“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”
Albert Einstein
A little while ago, one of my best-friend's; Jack announced that he’s taking part in the Newcastle Inflatable 5k (which you can read about on ukrunningevents.co.uk) to raise money for the charity he volunteers with: Cats Protection. Since Jack actually started volunteering there after I took him and his husband; Spencer to the Summer Open Day 2025 event at the Adoption Centre as part of one of my many collaborations with the UK’s largest feline welfare charity and I introduced him to Volunteer Manager; Michelle (you can read the blog post from that: The Ultimate Guide to Networking). To help share the donation link for Jack’s fundraising, I’ve put this post together where I’m going to provide a bit of an inside look of all my previous collaborations with Cats Protection, and there’s also a little bit from Jack coming up next...
Inside the Pressure of First-Time Partnerships
Sadly, I honestly can’t remember how I first came into contact with Cats Protection in order to have begun the collaborations – I'm fairly certain that I approached them though. And I’m also fairly sure it was because I got my first rescue cat (not from them) in the October and – for the first time – I experienced all the rewarding thoughts and feelings you can experience in adopting a rescue animal. And I think that’s why I reached out for our very first collaboration piece, which was regarding my first visit to my local Cats Protection Centre: Tyneside Adoption Centre (www.cats.org.uk/tyneside for their official website page or @CPTynesideAdoption Centre on Facebook, @CPTynesideAdoption on Twitter, and @catsprotectiontyneside on Instagram) and private tour of the Centre. We used the content about the visit to announce that we would be creating an entire Series of partnered content for Christmas that year (2018) - but I’ll talk more about that one in the next section.
Now, I recently published a collaboration piece with Northumberland Zoo (which you can read: https://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2026/08/how-authenticity-helped-me-to-gain.html) and in it, I mentioned that my Mum has asked – during the visit to the Zoo – whether I was enjoying myself or if I was feeling too pressured and distracted by having to create content via photos and videos etc. I explained that my career has never felt like ‘work’ because I enjoy what I do so much and that even when it’s a big, formal event I’m blogging about or creating content on, I enjoy it; so of course, I was enjoying taking photos and videos of the Lemurs in their daft positions and the surprisingly huge Raccoons! Ironically, that blog post was all about authenticity and how being honest and open – particularly in my content – has helped me to gain the influence I now could have over more than 3 million readers, and I’m using this as a lead into being honest about my first collaborations with Cats Protection... I certainly still didn’t feel stress or deem creating our content together as ‘work,’ but I will absolutely admit that there was a sense of pressure for me with it.
Having been blogging for five years at that point (I created I’m NOT Disordered in January 2013), I very obviously hadn’t engaged in as many collaborations as I have these days, so I think that this played a part in feelings of pressure. But that also meant that experiencing pressure wasn’t purely related to the Cats Protection collaboration, it was with all my collaborations between the very first one I ever did (with Young Minds in 2014) and probably until only the last few years, I think, if I'm being honest... For all that time, I held this mindset that I needed to prove myself worthy of the collaboration. That I needed to illustrate that I was good at what I was being asked to do and that I was deserving of everything it took from the partner to provide their contribution to the collaboration – whether that be gifting me an item, providing gift vouchers, allowing me a complimentary experience e.g. first class train tickets (I’ve worked with LNER before) or a stay in a hotel room (like the Radisson Blu collaboration), or meeting with their staff or Volunteers. No matter what it was that I was gaining or benefiting from because of their kindness and generosity, I felt certain that I needed to prove they’d made the right decision in agreeing to work with me/my blog.
Now, I completely recognise and accept that I was creating the pressure myself – no collaboration partner – in all my years of collaborating – has ever put any sort of pressure on me, at all (which I’m incredibly grateful for and I think that speaks to the values and priorities of those I work with). But I think that the largest example of putting it on myself was in terms of setting myself unrealistic goals for the statistics around the collaboration.
You may have noticed from my frequent content celebrating various milestones in the reader count (the most recent celebration being when I’m NOT Disordered reached 3 million readers around two months ago: https://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2026/06/three-million-readers.html) that I’m very aware of my blog’s statistics. This is actually because I’m typically not one to blow my own trumpet or to have a great deal of confidence in my qualities, skills, and abilities, but this can be a pretty essential quality in communications and marketing or the Influencer industry as it’s a key contributor to securing publicity, promotion, and collaborations or media appearances. I’ve discovered, however, that the statistics are actually massively helpful with this. I have developed the thought ‘how can I deny the appeal of my content if over three million people have cared enough to at least check it out?!’ If anything, to dismiss or fail to acknowledge these achievements related to statistics, feels on the verge – if not over that – of being disrespectful and ungrateful, to be honest. Because I massively recognise that each number represents an actual person. And that’s why I strive to increase those numbers; not for the popularity and the freebies I might get from it, but because that means another person that I/my content/my blog could help. Another person whose life I could make a difference to.
So, for my first Cats Protection collaboration piece I set myself completely unreasonable aims for the statistics and levels of engagement, and they were ‘unreasonable’ to such a degree that I obviously didn’t meet them at all! Not even close! That’s how stupid I was with them! These days, I’m very conscious of setting realistic, achievable goals because I recognise that not hitting targets, can be incredibly hard on my mental health and can leave me feeling disappointed and struggling with feelings that I’m a failure and that I’ve let a lot of people down. It’s no fun. And it makes no sense to put myself through those thoughts and feelings simply because I’m being unrealistic, at least it’s something I can massively control or rectify so that it doesn’t happen again with other collaborations and partnerships. And for the last few years, it hasn’t come up at all.
As I said though, this wasn’t a pressure that was ever put on me, nor was it one that was solely about the Cats Protection collaboration. And I think, if anything, it says a lot of good, positive, and productive things about Cats Protection that I have continued to work with them for the last eight years because I’ve done this for a number of reasons; but here are the main three:
I’ve absolutely adored the staff I’ve worked with: mostly the previous Customer Engagement Advisor; Chris, Michelle; the Volunteer Manager, and the Celebrity and Influencer Relationship Manager (who was from Head Office, not the Adoption Centre); Alice.
I love the opportunities they’ve afforded me – particularly the invite for me and a best-friend to attend their Christmas Animation Advanced Screening in London in 2019 (which I blogged about in this post: https://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2019/11/cats-protections-christmas-animation.html).
I’ve experienced a huge sense of positivity, productivity, value, honour, joy, excitement, and thrill from our collaborations and the general recognition of what they do as a charity, what they mean to the lives (both furry and human) that they touch – and save(!) - and how unique they are in the work they do and the way they collaborate.
Now, what would I say to other Influencers or Content Creators who are struggling with feelings of pressure in their own collaborations?
Whilst I mentioned statistics helping my confidence, I would always recommend – and something which I’m aware of doing myself – is not to let whether the partnership was ‘successful’ be purely defined by numbers. A more important quality, for me, which helps me to deem a collaboration as successful, is when I feel I’ve learnt something from doing it. Whether that means something practical like a new function on Canva or a way of phrasing an important message, or something like questions I should ask more often on similar work in terms of visiting their Centre etc.
Have boundaries around communication – don’t feel you have to be available to contact 24/7. You could try telling the collaboration partner from the beginning whether you have working hours or other commitments that regulate how many hours or which hours in a day that you can dedicate to this work with them.
Don’t feel responsible for their audience’s response. A brilliant feature on Instagram Insights is that in the statistics on views of a post, you can see the percentage of views that were from followers and the percentage that was non-followers. Whilst, if you use the ‘collaboration’ function on Instagram, it won’t make it clear the percentage of views that were from your followers versus the partner’s (it’ll keep it as followers or non-followers with non-followers not necessarily meaning they were your partner’s) but you can get a rough estimate of what it might mean. And if your content receives negative engagement from accounts that are followers of the partner, this is not your responsibility or fault. The partner is responsible for who they choose or agree to work with, and part of your pre-publication process should include both parties approving the content, so this should mean that they shouldn’t allow any publication of content that has their name attached, if they aren’t 100% happy with your work and what you’ve created.
Be clear and find the difference between professional standards and unrealistic perfectionism. Try to recognise where a standard has been created by yourself and is unreasonable or too demanding. And balance this or try to defy this with more rational, sensible, reasonable, achievable, and mutually agreeable (between yourself and the collaboration partner) standards, qualities, or expectations.
Recognising the Importance of Trusting Your Reputation
I guess that despite not reaching my personal statistics goals – luckily, I hadn’t confided them in Cats Protection so they neither thought I’d failed nor saw I’d been an unreasonable perfectionist – I guess the charity still deemed our collaboration to have been a success because our next one was actually an entire Series and it was for Christmas 2018! The Series was inspired by the success and popularity of a ‘12 Days of Christmas with I’m NOT Disordered’ Series which I ran in 2017 where I had a different person complete a short, festive-themed questionnaire and then published their answers individually each day for the twelve days preceding Christmas Day. And so, for the ‘12 Cats of Christmas with I’m NOT Disordered,’ we had twelve different cat owners answer a set of questions about their cat and with no relevance to Christmas or the festivities.
I wrote in that launch blog post that I’ve linked beneath the subtitle, that my aim for this Series was not only to raise the profile of Cats Protection, but also to raise awareness that cats aren’t just for Christmas. This is an incredibly popular message that is so important, Cats Protection typically don’t even allow adoptions over the Christmas period – only reservations – because of the worry that people are adopting as a Christmas gift and with no real thought, planning, or proper consideration for the long-term impact of adding a cat to the family. Especially the implications of it being a rescue cat who may have some struggles or even trauma to work through when coming to a new home and who may actually need the exact opposite of excited squeals of joy and loud Christmas music!
I think that perhaps my establishment of this message in my pitch of the Series to Cats Protection, really helped them to agree to the long-term collaboration because it was a fairly big commitment after only one Centre visit and one blog post. So, I think it was probably really helpful to see that I was in tune with their own way of working and the nature of thinking. That I was on the same page with their attitude and beliefs around cats and cat care, was probably seen as a larger priority for the charity – probably more so than my statistics were considered to be.
As I mentioned that additional goal too of raising the profile of the charity, that was very likely also a priority of theirs too and recognising that, and the additional collaborations I’ve completed over the years since these first ones with Cats Protection, have really helped open my eyes to another recognition: when an organisation – any organisation, charity, store, business, well-known individual – agrees to a collaboration with an Influencer or Content Creator, they’re trusting them with their reputation. And I think that this has likely come to feel like a greater and greater honour as the years have gone by because I’ve discovered the importance of mine/my blog’s own reputation too. I’ve established how much it matters, how important it is, and how much it means to trust someone else – literally no matter who that may be – with doing something such as a collaboration, that might very genuinely and largely influence or impact the reputation I’ve worked so hard to build to a relevant, proud, meaningful, appropriate, popular, important, and successful standard.
The fact that I have talked about the pressure first, isn’t a coincidence – it was the first thing that came up in working with Cats Protection that I wanted to provide an inside view into. And I’m actually so grateful that it was the first thing because luckily, I had managed to start realising the wrong-ness of it by the point of recognising this point around reputation. And this is great and very fortunate because had I not started to work on that, the added realisation that I was being trusted with the reputation of the UK’s biggest feline welfare charity(!) would have added to the pressure. In all honesty, it would have very likely, saw me massively struggle. I mean, talk about pressure and expectation! Like, how much does it matter to have such a huge, established charity work with you? How important is their decision to partner with you and your little mental health blog?
I think it’s important - as an Influencer or Content Creator, to recognise that where a big organisation – like Cats Protection – either agrees to work with you or where they send the pitch to you, they’ve very likely done their research first. And I think this is an added reason why I care so much about my blog’s statistics too – I recognise that they are very likely serving as a positive encouragement to go ahead with collaborations. It is with theis recognition, that I decided to include some of the largest statistical results of collaborations on the Media Kit that you can view on the Contact page. I decided to choose results that would apply to various organisations e.g. there’s one around products selling out, but also one about donation rises, so that no organisation feels that they wouldn’t be relevant to my content or that working with I’m NOT Disordered wouldn’t benefit them. This is also another way in which my statistics give me confidence – knowing that they are clearly ‘good enough’ for bit organisations to want to collaborate. That they make me worthy of being trusted with the organisation’s reputation and brand image.
As I mentioned earlier, over recent years, I’ve come to really appreciate this point of reputation because I’m incredibly aware that my blog has become a bit of a brand in itself really. And this actually links, really nicely, to a recent news article about my favourite Influencer; Victoria Magrath (which you can read on her Instagram: @Victoria) where she stated ‘I don’t like to refer to myself as an Influencer. It makes what I do feel transactional, and I didn’t start that way. It was a hobby I was obsessed with.’ This is reminscent of thoughts I’ve had regarding whether forming I’m NOT Disordered into a brand, would lead to any kind of negative connotation about it amongst readers. Would they consider it as becoming less genuine?
This is a really important view of my blog for me, and it’s the reason why I have never featured ‘adverts’ on I’m NOT Disordered. I think that a good piece of evidence that this is a priority for a lot of people, is that no matter who I tell, the second I mention having a blog and being an Influencer, the question I’m most often asked is: “do you make a lot of money from that?”
Firstly, would you ask a Doctor or a Police Officer that question? No, so why is it permissable for someone in this industry? Is it about the unfamiliar side to it? Or the interest and curiosity that the media have created in their coverage of blogging and Influencers?
Secondly, if I did make a lot of money – and was prepared to tell someone that I did – what would that mean to that person? Is that going to mean they won’t give me the time of day and wouldn’t check out I’m NOT Disordered? Or, would they be amazed, inspired, and have more reason to visit the blog?
Usually, my response to this question is to explain that any finanical gain is by way of freebies and complimentary opportunities, experiences, event invitations, and reimbursement for travel or accomodation costs incurred as a direct result of a collaboration. I also always add that I do this because my content is about mental health and I never want for anyone to think that I’m creating the type of content I create in return for money. I’m concerned that this would lead to them believing that it’s my motivation and that its some sort of inspiration or reason for being honest and open. As though that’s not who I am and that I’m doing it to benefit others and to encourage others to speak up too.
A huge example of my blog’s reputation mattering so much can be illustrated via my decision to stop collaborating with the private healthcare company who owned the life-saving psychiatric hospital I was in for over two years. A number of stories came out in the media about their other hospitals and having been in their hospital at the time of a news story (a patient suffocated another patient on the ward about the one I was on and we all had our leave stopped because the car park was full of Journaists!) I recognised the impact the stories had on their service users. In a way, this is obvious because the majority of these stories were about inpatients managed to commit suicide whilst in the hospital, but I don’t think everyone would - in those cases – consider the impact of it on more than the person who lost their life and their loved ones. There’s rarely any focus on the other inpatients and how they feel – I mean, they likely also had a relationship with the person who died, but they would also likely end up struggling with their opinion and trust in the staff to (where the death happened because of a staff failure or negligence).
The issue that made my mind up for me with this was when I received a comment on a collaboration piece from someone ranting about making complaints against the organisation and receiving no response so they were stating ‘I’m not being responded to because they’re all busy hosting these events’ (which I was attending and blogging about!). The only difficult bit in deciding whether to cut ties with the company, was the fact that I massively attributed my recovery to them. I was so grateful to their hospital, the staff, and the services they provided.
Some might wonder whether I also considered the fact that this is my blog and that I’m in complete control of the content that I create/publish on it. So, why should I change what I want to do for the sake of one comment? But I listen to my readers. I – and my blog – are literally only here because of them, so who am I to dismiss or disregard something so meaningful to them?
In recognising the negative impact of the various stories on service users and other inpatients, I think this served as the largest reason to end contact because I felt a very obvious and understandable loyalty to that group of people. I mean, I was one of them once. And I wasn’t prepared to let my blog’s reputation become about me not standing up for fellow service users.
Learning About Loyalty in Collaborations
I think that other than Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) and Waythrough (formally Richmond Fellowship), Cats Protection have been my longest collaboration partner because we’ve had content from that first one in 2018 until our most recent in 2025 (though I’m sure there’ll be a lot more still to come!). But it was within one year of working together that I realised loyalty is incredibly important to collaborations.
Ironically, in the blog post I just linked – which was our first collaboration in 2019 and revolved around my invitiation to the Easter Event at the local Adoption Centre – I talked about everything I’ve just been saying around those stories about the healthcare company leading me to ending contact and partnered work with them! But, in addition to being relevant about loyalty, it was also incredibly fitting for the discussion around reputation!
The reason I chose to use the blog post regarding the Easter Event as a chance to speak a bit about loyalty was because I’d had the recognition that it was due to my loyalty that Cats Protection had invited me back to their Centre for this event. And loyalty in collaborations, as an Influencer, or as a Content Creator, can take a lot of different forms. It doesn’t have to be about writing a great, big, long blog post about an organisation, their work, an event they host, or whatever else. It can simply be commenting on their social media posts or sharing their content across your own platforms. And I think that sometimes, having someone share your content can mean a bit more than a full, formal, collaboration piece because the person is somewhat obliged to create that content. Whereas, there’s a higher level of choice and less expectation when you simply retweet or add a post to your Stories on Instagram etc.
Every organisation I’ve worked with, where I’ve continued to share their content – even when I was in no way involved in creating it or contributing to it – have appreciated that gesture. And I think a key reason for this is the recognition that where it is simply about sharing their content, you have very little personal gain there in comparison to if it was collaboration content that mentioned you and gave credit to or provided links to your platform etc.
And, in all honesty, having this outlook or mindset is something I do in terms of it being the opposite way round too in so far as seeing previous collaboration partners still share or comment on my content that doesn’t involve or mention them. This is incredibly special for me because it shows a level of care, kindness, and gratitude. If our work together had honestly done them – as an organisation – no favours, they wouldn’t continue to follow and support me and my content, would they? And that nicely links back to that topic of reputation in that every single time any account interacts with another online – in whatever way and on whatever platform – they're immediately associating their reputations to each other.
I mean, I’ve seen followers (of other Influencers and Content Creators) be like ‘do you remember when you tweeted such-and-such about eight years ago? That was bad! Why would endorse them?’ And this speaks massively to the importance of clarity when interacting with others in terms of mentions and shares and ensuring it’s super clear to your audience or followers whether your interaction is actually an endorsement or whether you’re just recognising or simply agreeing with their post.
There’s also though, something to be said for creating content that isn’t a formal, agreed partnership or collaboration, but which mentions or promotes an organisation. And I say this because a really lovely experience i had recently was with a piece of Gracie’s Way (which is my pet bereavement project which I launched in January 2026) content that mentioned numerous organisations which included both Samaritans and Blue Cross and the two accounts commented on it!
The content had the title: ‘Top Tips to Coping with Pet Loss Triggers’ and was about or inspired by the current storyline of pet bereavement in Emmerdale. It was in the format of a carousel and the final slide had the title ‘Where to Seek Help & Support in the UK’ and then it had a couple of organisations and their helplines. The Blue Cross – who have 98.1k followers on their account: https://www.instagram.com/the_blue_cross/ thanked me for mentioning their Pet Loss Service and Samaritans – who have 119k followers on their account: https://www.instagram.com/samaritanscharity/ commented: ‘Thank you for reminding people that we’re here 24/7 365, it doesn’t matter what may be causing a person to be struggling, we’re always here to listen.’
It meant so much to know that such huge organisations have simply seen Gracie’s Way’s content and I think this is especially meaningful as it’s so soon in the project’s journey (I mean it’s literally been eight months!) and perhaps that’s what makes it feeler like a larger achievement than comments like that on my own content.
I think that something which is a key thought between both the topics of reputation and loyalty, is recognising how important your loyalty is to the other person/organisation but also, to yourself and your followers. I mean, if there was a potential risk to reputation, it may prove useful to weigh up the chance of it with how meaningful and important your loyalty will be as I said to both yourself and other party. But it’s good to realise that seeing your loyalty to another organisation could be really encouraging and lovely for your followers or audience to witness/learn about. It could say a lot about you as a person and it might speak to your motivations in content creation too as I spoke about earlier. In that, if you’re seen sharing an organisation’s content who you’ve worked with before but the content isn’t a collaboration, if you work together again, there’s a greater chance of it not being seen as tokenistic as people will recognise your long-term support of the partner too.
Evidence of me doing this with Cats Protection comes from the fact that when you search ‘Cats Protection’ in my blog post archive, there’s a number of posts that come up in the search results which weren’t titled as formal collaboration content, but have only appeared because I mentioned Cats Protection in them. Here’s my top five favourites:
"Where do you find the confidence to talk to complete strangers about mental health?”
This comment actually came from the event that the first blog post linked above was regarding/inspired by: the 2019 Summer Fayre at the Tyneside Adoption Centre, which Cats Protection asked me to create some social media content at.
In the blog post, alongisde my photos from the event, I discussed my thoughts on where my confidence comes from... I mentioned that I certainly haven’t always been like this and I reminisced on my first public speech which was to be the closing speech at the London Story Camp event for Time To Change in 2015. I had called my Mum before it saying that I could face going into this giant auditorium and talking to this huge crowd of complete strangers. I remember realising that so many people there were talking to each other like they knew at least one other person and I had no one! My Mum gave me the perfect mix of support and tough love by validating my nerves and anxiety, but also telling me to do it! Something which she helpfully pointed out – because in situations like that, I think you often don’t think too clearly yourself so I hadn’t even thought of this – that I’d gone all that way to London, that it was a huge honour to have been asked to do the closing speech, and that I’d likely be so mad and disappointed in myself if I didn’t go through with it. And if I didn’t do it and keep to my word, what would the organisation think of me? Would they ever work with me again or ever offer me another opportunity that involved trusting and believing in me if I let them down in this way?
It was definitely one of those instances that came from a reasonably small and insignigicant situation, but which ended up genuinely being an absolutely fundamental moment in my entire career – especially in terms of public speaking! I adopted the attitude ‘if I could do that...’ and turned to it for motivation with future opportunities and I think that the more speeches I have given, the more my confidence with them has just somewhat naturally grown too! And earlier this year, this was particularly useful when I ended up delivering an online speech for the largest number I’d ever spoken to in a Teams webinar: over 300!
I think another additional useful element for my confidence that has also come somewhat naturally, has been the growth, success, development, and popularity of I’m NOT Disordered – which really shines through in the statistics I’ve mentioned earlier. Seeing the number of readers and securing collaborations with huge organisations, being invited to co-facilitate mental health Police training, solo-facilitate suicide awarness training for the British Transport Police (BTP), giving presentaitons and speeches, having invitations to big events that have meant travelling and accomodation costs being paid, have all contributed to me feeling like I have somewhat of a place in the industry. That my blog holds its own little, important space.
The final and – in my opinion – largest reason for my confidence is about, whenever I am nervous or anxious, always keeping in my mind the goals I have in terms of what I want to achieve by talking to someone or by giving a speech. I use these goals as my ‘drive' and my courage and bravery to push past all the anxiety and stage-fright and to end up, actually, coming across as being confident and strong to everyone else in the end!
I’ve also found that over my years of creating mental health content for millions of people, I’ve just naturally and gradually developed a level of confidence around being honest and open on all the topics related to the themes mental health, trauma, self-harm, and suicide. This is probably because I’d say that having that quality of honesty to my content is hugely vital and fundamental in making it successful and popular. Authenticity – is what I referred to all of this as in my last and most recent blog post: https://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2026/08/how-authenticity-helped-me-to-gain.html.
The other day, I had an epileptic seizure and bumped into a lady and her daughter in hospital and it came out that they were wating for an assessment with the Crisis Team on the sixteen-year-old daughter. I found myself handing my blog’s business card over to them and the Mum invited me into their room while I waited for my taxi home. I told them that when I’d first created I’m NOT Disordered, I would never tell anyone what I wrote about; if someone asked, I would just say “my life.” Never ‘mental health.’ And that was a direct result of the stigma and discrimination that was so tightly held around the topic back then (2013) but that I now have the attitude that if someone has a problem with it, it should say more negative things about them than it should about me.
In learning that being honest and open about my mental health was a positive, helpful, useful, and productive thing, I have also found motivation to be confident talking to strangers in the hope that it will inspire or influence them to also be honest and open in whatever way they are affected by topics that are often misjudged, misunderstood, and/or kept secretive and confidential or, simply hushed-up! I know from personal experience that if someone who can truly empathise with you, gives you advice, it can mean so much more than a professional with a qualification telling you to do something else. I’ve always said, if I’m given advice by a service user or a professional, I’m more likely to listen to and try out, the service user’s (obviously only If they're safe and positive and productive – because I absolutely recognise and have experience of service users being poor, negative influences on one another too).
I mean, with this girl, she confided what she’d been saying about something she wanted to do that had led to her needing the assessment and it was something I’d done before. I told her that when it was me, professionals would say to me “you could just end up injured or physically disabled for life” and I didn’t listen because it didn’t mean all that much comong from them. From people who I didn’t 100% trust anyway. So, I still jumped. But I was able to tell her, from my jump, I was left with a ton of broken ribs and in agony for weeks on end because ribs are a bitch to heal – mostly because nothing can be done to fix them and because the breaks are also constantly aggravated every time you breathe because that makes them move! Apparently I was right in my belief that saying this would be helpful in influencing a need to pause and think on it.
That second collaboration post I linked about networking, really, shows and illustrates just how far my confidence, mindset, honesty, and openness has come over the years!
The Collaborations That Led Me to Work on My Emotional Boundaries
I’m still baffled as to why I was suprrised when this happened because mental health and pets are – even just from the outside – an emotional, meaningful, and special combination. They’re two big topics that can matter to a lot of people. And if both matter deeply and in an incredibly personal way to one, same person? Of course that’s going to bring about some huge emotions!
Out of all our collaborations, the 13 that I have listed above in the form of their links, have been particularly relevant to triggering big emotional impacts whilst working on creating the actual content for them. The ones which it’s probably safe to say that this is most true for, are those connected to bereavement and my pet loss and then the little Birthday celebratory posts with my pets too. I’d love to think that everyone who knows even the most remotest piece of information about me, will likely also know that I love my pets and that I – and my mental health in particular – massively benefit from having them in my life.
I think I’m fairly lucky that my blog/typical content is about mental health because I think that’s why no collaboration partner has ever seemed surprised if I’ve (and in fairness, I don’t exactly do it often!) become emotional around our content or communication together. Because they’ve likely seen or read some of my mental health content and have an awareness of that side to me. However, I’d like to ensure there’s a difference recognised between being emotional and being unprofessional – and that’s what I’ve had to learn about and what this part of the blog post is really about because it’s something I was worried that I was in danger of if I wasn’t more observant about my emotions in collaborations. And, in keeping with my honesty and wanting to instil it in others, I’ll be incredibly open here and say that being deemed or thought of as unprofessional by collaboration partners or anyone of any position relevant to my blog and content creation career, is one of my largest fears and something I’m perhaps too aware of in terms of trying to avoid it or at least being concious if I’m heading that way!
And this concern – or, I would accept ‘paranoia’ to be honest – is to such an extent that I worry it might sometimes become a priority and a key concern where it’s either not relevant, not appropriate, not true, or simply shouldn’t be a priority at all!
I think that in considering this more, it’s probably largely based off of a self-confidence issue that, I think, is perhaps born from the fact that I never started I’m NOT Disordered with the aim or any prediction of it ending up reaching over 3 million readers and that – even after thirteen years – I still have a bit of an identity crisis in doing this. I also think that this crisis is mostly influenced by an awareness that I’ve never felt the most knowledgable Influencer in terms of content creation, social media, alogrithims, statistics, editing skills, Canva, proof-reading, design abilities, and so on! I feel very self-critical that yes, I have done numerous short-courses via online learning (typically FutureLearn, Training Express, and Centre of Excellence) that are relevant to being a content creator e.g. my Certificate in Social Media in Healthcare, Diploma in Content Marketing, and Level 3 Diploma in Social Media for Business, but I haven’t studied any sort of long-term, degree-level, clasroom-learning studies. This has always made me feel somewhat inadequate and unqualified in what I do.
The irony here is that I think of all the professionals in communications and marketing who I’ve met and worked with e.g. in the comms and marketing teams and departments of NHS Trusts and charities etc. I can literally only think of two who said they actually had a University degree in a relevant subject! I remember one comms and marketing person in particular who had a degree in Art History! And I rememebr that because we talked about it for a good half an hour, laughing at how different that is and talking about the very real struggle so many students have of ending up in thousands of debt from their studies and then finding it incredibly difficult to get a paid job in their field that will actually use their education, in order to pay the debt back!
Someone asked me the other day, when I was talking about the instance I mentioned earlier of the young girl in hospital and how her friend DM’d me on Instagram to say I’d helped her... In telling someone of this, they were clearly like; it’s very understandable and imaginable that my content helps others, but do I benefit too? I explained that writing not only allows me creativity to come out, but that I also find myself able to process thoughts, feelings, and life events a lot easier and in a much safer way and a way that then enables me to cope in a healthier and more positive and productive way. This part of this blog post is a true illustration of this because considering this concern that I’m not ‘good enough’ or ‘qualified enough’ to do what I do, is something I’ve literally never discussed with anyone and so I’ve not really thought through where it stems from. And developing some sort of understanding has helped me to come to terms with it in a far better way.
In saying that, I’ve also started to wonder whether I would have this self-confidence crisis and paranoia if I’m NOT Disordered had 100 readers and no collaborations, nor any features in the media... Would I have ended up questioning the validity of my career? If my blog wasn’t so far ‘out there’ in terms of popularity, success, and the incredibly special opportunities and experiences it affords me? If it didn’t impact my emotions as much? If it wasn’t so important to me?
How to Handle Learning with a Collaboration Partner
This penuiltimate behind-the-scenes bit (yes, you nearly made it through the entire post!), was going to go last because the – now – last bit is regarding a collaboration post that was published prior to the one linked above. However, this point about learning links nicely to what I was saying about second-guessing my qualifications and abilities in my career. Because I think that ‘learning’ can very easily and quickly be seen as some sort of negative thing as though you’ve learnt to do something the ‘right’ way because you did it the ‘wrong’ way. Or you’re learning from a ‘mistake.’ Almost as though it speaks to a weakness and a sense of failure.
For me, this big learning opportunity with Cats Protection was regarding series content. So, our first Series was that one for Christmas 2018 with the cat Q&A from different owners across twelve days. Then, in 2023, I got my maine coon/rag doll cross cat; Ruby and we did a series of collaboration content to mark it. Even though I didn’t get Ruby from their Adoption Centre, we still used adding her to the family (I already had two house rabbits then) as an opporutnity for me to share their educational and advisory content about getting a kitten as I got her when she was a little over 8 weeks old.
The four main or key learning curves taken from that festive Series, which then shaped this most recent one were:
The length of the Series in terms of how long and how many posts were in it.
The frequency, days, and times that each post was published.
The length of each of the posts.
The number of links to Cats Protection and the placement of them.
When we started planning and approvin the idea and pitch behind the more recent one, I remember thinking about how I was going to phrase the fact that I was going to do those four factors differently this time. I obviously didn’t want to phrase it as: ‘I got this wrong last time, so I’ll do it this way this time.’ I needed to make it more positive and productive and I managed to phrase it that I really enjoy learning and that I’m so passionate and invested in my content creation that I really look into any areas of improvement or change so that my content can be the best it can possibly be. I also voiced to them that I recognised the importance and the meaning behind their agreement to collaborate with I’m NOT Disordered again and that I wanted our new Series to be as successful and popular as posssible so I wanted to use recent learning in order to inform a bit of a different structure, layout, format, and design of this Series.
I also realised something that could matter or make a difference was to express and make clear that the learning I had gained since the festive Series which was going to inform this kitten one; wasn’t solely from that festive Series. I’d naturally learned a lot over the five or so years between the two Series’ and some of the lessons had, in fact, come from other collaborations or just generally, other content. It’s not like we worked together and created a total disaster! So, that was important to express clearly and properly too.
I also really, thoroughly explained and detailed the impact doing things differently could or should have. Some of the differences between our first Series and this other one, were things I’d learnt in other Series collaborations e.g. the Etsy Blogmas Series in 2019 and had implemented in other collaborations already so in some cases, I was able to actually give Cats Protection evidence and statistics to prove and illustrate the benefits of doing things differently. I was able to evidence that they would benefit from it, that – the part about the time of day and which day I was publishing content was specifically relevant here – their links which were mentioned in the collaboration content would have a larger chance of being clicked and visited and then whatever they linked to, had a higher chance of being read, interacted with, or receiving engagements.
So, I think of other content creators; the important steps are:
Recognising and explaining where the lessons where learned.
Telling the partner your own motivations for wanting to learn and to improve.
Clearly stating and providing evidence as to how the lessons will impact the partner.
Providing examples or numerous versions of elements that can be changed, for approval.
The Event Collaboration That Still Stands Out For Me
Finally! This has ended up being a really nice one to end on, because it’s a lot less intense and I, actually, barely have anything to say about it - for once(!), to be honest!
I think I really wanted to include this point because it’s important for event hosts – mostly where it’s a potential or previous collaboration partner inviting an Influencer to their event – to realise that the experience an Influencer has at your event, can massively influence many things in your relationship or future work together...
Your bond and the genuine-ness and intensity of your connection.
The Influencer’s loyalty and dedication to collaborating with you.
The willingness and eagerness to collaborate.
The level of creativity and the ideas and inspiration featured or used in the collaboration content.
The effort and energy an Influencer is willing to dedicate or invest in the partnered work.
Any sort of approval or changes requested to be made to a collaborartion pitch or idea.
Whilst an invite alone, means a great deal to me and I absolutely appreciate invitiations and the chance to attend events, launches, or celebrations; I do also recognise how influential they can be to both my thoughts, feelings, and opinion of the organisation who have invited me and my thoughts, feelings, and opinion of the prospect of collaborating with them! I never attend an event without the recognition that it means a lot and that it can be massively impactful on the connection. And that’s probably why I put so much thought and words into a blog post I wrote back in January 2022: ‘A Guide to Events’ which I published after I reached one million readers: http://imnotdisordered.co.uk/2022/01/a-guide-to-events-my-one-million.html.
I hope that with the realisation of how much care and importance I put on events, being considered; Cats Protection realise how much it means when I say that out of all the events I’ve attended over the thirteen years of my career, their Christmas animation Advanced Screening at the Soho Hotel in London in November 2019, still stands out for me. It’s still so memorable – and memory is something I've struggled with over the years because of my mental health, so the fact that I can still recall a lot of details around that Cats Protection one, should say a lot, to be honest!
That’s it from me, for anyone still here (thanks!): please don’t forget why this blog post was started anyway – Jack's fundraising efforts for Cats Protection! If you’re unable to donate anything at all, please at least share the link with your followers:
