, I
actually managed to make a third attempt that again, landed me on life support,
and I blogged about it across three posts: The
Run-Up To An OD | I'm NOT Disordered, The
Admission For The OD | I'm NOT Disordered, and I
Put Some Thought Into The OD | I'm NOT Disordered).
Having failed to realise that you can turn off the
comment function on your blog posts, I received one on the World Suicide
Prevention Day post which simply but devastatingly read: ‘good luck with
attempt number 4.’ And it was definitely one of those
‘straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back situation in that it was the thing I needed
to push me over the edge and make the decision to finally end I’m NOT
Disordered on September 12th, 2014, in a blog post: The
End of I'm NOT Disordered | I'm NOT Disordered.
Everything I Learned From It
ü How
therapeutic writing can be
ü I
hadn’t recognised the achievement of building a strong blog
ü The
power of words – both mine and others! – on the internet
ü Blogging
was more than being something I did when I was free and in my hospital room
ü I
had built a connection with my audience without even realising
ü My
creativity needed an outlet
ü It’s
ok to take time away from a passion or a commitment
ü You
can’t force passion, mine had grown naturally
ü I
was missing out on the opportunity to be bettering my blog and my content
ü My
motivation was evolving
Why I Continued
In all honesty, I put some huge consideration into picking
back up the laptop and writing a new blog post (which you can read: An
Explanation | I'm NOT Disordered) on October 29th,
2014, after almost six weeks since that post ending, I’m NOT Disordered. In all
honesty, the urge to be one million percent confident of my decision to resume
my blogging was centred, largely, around embarrassment. I’m one of those people
who publicly moans when you get people posting on social media stating that
they’re ending their account or quitting content creation – at any level – and then
resuming in no time at all! So, I didn’t want to become one of those people
that I actually, openly criticise on the internet!
I wanted to be completely certain of my decision to
come back to the industry. And I came back strong! I actually posted two more
blog posts the following day: What've
You Missed? | I'm NOT Disordered and Chelsea
Does Newcastle | I'm NOT Disordered and then I published
another – but more thought-provoking (in my opinion!) post – the following day
(October 31st): Name
& Shame Or Dignified Silence? | I'm NOT Disordered.
In this piece, rather than adding photos with brief bits of text, I talked
through my thought process on whether to disclose the name of the hospital I
had been in for over two years.
Something I didn’t include in that blog post was
that I had once, accidentally, mentioned a member of staff by name in a blog
post (there’s no point linking it because I edited her name out of it to just
her job title – which was how I usually referred to particular staff as an
inpatient) and she became so incredibly upset and stated that a huge reason for
that was her awareness of the size of my blog’s audience (it was in the
thousands back then). She was worried she would face some sort of ‘backlash’
from my audience and this instance and the results of it, really stuck in my
mind when I thought about naming the hospital.
This ended up being a wise decision because had I
named them and had they then received a ton of negative comments from any of my
readers, I may not have been offered and awarded the opportunities I was two
years later… After a charity I was working with, was shortlisted for the National
Service User Awards 2015 (which I blogged about: National
Service User Awards 2015 | 'Ad' | I'm NOT Disordered)
which the private healthcare company who owned the hospital I was in, were
actually responsible for the creation of, it meant that I was invited to attend
the Award ceremony. At it, I ended up meeting a ton of really senior staff of
the healthcare company and on hearing about my blog now being very close to reaching
its first 100,000 readers (it got there just five months later: Thank
You for 100k | I'm NOT Disordered) I ended up
connecting with their Communications and Marketing Team.
This ended up meaning that over the following year,
I featured two members of staff on I’m NOT Disordered (namely the Involvement
Co-ordinator, and the CEO a few times!) and then, at
the end of 2016, I blogged pre-event promotional material before attending a
huge event with them:
PRE-EVENT
PROMO - Enhancing Patient Experience | Ad | I'm NOT Disordered
PRE-EVENT
PROMO - Enhancing Patient Experience | Ad | I'm NOT Disordered
PRE-EVENT
PROMO - Enhancing Patient Experience | Ad | I'm NOT Disordered
THE
TWITTER FEED: Enhancing Patient Experience with Cygnet Healthcare | Ad | I'm
NOT Disordered
In addition to finding myself happy with my
decision not to speak out about the negative experiences with the hospital
immediately after my discharge, I also became happy with the ultimate,
difficult decision to start blogging again. Ironically, the two actually came
somewhat together when, in 2017, I found myself attending event after event
after event (Cygnet
Hospital Coventry Grand Opening - A Conversation | Ad | I'm NOT Disordered,
Rehabilitation
and Recovery: New Approaches with Cygnet Healthcare | Ad | I'm NOT Disordered,
Cygnet
Healthcare #ChangeStigma Event | Ad | I'm NOT Disordered)
with Cygnet Healthcare.
Attending events very quickly became an enormous
passion for me and was immediately something I found I really enjoyed and
something which really helped me to thrive personally with my mental health
recovery, but also professionally with – what was becoming – my blogging
career. And it wasn’t long after I started attending and blogging about events
that I began being asked – by various organisations and people – to actually
speak at them, deliver presentations, run workshops, and even Chair two (I actually
blogged about both of those: #RFForum
| PRE EVENT PROMO VLOG | RICHMOND FELLOWSHIP'S NATIONAL WORKING TOGETHER FORUM
| #RFForum | Ad | I'm NOT Disordered and RICHMOND
FELLOWSHIP WORKING TOGETHER FORUM | #RFWORKINGTOGETHERFORUM | AD | I'm NOT
Disordered).
In keeping with what about my blog was helpful for
me, ultimately, recognising that it was helpful just to create the blog posts
was the real motivation for picking it back up. I realised that my mental
health actually needed to have that forum and that commitment. I came to see
that blogging had become so much more therapeutic than I had both recognised
and given it credit for! But I think that in fairness, it was likely difficult
to see the benefits of it for my recovery because when I started, I had so many
other things in my life that were also contributing to my mental health
recovery e.g. DBT, the therapeutic groups/timetable, the general safety of
being an inpatient, the validation I gained from being able to identify with
all the other inpatients, medication, and so much more! So, I guess it was
challenging to really be able to differentiate which bit was helping which bit
of my mental health and in which way.
When I ended, I’m NOT Disordered, it was right
before being discharged from my detention under section 3 and also just before
being transferred to the step-down unit nearer home. So, a lot of the benefits
from that particular, specialist ward had gone for over one month whilst I
wasn’t blogging and I think that this definite contributed to my eventual
recognition of how helpful blogging was. I think it also made the benefits I learnt
blogging had on my mental health, even more fundamentally important because I
was now without all those other things!
The flipside of this though, was the caution I
experienced in regard to ensuring I wasn’t becoming reliant upon I’m NOT
Disordered because I knew there would be a ton of dangers if that became the
case: I could end up using it to replace professional support or if I received
negativity or a drop in my audience it might hit me a heck of a lot harder and
in a more profoundly negative way. I also saw that if I didn’t have the time to
create content or if I was really tired one day when I should have been writing
a blog post, I might put too much pressure on myself to come through those
instances. I might feel more frustrated or sad in those situations. Then there
was also the practical side of things going wrong e.g. the internet crashing,
struggling to get an internet connection/signal, or even a device just totally
breaking and having to be without them whilst they’re being fixed or whilst
trying to replace them!
So, I feel that it was quite early on in my
blogging life that I managed to find that balance between allowing and
indulging in its psychological benefits whilst not becoming completely reliant
upon it. And it actually struck me as a bit ironic because back then, one
element to my blog’s Disclaimer page (Disclaimer
| I'm NOT Disordered) was actually about advising that
people don’t utilise I’m NOT Disordered as an alternative to professional help
and support! I think that having that message though, was fundamental to the
energy I put in to ensuring I didn’t do the same thing too! And, instead, it
became about recognising that there were things only my blog could help me with
and, equally, there were things that only professionals or other elements e.g.
medication or Therapy could impact.
Despite publicising this message for readers not to
rely on my blog for mental health advice or support, I’m still incredibly and
increasingly aware that my content is still massively influential on a reader’s
mental state and on their journey through – or into – recovery. And trust me,
this is another massive motivation for me to continue blogging. Admittedly
though, over the years of my blogging career, I have had to learn a level of
balance here too in terms of ensuring I don’t do something purely because it
can or might help someone else. Similarly to the other point: I don’t want to
put pressure on myself to create content when I’m too tired or even if I’m busy
with other commitments – or similar commitments e.g. attending events and
giving speeches that just don’t necessarily mean creating content.
Another balance I’d learnt regarding how helpful my
content is for readers, is around not being so afraid that if I create content
when I’m struggling, it will remove any hope readers have. For what felt like a
long time, I thought I had become the poster-person for BPD recovery and when I
had my first relapse after being discharged from that long-term
admission/hospital, I was so worried and anxious to publicise it. And this was
largely because I was just so completely convinced that a ton of readers would
have the mindset; ‘if she can do as well as she was and it can still go wrong
again, what’s the point of fighting so hard for a recovery that doesn’t last?’
After a short time though, I came to accept the
reality of recovery not being linear and one reason why that became a message I
wanted to publicise was because if professionals or anyone else had made me
aware of this fact, I might not have thought myself a total failure when I
first had that relapse! I may not have been so hard on myself for it. I might
not have gotten so low and felt so broken by it. And that is now my motivation
to do all that I can to help others be aware of the non-linear format of mental
health recovery because I absolutely hate the thought of someone being falsely informed
of literally anything through, I’m NOT Disordered. I can’t stand the idea of a
reader thinking or feeling like I – through my content – have misled them or
given them false hope and irrational or unrealistic expectations and standards.
In fairness to that hospital and to professionals
everywhere, I think a big reason for their lack of publicising the fact
recovery isn’t linear, is their fear that doing so will leave service users or
inpatients feeling hopeless and as though it’s pointless to try to get better.
But sometimes, being so afraid you’ll say the ‘wrong thing’ can end up causing
more harm than just taking the risk and trying to spin it into a positive, a
life lesson, or just trying to simply word, explain, phrase, or illustrate it
in a way that it is still helpful and beneficial e.g. when I spread the message
that recovery isn’t linear, I do so with advice on what to do if you do relapse
and information or contact details for support networks (hence the Help
Directory page – Help
Directory | I'm NOT Disordered – on I’m NOT
Disordered!).
Now, another motivation that keeps me going in my
blogging or – what is now, fairly and very recently established to be an – Influencer
career, is the enormously confident and immensely therapeutic sense of purpose
that it gives me. For such a long time – at least four years – I had this
massive certainty that I was on this earth to kill myself at a young age and in
a way that would draw attention to the failures of mental health services and
professionals.
When I was an inpatient in that long-term hospital,
I confided this belief in the staff on the ward, and they helped me to really
recognise that it was a huge quality or element that was actually holding me
back from recovery in a very massive way. And so, in April 2014 – after almost
two years in that hospital, I worked with a Psychologist to finally tackle it!
We worked so hard together to properly undermine it in a way that was lasting.
In a way that was true, real, and permanent. So, we spent a very long session
where she had me create two lists: one was evidence that supported the belief
and the other was evidence that contradicted it. I’m so grateful I had been
blogging for a while by then because it meant that I actually had the thought
to blog about this task and in doing so, I wrote out the entirety of both
lists: The
Early Death Belief | I'm NOT Disordered.
Inevitably/luckily/just as the Psychologist had probably
and likely actually hoped/planned for(!), the list of evidence contradicting it
was a lot longer and more powerful and influential than the list supporting the
belief (which you can see for yourself/in more detail if you read the actual
blog post/visit the link for it above!)! A big sticking point initially in
overcoming this belief, was the question ‘well what’s my purpose instead?’ and
‘if it’s not that, then why am I still alive?’ I desperately and understandably
needed a replacement for that incorrect, perceived purpose. In all honesty
though, it really wasn’t that much later that I realised blogging was it!
For so many various reasons, I came to believe that
I had experienced all the hardships and traumas that I had and I had overcome
all the difficult thoughts and feelings that I had, because doing so, meant I
could blog. And it made even more sense because I could blog about those things
in a way that was helping others and in a way that was therapeutic for myself
too! It made all the negativity worthwhile and I 100% felt that having this
career was my purpose in life. And I actually think that having this mindset or
quality to all my work around being an Influencer e.g. the content creation and
the public speaking etc has contributed to the success I have had in it and to
the very real and huge popularity of I’m NOT Disordered. I think it speaks to a
stronger and more genuine passion and dedication than an Influencer or blogger
who simply joins the industry to earn more money, to attract attention/followers,
to gain freebies and complimentary experiences, and/or to achieve fame and
notoriety.
Finally, in picking up blogging again, I totally undermined
that fundamental reason for quitting blogging: the worry I’d have no
inspiration or reason for content if I was in recovery and in the community
being a normal, plain person who was just like anyone else! I massively
surprised myself in realising that despite being discharged from hospital,
labelled as in recovery from BPD, and ending up living in my own home in the
community, I still had a ton of reasons to create content! I still had a ton of
things to say! I still had a number of messages and lessons I wanted others to
know. I still had so much creativity and need for this platform/career.
In case you didn’t realise; I literally couldn’t be
more grateful for my decision to start blogging again!
Everything I Learned From It
ü It’s
never too late for a fresh start
ü An
audience or following online, can remember you
ü I
have a lot more to say than I thought I did!
ü You
can find an even stronger appreciate in something when you are without it
ü Those
on the internet, really admire and benefit from honesty from content creators
ü Progress
doesn’t end with discharge from the psychiatric hospital!
ü I
didn’t need external factors to want to blog – I had reason to in myself the
whole time
ü I’m
far more resilient than I give myself credit for
ü Your
purpose can grow, change, evolve, develop, and even be completely, newly
created!
ü No journey is linear – not mental health recovery not the Influencer industry