“The best times we’ve had on Earth, are usually with those we love.”
Van Harden
Something my Mum has massively instilled in me with my career as an Influencer for a long time now, has been ‘shy bairns get nowt.’ So, when I was told my Niece; Erynn, who lives in Scotland, was visiting my Mum and Step-Dad for four days and they invited me to go to Northumberland Zoo, I thought about what I might be able to do to make the trip a little bit more special. So, I called the Zoo and ended up speaking to the lovely Maxine who, in exchange for featuring on I’m NOT Disordered and my social media, offered us all complimentary entry passes! I was so excited to tell the three of them that I called them straight away when really, I ended up wishing I’d held it in longer and told them on the way there so that I could see their faces! Everyone was obviously really happy and very grateful, and I found myself filled with a sense of pride that I hadn’t experienced before. A pride that I have the type of influence that means I can do really nice things for my loved ones. So, I decided to use this blog post – that will feature my photos and videos from the Zoo – to also discuss how I’ve managed to use authenticity to build and gain this level of influence, what it means to me, why it matters to me, and how it feels to be able to use it in a way that benefits those who mean the most to me...
There are a number of ways and reasons why I’ve gained the influence I have and so I thought I’d chat through the one which I believe is key; authenticity, and provide some thoughts and advice on how you could illustrate this too or if you already do, ways you can build on it and utilise it...
From Day One of I’m NOT Disordered (in January 2013!), I’m extremely proud to say that I’ve remained honest and open in all my blog posts and social media content creation. I think that something which really helped me with this was the situation I was in when I started blogging...
In 2012, five years after the abuse ‘ended’ and three years after my first suicide attempt, I made another attempt and ended up on life support in Intensive Care. Now, a few months earlier, whilst admitted to a psychiatric hospital, my inpatient Psychiatrist recommended to my Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) that I be assessed to go to an out-of-area psychiatric hospital that specialized in my diagnosis at the time of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). He made the statement that he felt after three years of my records showing over 60 admissions to both medical and psychiatric hospitals, it was clear that the mental health services in my locality weren’t good enough to provide the level and type of help and support I needed. I mean, my local mental health NHS Trust didn’t even have a professional trained in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), which is the recommended treatment for someone with BPD.
So, when the hospital who assessed me first deemed that their ward wasn’t secure enough to manage my flight risk (I used to run away a lot and was pretty talented and experienced at going AWOL from hospitals – even when I was detained under a section of the 1983 Mental Health Act!), I was assessed by Ward Manager and her Deputy of a BPD ward in a medium secure psychiatric hospital over 120 miles away from home. At the assessment, I asked them a few questions and found out how regimented life as an inpatient there was - that there was wake up calls, bedtimes, mandatory DBT group and individual sessions, communal morning and reflection meetings, and back-to-back therapeutic activity groups running from around 10am until 4pm! As a result of this, even though they came back with the offer of a bed there, I refused to go and because I was no longer sectioned, no one could force me to go.
But then in Summer 2012, I made another suicide attempt and in refusing the life-saving antidote treatment, I was sedated under the 2005 Mental Capacity Act and ended up being placed on a ventilator on life support and admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). When I was woken from the coma, the first words I heard were from my Mum and she said, “I don’t care if you hate me forever, you’re going to that hospital!” And for two massively different reasons, I agreed. The difference in these reasons though, is a testament and evidence to the fact that I really felt like two different people back then. There was the part of me which held onto one reason that I’d scared myself – when they first put me on life support, they hadn’t given me enough sedation and I woke up but couldn’t move or speak because the tube was down my throat and they only realised I was awake because my heartrate started to rise. I felt sure that I couldn’t experience that ever again. And the other half of me and the second reason was the genuinely suicidal part which had the thought that if I was all that way away from home with professionals who didn’t know me then I might have a heightened chance at running away and making another attempt and it succeeding.
When I went into that psychiatric hospital, the website stated that the average length of admission for patients on the ward I was going on (there was a ward for men, a more secure ward for women with Personality Disorders, and a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit or PICU as well as the ward I was admitted to) was 12 - 18 months. So, I knew that if I didn’t manage to escape and didn’t manage to make another suicide attempt and didn’t manage to succeed with it, I was likely going to be there for a long time, so I actually took a ton of luggage with me but, regardless of that, for some reason, for the first six months or so; every time a month went by, I felt surprised I was still there! But, on January 6th, when I had a 1:1 with my Key Nurse; Debbie, I reached a huge turning point (in more ways than one, to be honest!).
In the 1:1 we discussed the fact that there was still a heck of a lot of stuff around my trauma of six months of sexual abuse and one instance of rape (by the same person) that no one knew about (despite having reported it to the Police). And we recognised that, when I was struggling on the ward, I found it a lot easier to explain why things had took a bad turn and why I had done whatever actions I had in order to cope with the difficulty, by writing them down and then giving the notes to the staff. There’s actually one blog post in particular which illustrates this really well because I actually typed up the note I’d given to staff: The One Where I Saved Me From Myself, and for those who can’t be bothered flicking to another blog post; this is what the note I’d written and given to them, said:
'Do you have any idea how it feels to wake up one morning and your first thought to be 'today, I'm going to kill myself'? But to not just have that, to also have excitement at the thought of that? It's one thing to feel suicidal but it's another, to enjoy that feeling.
It makes me feel safe, which is ironic considering I'm more unsafe than ever when I feel this way. But no, it makes me safe because it means people can say and do what they like to me and it won't hurt. I won't even feel it.
I write this as I feel myself slipping further and further away. This is my desperate attempt to cling on to something before I fall. This is me, saving me from myself.’
In recognising this fact, the Key Nurse and I decided to create a plan for me to spend the evenings writing notes about the trauma and things the staff didn’t know (but necessarily no one else did) as well as the stuff absolutely no one, but myself and my abuser, knew happened and then I’d hand the notes over. And it was this agreement that really made me realise that despite the fact I’d already been there around six months, I was in this for the long-haul. I felt like I’d committed to recovery by agreeing to do this and when my Key Nurse came back with a care plan, she’d created other staff to know what I was doing and to have a plan in place if the notes made me struggle more. If you’re interested in knowing what the plan said, I actually typed that up too in my very first blog post: The One Where I Begin Blogging.
So, I think that it was a mixture of this realisation that I had a lot further to go until I would be defined as being in recovery and well enough to be discharged as well as the feeling that I had at least took one massive step towards recovery in agreeing to this plan; that inspired me to create I’m NOT Disordered. But, the overall or general aim or mission behind starting to blog – in respect of both of those inspirations – was the view that it would be a way to document my progress in a way which I controlled and which was as thorough as it could be because it was written by me. And I know more about me, my mental health, and any progress - or otherwise - I’m making, than anyone else!
Now, perhaps it makes sense what I was saying earlier about how the position I was in when I started blogging really impacted the fact that I was able to be so honest, open, and authentic from the first word of my first blog post! And the thought process under-pinning this, was around the fact that if I was going to blog about recovery for my loved ones (because in the very beginning, my intended audience was purely my loved ones with the thought that if they had a better understanding and knowledge of my experiences, they might be even more helpful and supportive – not that my Mum could get at all more supportive but it was mostly, my friends who weren’t quite as aware of things...) then they needed to truly see just how bad the bad moments were. Otherwise, how could they possibly appreciate the wins – no matter how small and impactful?
When my blog – and the only word I’ve ever been able to think of that comes close to reality and being an accurate description – snowballed, and the audience grew (initially through word of mouth because in the very beginning, I only shared the content on I’m NOT Disordered on my super private Facebook account which is literally just friends and family), I realised that properly maintaining my authenticity was going to become of fundamental importance to a lot of my readers. I also came to believe – as a result of comments, emails, and feedback – that it was likely that quality, which was actually the thing that was most helping to attract more and more people.
Honesty and openness – which are basic elements to authenticity – can be incredibly hard to come across online in general, but also in mental health content specifically. I think that this is for a number of reasons, but the biggest is likely that mental health content creators are afraid of receiving judgmental comments from followers and readers. And just because I’m still blogging thirteen years later and have over 3.2 million readers, don’t think that means I’ve never received such comments either!
In 2014, after a blog post that was pretty much a rant about the staff of the psychiatric hospital, though it was pertaining one specific incident I had carefully (in terms of avoiding any personal or identifying details for both the service users involved and the staff) blogged about. A complete stranger commented that I should be more grateful to the staff for trying to help and support everyone and for providing potentially life-saving services/facilities. My largest problem with this comment was that it wasn’t written by a fellow inpatient on the exact same ward who was dealing with the exact same staff, so; for me, what right did this person have to comment and make that judgment that I was being ungrateful?
Something that caused a huge issue between inpatients and staff was the pure fact that we were there literally 24/7 and they left at the end of their shift! There was a high turnover of Ward Managers in my time there, and every single one would march in with all these new ward rules... before spending even a single shift on the ward! Like, it might have been fair enough if they’d been there a few weeks or months, because us inpatients would always argue that they haven’t even taken the time to see whether the changes they’re trying to implement will help or hurt us, the rest of the staff, and the general running of the ward. We’d also point out that it’s not them who have to live by these rules. And the rules we would more likely be fighting against were mostly around the therapeutic timetable, so it wasn’t as though it was a ‘little’ change or that we were being awkward about making just a really small adjustment or doing things a tiny bit differently.
Although admittedly – if we’re going to talk about authenticity then it’s only fair that I’m honest here too – I would recognise or accept the idea that our diagnosis may have played a part – not in our views and opinions but perhaps in our relaying of them. Because it was a specialist hospital it meant literally everyone had the same Personality Disorder diagnosis but the twist was, back then (I don’t know what the diagnostic criteria is now that it’s named Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, or even if they have changed the criteria or just the name!) in order to diagnose someone with BPD, they had to have at least 5 of 9 possible symptoms. This meant that a lot of the girls – and it was a 16-bed unit, so there were a lot of us! – had a totally different combination of symptoms, and sometimes the combination one girl had would clash with another girls. I think this was especially true, and especially a problem, with some of the key symptoms being a difficulty controlling your emotions (with the main focus of this for BPD being anger) and persistently having unstable and intense relationships. I mean, I honestly feel that I don’t need to say much more for readers to understand exactly what those symptoms would mean in terms of the difficult moments on the ward between staff and service users.
One thing which I managed to see in a positive light from being in that hospital, was that when I was diagnosed with BPD in 2009, I was actually diagnosed as having all nine of the symptoms (when I went through a diagnosis review last year, they were able to list the diagnosis as ‘historic’ on my records because I no longer meet the criteria as I only struggle with one of those symptoms now and I wrote a blog post about it: “LET’S REMOVE IT FROM YOUR RECORDS, YOU’VE CLEARLY RECOVERED FROM IT!” | HOW I HAVE OVERCOME 8 SYMPTOMS OF BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER & HOW YOU CAN TOO!). So, for the longest time, that fact was very obviously, and understandably, a huge negative in my life and I struggled with a lot of feelings around loneliness, feeling like a failure, and thinking of myself as broken. But as an inpatient, having 9 symptoms became a good thing when I realised it meant that I could empathise with literally all of the other girls – it didn’t matter what combination of symptoms they had because I had them all too! And one thing this often meant, or one way it was often shown or illustrated was through me being a bit of a mediator between both two service users and between service users and staff!
A challenge there though, was that it’s no secret there’s often a huge sense of Us Vs Them in mental health services with service users and professionals. And, as an inpatient in a long-term unit, it meant I was likely going to be with the other girls for a long time, so it was incredibly important that we all had a good relationship and a positive connection. So, in mediating between patients and staff, I never wanted it to come across as though I was taking the side of the staff or as though I was sticking up for them. The last thing I wanted was for the girls I’d come to think of as family(!) to think that I wasn’t loyal or genuine. As though I was saying all these supportive things to them, but when staff were there, I wouldn’t follow through with things... Which, really, all speaks to authenticity as a person rather than purely in terms of being an Influencer or Content Creator.
Now, I mentioned authenticity seeming non-negotiable from the outset of my blogging career... that’s because I was a detained inpatient at the time and with that influencing the start of I’m NOT Disordered, how could avoid blogging about it and talking about being in here? Especially keeping in mind that it was a long-term hospital. It was that fact, actually, around being in there for a lengthy admission that motivated me to finally post something on Facebook about my admission on the day I was taken to the hospital. I had come to recognise and accept that I wouldn’t be able to maintain any sort of lie for such a long period of time (with it stating the average length of admission as 12 – 18 months when I went in). I’d honestly wracked my brains to think of an alternative reason why I was moving away for so long! I did that because until then I actually had never posted anything about mental health – neither generally nor regarding my personal experiences of struggling with it.
Something I enjoy about being authentic which links back to this lack of honesty on Facebook, is that there were far too many instances where I either wore long-sleeves when I was hot or had to delete photos where you could see the scars or the bandages on my arms. Once I'd been honest and open about the fact I self-harmed though, I didn’t have those stresses and the guilt that came with trying to hide and being somewhat dishonest about the most important aspect of my life at that time. And not only not talking about it, but also going to some big lengths to hide things, meant that other than my Mum – who was probably the one person in my life who was most aware of how much I was struggling with my mental health – I had no support from my friends and family. Because no one knew I needed it.
Honesty and openness – which are basic elements to authenticity – can be incredibly hard to come across online in general, but also in mental health content specifically. I think that this is for a number of reasons, but the biggest is likely that mental health content creators are afraid of receiving judgmental comments from followers and readers. And just because I’m still blogging thirteen years later and have over 3.2 million readers, don’t think that means I’ve never received such comments either!
In 2014, after a blog post that was pretty much a rant about the staff of the psychiatric hospital, though it was pertaining one specific incident I had carefully (in terms of avoiding any personal or identifying details for both the service users involved and the staff) blogged about. A complete stranger commented that I should be more grateful to the staff for trying to help and support everyone and for providing potentially life-saving services/facilities. My largest problem with this comment was that it wasn’t written by a fellow inpatient on the exact same ward who was dealing with the exact same staff, so; for me, what right did this person have to comment and make that judgment that I was being ungrateful?
Something that caused a huge issue between inpatients and staff was the pure fact that we were there literally 24/7 and they left at the end of their shift! There was a high turnover of Ward Managers in my time there, and every single one would march in with all these new ward rules... before spending even a single shift on the ward! Like, it might have been fair enough if they’d been there a few weeks or months, because us inpatients would always argue that they haven’t even taken the time to see whether the changes they’re trying to implement will help or hurt us, the rest of the staff, and the general running of the ward. We’d also point out that it’s not them who have to live by these rules. And the rules we would more likely be fighting against were mostly around the therapeutic timetable, so it wasn’t as though it was a ‘little’ change or that we were being awkward about making just a really small adjustment or doing things a tiny bit differently.
Although admittedly – if we’re going to talk about authenticity then it’s only fair that I’m honest here too – I would recognise or accept the idea that our diagnosis may have played a part – not in our views and opinions but perhaps in our relaying of them. Because it was a specialist hospital it meant literally everyone had the same Personality Disorder diagnosis but the twist was, back then (I don’t know what the diagnostic criteria is now that it’s named Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, or even if they have changed the criteria or just the name!) in order to diagnose someone with BPD, they had to have at least 5 of 9 possible symptoms. This meant that a lot of the girls – and it was a 16-bed unit, so there were a lot of us! – had a totally different combination of symptoms, and sometimes the combination one girl had would clash with another girls. I think this was especially true, and especially a problem, with some of the key symptoms being a difficulty controlling your emotions (with the main focus of this for BPD being anger) and persistently having unstable and intense relationships. I mean, I honestly feel that I don’t need to say much more for readers to understand exactly what those symptoms would mean in terms of the difficult moments on the ward between staff and service users.
One thing which I managed to see in a positive light from being in that hospital, was that when I was diagnosed with BPD in 2009, I was actually diagnosed as having all nine of the symptoms (when I went through a diagnosis review last year, they were able to list the diagnosis as ‘historic’ on my records because I no longer meet the criteria as I only struggle with one of those symptoms now and I wrote a blog post about it: “LET’S REMOVE IT FROM YOUR RECORDS, YOU’VE CLEARLY RECOVERED FROM IT!” | HOW I HAVE OVERCOME 8 SYMPTOMS OF BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER & HOW YOU CAN TOO!). So, for the longest time, that fact was very obviously, and understandably, a huge negative in my life and I struggled with a lot of feelings around loneliness, feeling like a failure, and thinking of myself as broken. But as an inpatient, having 9 symptoms became a good thing when I realised it meant that I could empathise with literally all of the other girls – it didn’t matter what combination of symptoms they had because I had them all too! And one thing this often meant, or one way it was often shown or illustrated was through me being a bit of a mediator between both two service users and between service users and staff!
A challenge there though, was that it’s no secret there’s often a huge sense of Us Vs Them in mental health services with service users and professionals. And, as an inpatient in a long-term unit, it meant I was likely going to be with the other girls for a long time, so it was incredibly important that we all had a good relationship and a positive connection. So, in mediating between patients and staff, I never wanted it to come across as though I was taking the side of the staff or as though I was sticking up for them. The last thing I wanted was for the girls I’d come to think of as family(!) to think that I wasn’t loyal or genuine. As though I was saying all these supportive things to them, but when staff were there, I wouldn’t follow through with things... Which, really, all speaks to authenticity as a person rather than purely in terms of being an Influencer or Content Creator.
Now, I mentioned authenticity seeming non-negotiable from the outset of my blogging career... that’s because I was a detained inpatient at the time and with that influencing the start of I’m NOT Disordered, how could avoid blogging about it and talking about being in here? Especially keeping in mind that it was a long-term hospital. It was that fact, actually, around being in there for a lengthy admission that motivated me to finally post something on Facebook about my admission on the day I was taken to the hospital. I had come to recognise and accept that I wouldn’t be able to maintain any sort of lie for such a long period of time (with it stating the average length of admission as 12 – 18 months when I went in). I’d honestly wracked my brains to think of an alternative reason why I was moving away for so long! I did that because until then I actually had never posted anything about mental health – neither generally nor regarding my personal experiences of struggling with it.
Something I enjoy about being authentic which links back to this lack of honesty on Facebook, is that there were far too many instances where I either wore long-sleeves when I was hot or had to delete photos where you could see the scars or the bandages on my arms. Once I'd been honest and open about the fact I self-harmed though, I didn’t have those stresses and the guilt that came with trying to hide and being somewhat dishonest about the most important aspect of my life at that time. And not only not talking about it, but also going to some big lengths to hide things, meant that other than my Mum – who was probably the one person in my life who was most aware of how much I was struggling with my mental health – I had no support from my friends and family. Because no one knew I needed it.
And so, one of my largest goals from being authentic and open and honest with my blog, was that my loved ones would feel better informed and aware of things in the way that would enable them to be helpful, useful, and supportive of my mental health. And I guess this is just more evidence of the fact that in the beginning, I’m NOT Disordered was genuinely intended for just my loved ones to read, and that this is why I was only sharing the blog post links on my private Facebook account! At the same time though, just to be clear, I absolutely – and very obviously – don’t begrudge anyone for sharing the link to their own circle!
With loyalty being connected to authenticity, it is actually, also a huge aspect which I recognise as being helpful in my blogging career too! I wrote a bit about this in the blog post back in 2019 titled: LOYALTY IN COLLABORATIONS, but there’s so much more I could say as I was really just using that post as the opportunity to announce – with turning it into an ‘announcement’ and causing too much of a fuss with it – that I was distancing myself and I’m NOT Disordered from my local Police Force; Northumbria Police, and from the private healthcare company who had owned the psychiatric hospital I was in for over two years and then collaborated with numerous times after my discharge; Cygnet Healthcare. The reasons for these were defined and had links to further information on each of them in that blog post, and I felt the need to provide rationale for this decision for two reasons:
It was a big decision to stop working with these organisations after so many incredible, exciting, and inspirational collaborations and partnerships with them and I wanted readers to see that it had taken some big issues to convince me to end those previously, successful and productive working relationships.
I recognised that authenticity in so far as being honest and open about what was happening behind-the-scenes, was really important in so far as ensuring readers agreed that I’d made the right decision in cancelling further work with those organisations.
Now, I can imagine some people out there – though I’d think it would people who weren’t content creators because I feel sure other content creators will understand it – who will question why I thought I was almost obliged to tell my readers the reason for my decision. I think there’ll be people who would raise the point that I don’t owe anyone those details. That it’s my right to keep those to myself and that there’s no real need for people to know the rationale for distancing myself from those organisations.
To me though, I wouldn’t have the career that I do – I wouldn’t have even had those partnerships with those organisations if it weren’t for my readers and followers. If my blog had gone ‘nowhere’ and had no engagement and no rise in the size of its audience, then why would those organisations have wanted to work with me? How would they have even heard of me without my blog and the reputation it carries? Which leads me onto another important impact authencitiy can have which is also massively linked to collaborations; a positive reputation.
For me, when it comes to my collaborations, more often than not; an organisation will hear about my blog and approach me first – I’d say perhaps 30% of the collaborations that you see now on I’m NOT Disordered are a result of me pitching the idea to others – as I did with Northumberland Zoo! The remaining 70% are organisations approaching me – including those I’ve previously worked with and who simply have an idea for a new, different, or additional collaboration. I feel I’ve worked really hard on my collaboration game(!) to get to this point in my career – it hasn’t come by itself. I haven’t - as some budding Influencers do – just sat back and waited to have everything handed to me on a platter. My Mum has always taught me the value of hard work and of dedication, so I’ve never been one to rest on my laurels and that’s certainly not changed in regard to my career.
I’d actually say – something I’ve never considered or revealed before – probably around 75% of organisations who contact me first for a collaboration, have done so after seeing my work in some sort of collaboration piece of content with another organisation rather than seeing my blog posts that aren’t in any sort of partnership. And I think that speaks volumes in a few different respects/on a few different elements in my career:
The general power and influence a collaboration can have on full - sometimes huge and important – organisations.
The effectiveness, success, and popularity of my collaborations because they’ve obviously been good enough in their quality and standard to convince another organisation to get in touch too.
That I’m choosing the right partners to collaborate with because I’m then getting contact from the right organisations I’d want to work with too.
Something which I always really try to do in terms of authenticity and organisations contacting me is to ensure they know that I want to work with them. That just because I didn’t seek them out, it doesn’t mean they’ve had to beg or in any way convince me to collaborate. Typically, those who contact me are either organisations I hadn’t heard of (this is particularly true for the recent ones I’ve done via content for my pet bereavement project; Gracie’s Way, with small businesses on Etsy) or huge organisations (like Northumbria Police and O2) who I never would have imagined caring about me and my blog! So, I’m always eager to get across to those who get in touch that because it’s happened that way around, if i say ‘yes’ it means ‘yes!’ I would never collaborate with an organisation that I had 99% interest, passion, dedication, and determination regarding. It’s 100% or nothing for me!
With loyalty being connected to authenticity, it is actually, also a huge aspect which I recognise as being helpful in my blogging career too! I wrote a bit about this in the blog post back in 2019 titled: LOYALTY IN COLLABORATIONS, but there’s so much more I could say as I was really just using that post as the opportunity to announce – with turning it into an ‘announcement’ and causing too much of a fuss with it – that I was distancing myself and I’m NOT Disordered from my local Police Force; Northumbria Police, and from the private healthcare company who had owned the psychiatric hospital I was in for over two years and then collaborated with numerous times after my discharge; Cygnet Healthcare. The reasons for these were defined and had links to further information on each of them in that blog post, and I felt the need to provide rationale for this decision for two reasons:
It was a big decision to stop working with these organisations after so many incredible, exciting, and inspirational collaborations and partnerships with them and I wanted readers to see that it had taken some big issues to convince me to end those previously, successful and productive working relationships.
I recognised that authenticity in so far as being honest and open about what was happening behind-the-scenes, was really important in so far as ensuring readers agreed that I’d made the right decision in cancelling further work with those organisations.
Now, I can imagine some people out there – though I’d think it would people who weren’t content creators because I feel sure other content creators will understand it – who will question why I thought I was almost obliged to tell my readers the reason for my decision. I think there’ll be people who would raise the point that I don’t owe anyone those details. That it’s my right to keep those to myself and that there’s no real need for people to know the rationale for distancing myself from those organisations.
To me though, I wouldn’t have the career that I do – I wouldn’t have even had those partnerships with those organisations if it weren’t for my readers and followers. If my blog had gone ‘nowhere’ and had no engagement and no rise in the size of its audience, then why would those organisations have wanted to work with me? How would they have even heard of me without my blog and the reputation it carries? Which leads me onto another important impact authencitiy can have which is also massively linked to collaborations; a positive reputation.
For me, when it comes to my collaborations, more often than not; an organisation will hear about my blog and approach me first – I’d say perhaps 30% of the collaborations that you see now on I’m NOT Disordered are a result of me pitching the idea to others – as I did with Northumberland Zoo! The remaining 70% are organisations approaching me – including those I’ve previously worked with and who simply have an idea for a new, different, or additional collaboration. I feel I’ve worked really hard on my collaboration game(!) to get to this point in my career – it hasn’t come by itself. I haven’t - as some budding Influencers do – just sat back and waited to have everything handed to me on a platter. My Mum has always taught me the value of hard work and of dedication, so I’ve never been one to rest on my laurels and that’s certainly not changed in regard to my career.
I’d actually say – something I’ve never considered or revealed before – probably around 75% of organisations who contact me first for a collaboration, have done so after seeing my work in some sort of collaboration piece of content with another organisation rather than seeing my blog posts that aren’t in any sort of partnership. And I think that speaks volumes in a few different respects/on a few different elements in my career:
The general power and influence a collaboration can have on full - sometimes huge and important – organisations.
The effectiveness, success, and popularity of my collaborations because they’ve obviously been good enough in their quality and standard to convince another organisation to get in touch too.
That I’m choosing the right partners to collaborate with because I’m then getting contact from the right organisations I’d want to work with too.
Something which I always really try to do in terms of authenticity and organisations contacting me is to ensure they know that I want to work with them. That just because I didn’t seek them out, it doesn’t mean they’ve had to beg or in any way convince me to collaborate. Typically, those who contact me are either organisations I hadn’t heard of (this is particularly true for the recent ones I’ve done via content for my pet bereavement project; Gracie’s Way, with small businesses on Etsy) or huge organisations (like Northumbria Police and O2) who I never would have imagined caring about me and my blog! So, I’m always eager to get across to those who get in touch that because it’s happened that way around, if i say ‘yes’ it means ‘yes!’ I would never collaborate with an organisation that I had 99% interest, passion, dedication, and determination regarding. It’s 100% or nothing for me!
Another element of my career which is relevant to authenticity and collaborations, and which is something else my Mum has instilled in me, is ‘shy bairns get nowt.’ This is something which massively came into play with the collaboration partner featured in this blog post; Northumberland Zoo!
We (my Mum, Step-Dad, and I) hadn’t long decided to take my eldest Niece (my Mum just got married, and the Niece is the daughter of new Step-Brother which is why longtime readers won’t have heard of her!) who was visiting from Scotland, to Northumberland Zoo, so I ended up not thinking to request the collaboration until literally a day or two before our visit on August 5th. So, massive thanks to the Zoo for being so accommodating at such short notice!
I started off by asking to speak with their Communications and Marketing person and ended up talking to a lovely lady called Maxine – whose job title I still never got (bad Blogger 101!) - and in telling her about I’m NOT Disordered, the size of its readership, I was pleseantly surprised to be offered complimentary passes for the four of us to the Zoo for our visit. Whilst tickets are incredibly reasonably priced (you can find more on their price list: https://www.northumberlandzoo.co.uk/hours-prices) considering how much is at the Zoo, the quality of ‘day out’ it is, the memories you can make there, and the things you can do, it was an incredibly kind gesture and one I very obviously agreed to!
Having this offer and being very aware of how much we had been going to pay, I felt a level of expectation which I’ve become accustomed to though when I first started receiving returns for my collaborations, I massively struggled with it. In fact, when I first started experiencing it, I would’ve summed it up more as stress and pressure than ‘expectation.’ Mostly because I viewed it negatively because it affected me in a hugely negative way. I would feel a large amount of pressure to create content of a high quality, that was massively creative, and which – obviously! - performed really well in terms of popularity/views and engagement. And despite my blog obviously not having the number of readers it does now and not having the same frequency of increase in readers; I actually had higher goals for the views on my collaboration content than I do now! That’s how irrational I was thinking. I was basically setting myself up for failure. Like, if I wasn’t getting those sorts of statistics anyway, why did I think I’d magically get them for the collaboration content? And why on earth did I think that the partner would expect me to reach those statistics with our collaboration too?! Like, never did an organisation tell me they had expectations on reach and engagement. And organisations like UK Police Forces and NHS Trusts, very obviously did their research and knew my numbers and obviously thought they were good enough to have gotten in touch, so why was I so focused on out-performing?
Of course, sometimes this was a good thing – to aim ‘too high’ because it meant that I worked a lot harder and my content probably did do better than it would have had I not been trying so desperately to reach a wider amount of people. But, never achieving my goals and aims, had a huge mental health impact on me too, and it worked very well at ruining any confidence I had or any pride and sense of achievement in my blog’s numbers because them seemed to never be ‘good enough.’ And I am so, so, so thrilled that I managed to make that negativity and unrealistic outlook disappear and become the more confident, proud, and excited person that I am now with the productive, happy, and positive collaborations that I have and engage in.
Now, Northumberland Zoo is definitely up there with the exciting and lovely partnerships and collaborations. It’s one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done – especially recently where a lot have entailed big, serious responsibilities and commitments like giving speeches to hundreds of people! So, when my Mum checked – whilst at the Zoo – whether I was feeling stressed or as though I was getting to enjoy myself by having to work/create content, I told her that I enjoy it so much, it’s never ‘work.’ And really, all I was doing at the Zoo – unlike when I’m attending big, formal events – was taking photos and videos of the most amazing, funny, and interesting animals! By the way, if my purchases at the gift store (the photo of the Raccoon cuddly toy and fridge magnet) were nothing to go by, the Raccoons were my ultimate favourite animal to see, photograph, and video! To the point where I did actually find myself having to choose my favourite photos and videos because it wasn’t going to be practical to add them all to the Instagram reel/this blog post!
So, below, find the video (which is the Instagram reel, just uploaded to YouTube) or go watch it on my Instagram: @aimes_wilson and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it!
We (my Mum, Step-Dad, and I) hadn’t long decided to take my eldest Niece (my Mum just got married, and the Niece is the daughter of new Step-Brother which is why longtime readers won’t have heard of her!) who was visiting from Scotland, to Northumberland Zoo, so I ended up not thinking to request the collaboration until literally a day or two before our visit on August 5th. So, massive thanks to the Zoo for being so accommodating at such short notice!
I started off by asking to speak with their Communications and Marketing person and ended up talking to a lovely lady called Maxine – whose job title I still never got (bad Blogger 101!) - and in telling her about I’m NOT Disordered, the size of its readership, I was pleseantly surprised to be offered complimentary passes for the four of us to the Zoo for our visit. Whilst tickets are incredibly reasonably priced (you can find more on their price list: https://www.northumberlandzoo.co.uk/hours-prices) considering how much is at the Zoo, the quality of ‘day out’ it is, the memories you can make there, and the things you can do, it was an incredibly kind gesture and one I very obviously agreed to!
Having this offer and being very aware of how much we had been going to pay, I felt a level of expectation which I’ve become accustomed to though when I first started receiving returns for my collaborations, I massively struggled with it. In fact, when I first started experiencing it, I would’ve summed it up more as stress and pressure than ‘expectation.’ Mostly because I viewed it negatively because it affected me in a hugely negative way. I would feel a large amount of pressure to create content of a high quality, that was massively creative, and which – obviously! - performed really well in terms of popularity/views and engagement. And despite my blog obviously not having the number of readers it does now and not having the same frequency of increase in readers; I actually had higher goals for the views on my collaboration content than I do now! That’s how irrational I was thinking. I was basically setting myself up for failure. Like, if I wasn’t getting those sorts of statistics anyway, why did I think I’d magically get them for the collaboration content? And why on earth did I think that the partner would expect me to reach those statistics with our collaboration too?! Like, never did an organisation tell me they had expectations on reach and engagement. And organisations like UK Police Forces and NHS Trusts, very obviously did their research and knew my numbers and obviously thought they were good enough to have gotten in touch, so why was I so focused on out-performing?
Of course, sometimes this was a good thing – to aim ‘too high’ because it meant that I worked a lot harder and my content probably did do better than it would have had I not been trying so desperately to reach a wider amount of people. But, never achieving my goals and aims, had a huge mental health impact on me too, and it worked very well at ruining any confidence I had or any pride and sense of achievement in my blog’s numbers because them seemed to never be ‘good enough.’ And I am so, so, so thrilled that I managed to make that negativity and unrealistic outlook disappear and become the more confident, proud, and excited person that I am now with the productive, happy, and positive collaborations that I have and engage in.
Now, Northumberland Zoo is definitely up there with the exciting and lovely partnerships and collaborations. It’s one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done – especially recently where a lot have entailed big, serious responsibilities and commitments like giving speeches to hundreds of people! So, when my Mum checked – whilst at the Zoo – whether I was feeling stressed or as though I was getting to enjoy myself by having to work/create content, I told her that I enjoy it so much, it’s never ‘work.’ And really, all I was doing at the Zoo – unlike when I’m attending big, formal events – was taking photos and videos of the most amazing, funny, and interesting animals! By the way, if my purchases at the gift store (the photo of the Raccoon cuddly toy and fridge magnet) were nothing to go by, the Raccoons were my ultimate favourite animal to see, photograph, and video! To the point where I did actually find myself having to choose my favourite photos and videos because it wasn’t going to be practical to add them all to the Instagram reel/this blog post!
So, below, find the video (which is the Instagram reel, just uploaded to YouTube) or go watch it on my Instagram: @aimes_wilson and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it!