LOOKING BACK OVER THE TWO YEARS WITH MY FLUFFY SOULMATE | ALSO INCLUDING MY FAVOURITE CAT BITS FROM ETSY | HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY, MY LITTLE RUBY | IN COLLABORATION WITH ETSY UK

“Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.”

Richard Bach

Even though for my two mini-Lionhead bunnies (Luna and Gracie) I celebrate their ‘Gotcha Day’ as their Birthday, I know Ruby’s actual date of birth(!), and so her Birthday is marked on March 26^th. This year, for her second Birthday, I’ll be looking over the previous two years with her, realising she’s my fluffy soulmate, reminiscing over my favourite moments together, and reflecting on some of the things I’ve learnt from loving her. I’ll also pepper the post with some of my favourite cat items and products on Etsy UK right now…

THE SCARIEST MOMENTS FROM THE LAST FIVE YEARS | HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2024

For Halloween 2019, I wrote a blog post titled; Five Scariest Moments of My Life (you can read it here) and I thought that this year, I’d do an updated version. Because I would obviously still rank the moments listed in that original post as the scariest in my life, I thought that I’d just add to them with scary moments that have occurred throughout the previous five years since that post…

WHO WOULD I BRING BACK WITH A RESURRECTION STONE? WHERE WOULD I GO BY PORTKEY? WHAT WOULD MY PATRONUS BE? | HARRY POTTER & MENTAL HEALTH; IN A WAY YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE!!!

Recently, I began watching Harry Potter all over again from the beginning and I found myself pondering the idea of a blog post. The problem was, I knew I’d already published content way back in January 2019, which I utilised to talk about ten life lessons illustrated in the Harry Potter series (you can read it here). And so, I considered choosing some quotes from the series that were applicable to many different aspects of mental health, but I knew that I’ve actually created some incredibly similar posts about different TV seasons and movies. Looking back over some of these and after researching how many blog posts and articles there are out there where people have related to Harry Potter quotes, led me to the conclusion that I wanted to do something completely different. I feel like I always work really hard to try to make sure that I’m NOT Disordered’s content is unique and creative, and I’d like to think that this post will massively fulfil that. So, rather than choosing quotes or my favourite bits, I’ve decided to apply some of the concepts throughout the entire Harry Potter series to myself and talk through what these would mean for me…

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH & LEARNING ONLINE | INCLUDING ALL THE COURSES ON MY WISHLIST

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

Dr. Seuss

I actually began my first distance-learning course way back in 2014 when I was a sectioned inpatient of a specialist psychiatric hospital in Bradford. Since then, I have completed a whole range of courses online too and after having recently enrolled on another one (which I’ll talk about later in the post); I was inspired to write this blog post. So, I’ll be talking about all my thoughts on learning, the benefits you can experience when you’re learning online, some tips for both completing your course and managing your mental health whilst you learn, my education journey, my Wishlist on my three favourite online learning sites, and so much more…

HAPPY 11TH BIRTHDAY I'M NOT DISORDERED | A REEL OF BLOGGING CAREER MEMORIES & A HUGE BALLOON!!!

AND THE YEAR 2023 IS COMING TO AN END… | THE FINAL PART

“She remembered who she was, and the game changed.”

Lalah Deliah

*YOU CAN READ PART ONE HERE & PART TWO HERE*

Lola Design Organiser: £14.99

Milan Pen: £10.87

iPad Touchpad Keyboard Case: £35.00

Canvas Tote Bag: £21.99

W7 HD Foundation: £4.00

SOMETHING HUGE THAT I’VE BARELY BLOGGED ABOUT

My mental health has been really poor these past few weeks or months, and so I’ve had to talk to a lot of professionals and there’s something we keep talking about and I was shocked to realise I actually haven’t said much about it on I’m NOT Disordered! There’s one post (which you can read here) that says the most about the fact that on February 18^th 2023, I was sectioned under section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act.

DAY TWENTY-FOUR OF BLOGMAS UNBOXED 2023: A REEL OF DECEMBER 2023

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

#HEREFORTHEKITTENS | WEEK TWO: UNSEEN ‘BABY PHOTOS’ OF RUBY & EVERYTHING I’VE LEARNED IN HER SECOND WEEK | IN COLLABORATION WITH CATS PROTECTION & FEATURING AN ETSY DISCOUNT CODE!!! | AD

This post and the following two are part of a series named Here For The Kittens and are all in collaboration with Cats Protection, the UK’s largest feline welfare charity…

You can find all the links for their social media here: Cats Protection’s LinkTr.ee

You can find the first post of this series here: http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2023/05/hereforthekittens-series-intro-managing.html

The second post is here:

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2023/05/hereforthekittens-week-one-all-emotions.html

Firstly, a massive thank you for all the lovely comments and feedback on the previous two posts in this series! You’re making a huge difference! This post – marking the second week with my little ragdoll kitten; Ruby – is all about things I’ve learnt from having her across this past week, and how I’ve coped with all of them. There’ll also, be a very special bit of some unseen ‘baby’ photos and videos of Ruby from just a few weeks old (as well as media from the past week!) …

THE REGRETS & MOTIVATIONS IN REPORTING ABUSE | MARKING 16 YEARS SINCE THE ABUSE ‘ENDED’

“So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialised, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: ‘this did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault and responsibility of the adult. I was – and am – innocent.’”

Ellen Bass & Laura Davis

April 20^th is one of those anniversaries where it alternates each year with either feeling like what happened on this date in 2007 (the ‘end’ of the abuse) occurred just the other day or an entire lifetime ago! Ironically though, this post is something I’ve actually wanted to write for a long time, but I’ve always been really aware that if I even hover towards using the wrong words, it could be a disaster. Now that I’ve ‘relapsed’ in my mental health though, I feel more capable of taking this risk…

If you’ve been reading, I’m NOT Disordered for some time now, you’ll probably know; but because I have so many new readers every day I didn’t want to risk not starting at the beginning. So, in 2006 a person who was of massively high standing in the community and my life and who was seen as trustworthy and respectable began abusing me. He managed to start doing it under the radar because I was attacked on my way to school one day in the November and began having panic attacks. My abuser offered to provide 1:1 support where I could go and sit with him when I was struggling or upset and so when he first hurt me; and it became the other way around (him calling me into his office) no one even batted an eyelid.

A FEW IMPORTANT BITS & PIECES FROM THE PAST YEAR | CELEBRATING MY 32nd BIRTHDAY!!

“Thirty two!”

“I know! How did I manage it?!”

“A lot of hard work!”

As if I’ve made it to thirty-two!! Having started to take a number of actions that could have very likely killed me when I was eighteen, a number of mental health professionals openly stated that they’d be surprised if I made it to my nineteenth Birthday. In all honesty, I also couldn’t imagine me ever getting to this age! And obviously, for a very long time, I didn’t even want to make it that far! I mean, I actually had this really intense belief for well over a year where I was convinced that I had been put on this earth purely to commit suicide and die at a young age so that it drew attention to the failures within psychiatric services. And it took A LOT of therapy to help me work through that and I think that the ultimate aid in this, was I’m NOT Disordered; because blogging truly feels like I have a purpose in life. Like, I believe this is what I was put here to do. This, is why I have gone through all that I have…

HOW I MADE IT TO MY THIRTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY

So, I’ve said before that when I began hallucinating and made my second suicide attempt in 2009, a number of professionals commented that ‘at this rate’ I wasn’t going to make it to my nineteenth Birthday (which was just a few months away!). At the time, my first was “thank goodness for that!” So now, to be celebrating my birthday and turning thirty-one? Well, it’s a pretty big deal! And I wanted to publish a post that was just as special and just as important…

WHY I’M CAREFUL WITH THIS SORT OF THING:

In my life, I’ve learnt a lot of things the hard way, and one of these lessons in my mental health recovery has been making me more aware of any advice I give around the topic. I learnt this through one of the other inpatients in the specialist psychiatric hospital I was in for two and a half years, asking me what my turning point had been.

In fairness, this girl had become very easily influenced. I mean, when she was admitted to the ward specialising in Personality Disorders, she was the only girl to have absolutely no self-harm scars anywhere on her body. At the time, her method of self-harm was to abuse the medication she was on for a medical condition she had. But, being hospitalised meant that this method was completely taken away from her (and I try to identify with this because my own method was made more difficult too) and so she almost naturally, desperately searched for an alternative coping skill. And I guess that being surrounded by girls who self-harmed in a same, particular way meant that she very quickly and somewhat easily came across the means for doing that. So, by the time my discharge was being discussed, this girl needed plastic surgery on her massively damaging self-harm wounds.

MY JANUARY

With my Birthday on the horizon (February 1^st), I thought I’d do a bit of a round-up of January; with everything from favourite photos to best purchases…

A FUNNY STORY SEEING ME INTO THE MONTH:

On January 1^st, I tweeted ASOS to thank their customer service from New Years Eve but didn’t actually talk about what had happened and the reason why I’d had to contact them – and it was kind of funny, so I thought I’d share it here…

So, I had some items from a huge ASOS order to take to my local post office (which is about a twenty-minute walk away from my home) and since it was processed through ASOS’ website, I figured there was no chance that the post office would have held different hours for New Years Eve. So, after arriving there a hot and sweaty mess from the weight of the parcel, I found that whilst the place was closed, there were still two staff inside and so I desperately knocked on the glass door.

The female assistant I’d met on the many occasions I’ve used the post office, came to the door and asked why I was there and what I had wanted to do. She told me that their systems had been down since 1pm (it was about 4pm) and that they were shutting early anyway. Rather than get into any kind of ‘well-you-should-have-updated-the-website-and-not-accepted-the-return!’ kind of argument, I begged her to just take the parcel in and store it somewhere until they were back open, and I could come in with the QR code. She called her boss over and he said they wouldn’t accept responsibility and I told them that was fine, “but please just take the parcel! I can’t carry it anymore!”

EVERYTHING THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT RECOVERY | MARKING NINE YEARS SINCE BEING SECTIONED & ADMITTED FOR 2.5 YEARS!!!

‘Recovery isn’t linear’ is a very common saying these days in the mental health industry. I think this is because campaigners are making way in breaking the stigma and discrimination around mental health; and this has meant more people are finding the confidence and bravery to speak up about mental health. In doing this, it has enabled everyone to learn from their peers. So, to mark this date which – nine years ago – I was sectioned and admitted to a psychiatric hospital over 100 miles away from home for two and a half years (the photos are from that admission); I wanted to write a post that might help others to learn from my experiences of things which I was never advised on or even made aware of their existence…

It’s ok if you can’t find the point in showing your scars in public.

I remember walking through the streets of a nearby city and seeing two girls and immediately I noticed that one of them had self-harm scars (and I know some people might think ‘you can’t assume that’s what they were’ but those people didn’t see these scars!) on her arms. 

Firstly, it made me kind of sad. Mostly because it was the first thing about her which I noticed. And this is one huge reason why I very rarely have my self-harm scars showing in public – I worry that I’ll almost become defined by them. That someone else might look to me and instead of seeing my bright red hair (I mean, I doubt anyone could miss that!), their stares would be drawn to my scars. And honestly? I’d so much rather be known as the girl with red hair than the girl who has self-harmed.

I’m very aware that in blogging about mental health for over eight years now, and that I’m more than willing to be labelled a ‘Blogger’ there might be some element in there when I’m being defined by mental illness. The thing is, I have control over that. I can control how my self-harm is referred to. I mean, people can misinterpret, but ultimately, I can say that I’ve done it for this reason whereas if I were to show my scars in public with absolutely no context to them…? God knows what people would think or come up with as to reasons why I’d done it.

THE MOST IMPORTANT MENTAL HEALTH MOMENTS FROM ONE YEAR OF BEING DISCHARGED FROM SERVICES

Maybe we always look back and think it was better than it was
Maybe these are the moments
Maybe I've been missing what it's about
Been scared of the future, thinking about the past
While missing out on now
We've come so far, I guess I'm proud
And I ain't worried about the wrinkles around my smile
I've got some scars, I've been around
I've felt some pain, I've seen some things, but I'm here now

Macklemore ft. Ke$ha

 

One year ago, I was finally discharged from my local Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) after over twelve years in and out of their care. The plan was for me to have six months of stability outside their care before beginning trauma therapy but so much has happened in the past year that this plan hasn’t really been followed through. However, I’m so happy with the place I’m in now and everything/everyone I have in my life; so, I decided to go through the past year of blog posts and talk about the most important moments for my mental health since my discharge from services…

 

The Pharmacy’s Mistake

http://www.imnotdisordered.co.uk/2020/07/you-shouldnt-become-complacent-with.html

Unfortunately, not long after being discharged from CMHT, I was faced with a situation that really made me wish I still had their support and guidance…

I had begun to worry that maybe I needed to request my antipsychotic medication (Aripiprazole) be increased when the hallucinations seems to be coming back, but it wasn’t until I was showing physical symptoms that I called the non-emergency NHS 111. When they asked what medication, I took and I went to check my dosette box to list them all, I realised that the Aripiprazole was missing and the Doctor on the phone assured me that all my symptoms collated to those you might experience in withdrawal from that medication.

HELPFUL RESOURCES DURING GRIEF | IN COLLABORATION WITH ETSY UK | AD

“We don’t stop loving. We don’t forget. We don’t stop hurting. We don’t get over it. We journey forward. Living the best that we can. We hold them in our hearts. Until we’re together again”

Grieftolife.com

The loss of my bunny; Pixie (you can read more about her death here) has really shown me a lot more about grief and that has included recognising the importance of having help and support…

A huge motivation in me maintaining I’m NOT Disordered and my safety, is my hope that my experiences are helping others in some way. The notion that I didn’t go through all that I have for no reason has been massively reassuring and a positive step in my mental health recovery. It has given me hope. Hope that all those hard lessons I’ve had to learn, were worthwhile. Like they were thrown at me for a reason.

So, similarly to my mental health, I want to use my experiences around grief, loss, and bereavement to help others safely navigate (in my opinion) one of the most difficult emotions you can go through. Having lost Pixie almost two weeks ago, I’ve turned to numerous things to help and support me to cope with my grief in a healthy way, and I thought I’d share what I have found the most beneficial for my mental health:

So firstly, practical items – chosen from Etsy…

SELF-SOOTHE:

Learning the Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) skill of self-soothe in the section of the Therapy labelled ‘Distress Tolerance,’ I was initially kind of reluctant to tell people how helpful I found it because I was so worried it would give others selfish, materialistic connotations about me. As though hearing that washing my hair could help my mental health meant two things:

1.       I can’t have been that unwell if something so simple could make a difference

2.       I must be really shallow and self-obsessed if I felt I had to do something for me to help me

Gradually, though, I began to warm to the idea of telling others what I found helpful because I found that sometimes, when I was in a mental health crisis, I needed to be reminded by others of the coping skills and mechanisms that were helpful. As though my head was so focused on being unsafe that there was no room to entertain healthy thoughts like those around what I could be doing to keep myself safe. So, telling the hospital staff, and then the professionals who would continue my care in the community after being discharged, was pretty necessary and in recognizing that, I had to just swallow my pride and ignore any concerns as to what others would think of me.

A YEAR LATER | HAPPY NEW YEAR 2021

So many people are pleased to say goodbye to 2020 since so many terrible events have happened during it. Aside from the pandemic and UK lockdown, I personally, lost quite a few loved ones this year. Yet I still struggle to view it as entirely ‘bad…’ Since my Aripiprazole (an antipsychotic medication) was restarted and increased, I’ve not experienced a single hallucination and therefore, haven’t self-harmed since August. I’ve also achieved quite a lot this year relating to I’m NOT Disordered (particularly reaching 800,000 readers), so I feel torn between being thankful that the year is ‘over’ whilst also having the ability to look back at it with some level of fondness…

So, I was looking at last year’s blog post (which you can read in full here) and thought I’d include updates and new thoughts around each of the 20 points I’d discussed.

One

The first was about saying a thank-you to Richmond Fellowship who have provided me with a support worker (the worker has changed a few times over the years) since my hospital discharge in 2014. But I wasn’t really thanking them for that support, I was actually acknowledging the amount of opportunities they’ve given me through events and meetings. And that still stands! Over the last year, the lockdown has prevented so many face-to-face meetings and pretty much every single event; but I’ve still felt included in being a member of the Working Together Committee – who have a huge influence on the general way in which Richmond Fellowship is ran. I’m enjoying have the ability to speak up on behalf of service users and being treat with respect that regards my views, thoughts, and feelings on different topics, as important. However, I’d also like to thank my support worker this year! Since the beginning of the UK lockdown, our face-to-face appointments have been scarce and that has meant using the phone to get support… I used to struggle with audio calls because it reminded me of the auditory hallucinations in that I could hear them but couldn’t see where – or who – they were coming from. Being almost forced to do calls though, has gotten me used to the sensation and I find myself ringing my support worker and speaking to her even more than when it was just normal appointments! And she’s been brilliant with this.

WHY I SPEAK UP ABOUT RAPE AND ABUSE

I wanna sing, I wanna shout.
I wanna scream till the words dry out.
So put it in all of the papers, I'm not afraid.
They can read all about it, read all about it, oh.

Nothing to hide
Stife and I smother
Suffered and cried
Strife made me tougher

Emeli Sande – Read All About It

I hope that there are some people out there who’ll read that title and say; ‘why shouldn’t she speak up?’ but I’m more confident that there’s people saying ‘yes, why the hell do you talk about it?!’

When the abuse started in 2006, I couldn’t – for one second – imagine telling over half a million people about it; I couldn’t imagine even telling one person! In the very early days, I didn’t even recognize that what he was doing was wrong; I only knew that it felt wrong and the absence of sex education and media stories about abuse and rape, meant that I didn’t even know what it was called. I hadn’t heard those words before; I didn’t know what they meant. I didn’t know that what he was doing to me had a name and because of that, I didn’t know that I wasn’t the only person in the world being hurt in this way. Of course, all of these things would have changed if I’d just taken the chance and spoke up. 

His promises that no one would believe me and my own worry that if people did believe me, they would think I’d deserved it, made me completely reluctant to tell anyone what was happening though. I was already having suicidal thoughts about jumping from a building or overdosing and I knew that if I told someone and one of those possibilities happened then it would be enough to just tip me over the edge and solidify my belief that dying would be the only escape from the abuse. I’d lost all sight of how telling someone could do any positive or good at all. I couldn’t imagine anyone believing me and so I couldn’t imagine anyone being able to make it stop.

WHEN DO YOU NEED TO ‘GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER’?

The other day, at my Digital Marketing internship with Docere and SS Healthfoods, I was talking to one of the Marketing Executives about my long-term goals and all things Universities and careers. It made me think about how long it has taken for me to finally have those dreams/goals, and then I started to consider why I felt there should have been an age for me to have all these things decided. 


I don’t remember even thinking about a ‘dream job’ when I was younger until Middle School when a teacher told my Mum that she thought I’d end up being a Journalist (do you think ‘Blogger’ is close?) but I never really held onto that so much. When I came to the point of choosing my GCSE subjects, I didn’t really have a career in mind then either; I just chose the ones I was interested in – History, Media Studies, and Textiles. Then, when I was excluded from High School, I met a Lawyer specializing in Education and that became my goal – to be like her. I wanted to help children avoid experiencing everything that I had, when I was at School. 


So, at A Level, I took Law, Philosophy, and History, and with the abuse having ‘finished’ months before Sixth Form started, I threw myself into my schoolwork in a desperate bid to block out the memories of it. I also started working at my local Primark store in Newcastle city center but in the end, my mental health deteriorated to the point where there was no blocking anything out and I missed all of my final exams and quit my job because I attempted suicide. Even though I had an offer to study Law at Newcastle University, being sectioned under the Mental Health Act, I instantly didn’t want to work in anything to do with the law and after two weeks in a psychiatric hospital I decided to pursue my other interest; fashion and enrolled on a Summer course. Before I had a chance to attend the induction session, I was sectioned again. After my second longest admission in October 2009 to February 2010, I became interested in the notion of helping others and attempted to enroll on a childcare course but when my DBS came back with notes of my interactions with Police (occasions when I’d been sectioned or had ran away from Hospital), I was denied access to the course. In the end, I developed the belief that if I couldn’t look after myself then I shouldn’t attempt to look after anyone else.

WHY RAPE & SEXUAL ABUSE ARE SO TABOO

ta·boo

[təˈbo͞o, taˈbo͞o]

NOUN

1.       a social or religious custom prohibiting or forbidding discussion of a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing.

synonyms:

prohibition · proscription · veto · interdiction · interdict · ban · restriction · boycott · nonacceptance · anathema

ADJECTIVE

1.       prohibited or restricted by social custom.

"sex was a taboo subject"

synonyms:

forbidden · prohibited · banned · proscribed · vetoed · ruled out · interdicted ·

[more]

VERB

1.       place under prohibition.

I don’t think I talk about LEAPS a lot on here because we have a very strict confidentiality agreement – but for those who don’t know, Listening Ear And Positive Support (LEAPS) is a support group for people who are unemployed. The nature of the organization means that there’s a lot of private and personal things discussed at the weekly meetings, but this was something I said so I guess it’s my decision to make it public…. A while ago, I secured Lottery funding for LEAPS with one of our budgets being to fund a group session on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). So, the other day at the CBT session we were talking about ‘errors in thinking’ and I gave a personal example about how – for a long time – I blamed myself for the abuse I went through. I’ve known this group of all men for over two years now and it made me wonder why I feel like I can talk to them about this…

BULLYING: MY EXPERIENCE, ADVICE & MESSAGES TO THE BULLIES

So, I went to my neighbour’s house yesterday and her daughter told me she had a headache, when I asked why the reply was a little more than I’d assumed it’d be. She told me she’d been on the phone all afternoon with her daughter’s (my neighbour’s granddaughter) school after finding out a boy was bullying her. Her daughter told me that the boy was spreading rumors about her and turning all of her friends against her, to the point where they shouted at her that day at lunch time. It brought back a ton of memories of when I was bullied at High School and then I began to worry… All of those stories you see and hear in the media about young people committing suicide after being bullied at School. That fueled my anger that it was now happening to a young person I cared about, and this; was the inspiration for this blog post.