WHY I’M PRESENTING AT THE EMTA CONFERENCE FOR THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE & EXCLUSIVE INSIGHT INTO MY PRESENTATION! | #EMTA2025

“Be spectacularly great at what you do. Wear your passion on your sleeve and hold your heart in the palm of your hand. And work hard. Really hard.”

Robin S. Sharma

EMTA (@EMTAcommittee) / X

RCEM Events (@RCEMevents) / X

A number of years ago, I was asked to attend and blog at an event at a local University, and ever since, I’ve kept in touch with the Doctor who invited me. Then, a few weeks ago, she got in touch with me and offered me one of the largest and most prestigious opportunity that I think I’ve ever been offered – an invitation to speak at the National Conference for the Royal College of Emergency Medicine! It was one of those situations where you try to play it cool and act like things like this happen all the time… But actually, all that coolness went out the window and I just said: “oh my goodness! Are you serious?!” After a few emails with the lovely Conference and Events Officer, and confirmation of my train tickets and accommodation, I asked if I could announce my presentation on, I’m NOT Disordered and across my social media and was told “yes, please!” So, I’m going to use this opportunity to talk through a lot of the reasons why I’m doing this, to publish some feedback and comments from various professionals, and to provide some exclusive insight into my PowerPoint...

AN EXCLUSIVE CHAT WITH MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS & 3 ALICE IN WONDERLAND QUOTES MADE RELEVANT TO MENTAL HEALTH | ALICE IN WONDERLAND: THE MUSICAL | IN COLLABORATION WITH IMMERSION THEATRE

www.immersiontheatre.co.uk

@Immersion_Thtr

@immersiontheatreuk

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”

Madeleine L’Engle

On attending a show at Whitley Bay Playhouse, I just happened to spot the poster for Alice in Wonderland: The Musical and I think that I literally jumped for joy with pure, childish excitement! I’ve loved Alice in Wonderland for well over ten years now with my obsession starting when I read the book whilst a sectioned (detained under Section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act) inpatient of a psychiatric hospital. I almost immediately discovered just how beneficial the level of imagination used in the plot was for my ability to use reading the book as the opportunity for some emotional and psychological escapism. It provided me with the chance to really block out my environment and, actually, my entire situation. It afforded me this amazing skill to just fully immerse myself in Wonderland, become engrossed in Alice’s adventure, and really become invested in each of the hysterical, but seriously wise, characters. So –with my love for Musicals also in mind – seeing this poster was incredibly exciting and I genuinely pulled my Mum along to the Box Office and bought tickets. Then, I came home and contacted Immersion Theatre to pitch the idea of this piece being a collaboration and I’m so honoured to have received a ‘yes!’ and to have been given the opportunity to actually have a chat with two of their cast.

So, I’ve put together this post full of snippets from my chat with Chris Laishley who plays the Mad Hatter and Meg Matthews who plays both the parts of the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts, as well as a few bits about how I relate to three of my favourite quotes from the Alice in Wonderland story…

TEN THINGS I NEVER THOUGHT I’D SAY

1.      “I’M TWENTY-EIGHT!”

It’s like I wrote in my blog post on my twenty eighth Birthday (February 1^st 2019), when I took my first overdose aged eighteen (in 2009) I don’t think there was a huge concern that I wouldn’t make it to my next Birthday because the overdose wasn’t really life-threatening and I think people just assumed it to be a ‘one-off.’ But by 2012, when they’d calculated that I’d taken over 60 overdoses in the space of three years and I ended up on life support, I think people became… ‘concerned’ is probably an understatement… especially after I ended up on life support in Intensive Care.

2.      “I LIVE IN A BUNGALOW”

So often I get asked questions about my ‘flat’ and I’m so proud and lucky to be able to correct people with ‘I live in a bungalow.’ It’s sad that I only got this home because I’d been in a psychiatric hospital for two and a half years and so I was high priority on the list for a council property. But I could’ve just been housed in a crappy little flat! We dubbed my little bungalow my ‘forever home’ but as I progress through recovery, I can see that it’s almost inevitable that I will move at some point in the future but for now, I’m grateful for my little one-bedroom bungalow! 

HOW TO LAND A COLLABORATION | FOUR TOP TIPS

After attending the Richmond Fellowship Working Together Committee meeting on January 24^th, it got me thinking a lot about all of the collaborations I’ve had with organizations. And now that I’m NOT Disordered has almost half a million readers, I feel like maybe now is the right time to share some advice for new Bloggers and current Bloggers who aren’t as established as they’d like to be. I won’t pretend to be an expert though; there are so many Bloggers out there who are doing some incredible work with huge organizations, but I think that in the Blogging industry, there’s a lot around competition and tearing one another down in order to climb the ladder and I don’t want to be one of those Bloggers. Instead, I want to promote the positive impact Blogging can have on your mental health and encourage others to ‘give it a go.’ I’d love to see more mental health Blogs out there so that we can spread the word about the topic in an aim to diminish the stigma around it. Collaborating with Organizations also provides this opportunity and it has played a huge part in the success/popularity of I’m NOT Disordered.

RICHMOND FELLOWSHIP WORKING TOGETHER FORUM | EVENT POST | AD

I was so proud to be asked to join the planning Committee for the Working Together Forum this year and when the position came up to Chair the entire event, I jumped at the chance!

The more work I do with a particular organization, the more eager I am to take on more responsibilities and bigger opportunities.  I guess I see it almost like most work where there’s a promotion in sight and like many things in my blogging career, I’ve had to discover and sort of, decide for myself, what this means. What a ‘promotion’ means to me. What I’d class as a ‘step up;’ and chairing an entire event for such a wonderful, supportive, and inspirational organization like Richmond Fellowship (RF), seemed like the right role to do just that. And as I did last year, I also agreed to co-facilitate a workshop with the awesome Emily Dell from the RF Communications team (more on that later!).

WHY IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO REPORT ABUSE

So, I had a meeting recently (about a very top-secret project) and during it the issue came up about service users feeling like they’ve experienced a miss opportunity in reporting the abuse they’ve survived.

This often happens immediately when you get involved with mental health services – whether that be inpatient or outpatient/community – because the first contact is usually in the form of some sort of assessment and that often includes the question ‘have you ever been abused?’

For the abuse survivor who has kept quiet, this is yet another opportunity where they’ve not spoken up. Another time that they’ve been too scared to speak. Another time that their abuser has won. When, in reality, if you’ve never reported it before, why would you suddenly decide to? And secondly, if anyone was going to be the first person to be told, is it realistic to assume that person would be a complete stranger who coldly and clinically asks one of the most important questions you’ll be asked in your mental health journey – in your life?

TOP FIVE TIPS TO TALKING TO THE MEDIA | MY FEATURE ON C4'S DISPATCHES | AD

I write this off the back of my appearance on the Channel 4 documentary series Dispatches having just interviewed on their special episode going undercover with the largest social networking platform; Facebook!

The amount of praise and just all-round positive comments I’ve been getting has been crazy and I’ve had so many people ask how I managed to stay so calm as I appeared in my interview. It was questions like these, that have inspired this post where I’ll be talking all about the best things to do when you’re having a media appearance – no matter what the medium.

MY LIFE IN NINE iZOMBIE QUOTES

So, last year, I was facilitating a course in ‘Recovery Through Blogging’ at the local Recovery College and the ice breaker for the group was to talk about your favourite movie or TV show. The entire class had told us their favourite movie and then we got to one girl and she said ‘I’m going to be a bit different then and talk about my favourite TV show from Netflix.’ When she said iZombie was from Netflix, I got interested; having just signed up to the incredible service myself, I’d been in search of new shows and movies. She told us that the show was about a girl who was a Zombie but she solved the murders of the people’s brains she ate. I’m into gory things like that so when I got home I added it to ‘My List’ on Netflix and ended up forgetting about it for a couple of months or so. When I finally watched it, it was one of those shows were it takes a couple of episodes to really get invested in the characters but after that, I was hooked! I recently just re-watched the entire series for the fourth time (there’s four series with about twenty episodes per season) and wondered how I could spread the word about this incredible show…

1.     “But what if there is hope? Even if it’s dim and somewhere in the nebulous future. It’s a hope I need in order to survive”

24HRS WITH... ME!

24 hours with... me!

Date: Thursday June 7^th 2018

Why have you chosen to write about today?

A ton of amazing things happened!

Good morning!



What time did you wake up?

10am


Why did you wake up at that time?

I had a support session with my worker from Richmond Fellowship at 11am



Did you have a dream?

Not that I remember.

TOP 10 UK BLOGS ON BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER

So overwhelmed and proud to announce that I’m NOT Disordered has made it onto FeedSpot’s UK TOP TEN BLOGS about Borderline Personality Disorder!

Huge thank you to everyone at FeedSpot and most importantly, to all of you guys reading this! Without my readers I wouldn’t have the incredible opportunities that I get, and my work means the world to me! You guys have given me something to be proud of and allowed me to finally find my purpose in life. And that, is something I will be forever grateful for.

https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_borderline_personality_disorder_blogs/

WEGO HEALTH AWARDS

Thank you to everyone who’s voted so far!

To nominate me/I’m NOT Disordered for the category ‘Best In Show: Blog’ please visit:

https://awards.wegohealth.com/nominees/12376

USING MY M&S BEAUTY PRODUCTS | AD

To watch my video when I was originally gifted the beauty products by Marks and Spencers (M&S) click here

To watch me use the products:

WHY WE SHOULD TALK MORE ABOUT BEAUTY PRODUCTS | GIFTED BY M&S | AD

I'M NOT DISORDERED TAKES PART IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD RESEARCH STUDY | AD

The University of Sheffield have developed a questionnaire called ReQoL (Recovering Quality of Life) to help understand feelings and monitor the progress of recovery and quality of life for people who have different mental health conditions.

The research is being carried out by the University of Sheffield and is funded by the Department of Health.

It involves a quick (5-10 minutes) multiple choice questionnaire that does not affect your care.

For more information on the study please contact Dr Anju Keetharuth at the University of Sheffield by email at reqol@sheffield.ac.uk or by telephone on: 0114 222 0884

You can also read about the findings of the study and more details on the website: http://www.reqol.org.uk

I'M NOT DISORDERED JOINS TEAM OB | OLIVER BONAS | AD

“I haven’t got a chance in getting this collaboration, but I figured that I’d try anyway”

“It’s like I always tell you; shy bairns get nowt!”

I had this conversation with my Mum not long after emailing the PR team at Oliver Bonas. After a few tweets with their Twitter team I finally got the email address for the team I needed to contact, to approach them with a collaboration idea.

A mental health blog probably seems a long way from a fashion blog but there can be more links than you’d think. Especially where the author of the blog is interested in, and passionate about; fashion.

I took Textiles at GCSE level and in ever project, and for every assignment I tried to incorporate clothing pieces as opposed to purely focusing on prints and researching artists specialising in multi-media. Admittedly, I’ve never been a trend setter; I prefer to follow them but my passion for fashion has me customising trends to flatter my body shape. I like how confident clothes and accessories can make you; if I wear a good outfit it doesn’t matter how I’m feeling on the inside, I’m smiling on the outside and strutting my stuff down to the corner shop! I like how happy fashion makes me – you should see my face when I find an amazing new Valentino bag in TK Maxx!

TIME TO TALK DAY WITH I'M NOT DISORDERED | PART FOUR

TALKING ALL THINGS MENTAL HEALTH WITH NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST CHIEF EXECUTIVE, JOHN LAWLOR | PART ONE

TALKING ALL THINGS MENTAL HEALTH WITH NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR NHS FOUNDATION TRUST CHIEF EXECUTIVED, JOHN LAWLOR | PART TWO

PARTYING WITH INTHEFROW, ALEX HARRISON, & GOOGLE PIXEL!! | AD

Friday 20^th January 2018, 09:43 - ‘Congratulations Aimee your Saturday just got awesome… You and your named guest are now part of a chosen few to joing us in celebrating the all-new Google Pixel 2 with InTheFrow at our Manchester event this Saturday’

Like most girls, I like fashion.                            

It was because of this, that I began to follow InTheFrow (Victoria McGrath) on YouTube. And - not going to lie - I was kind of mesmerised by her bright purple hair!

2018, HERE I COME!! | HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I wonder if, like phone networks, the internet and social media platforms crash at midnight?
I mean, how many Bloggers are there out there who will be scheduling a special piece for the very beginning of 2018?

It is times like this that are difficult, as a Blogger, to produce original content; it makes sense to write a New Years blog post, but you think that almost everyone will be writing either their resolutions, aims, goals, plans, or reviews of the year just gone… I think that the most original thing to do in this situation, almost, is to not even write a post!

 

PRESENTING 'The Benefits Of Blogging' IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ITV FIXERS | Ad

I remember, what feels like a very long time ago, when I was hired for the first time to work as a Blogger for an event. The event was hosted by Danny Bowman and I came to learn that he'd first started out his work in raising awarenesss for male mental health and Body Dymsmorphic Disorder, with an organisation called ITV Fixers.

Instantly, I too, wanted to work with them; realising that they were the ideal team to help me make my blog into something. It was still the early days, but not so 'early' in that I'd already decided I wanted to pursue blogging and social media, so I was eager to get all of the confidence and passion that it seemed Fixers had helped Danny get.

I first met my Producer Emily in a Costa near my home town. I knew straight away that I wanted to write a booklet of some kind around my journey and since Fixers were all about raising awareness for different issues or aspects of life, I decided to focus the booklet on ‘The Benefits of Blogging.’ At first is was all go-go-go, but then I started getting a lot more work with organisations as I'm NOT Disordered's popularity grew too and the project went on the back burner.

We had some design disagreements when the draft came back not quite meeting my expectations or the vision I’d created in my head. It was hard because I didn’t want to cause any upset but I’m very particular about what I put my name – and I’m NOT Disordered’s – to. Over time though, I grew to love it. I’m one of those people who is like a child with their favourites; in that I’m forever changing my mind. One time I’ll like all bright, cheerful colours and ‘vivid’ filters, the next I prefer muted, pastel shades and ‘windy’ filters. This project was one of those times – I grew to love the colour palette! Emily, and a designer and I had gotten together and I’d showed them my favourite bloggers and aspects of their site that I liked, whilst also pulling inspiration from I’m NOT Disordered. We used the text and the design of the subheadings from my blog, and based the layout and use of images from inthefrow.com. I also picked inspirational photos from Pinterest and the quotes and theme were maintained whilst the overall image was changed in order to prevent any copyright.

It was difficult writing the content for the booklet because it had to be a particular length and it was planned that the photos would take up one entire page so I’d immediately cut down the amount of space for text. It meant I had to keep things short – something I found hard because when it comes to blogging and the benefits of; I have a lot to say!

To celebrate the project completion, the Fixers team decided to organise an event that would launch all the new projects in the North East. Some of the other pieces included raising awareness of domestic abuse towards men, lack of sympathy towards fathers during miscarriages, signs of suicidal thoughts and feelings, and the need to improve Eating Disorder services. My project was the only booklet; all of the others were videos – one of them, was actually a rap all about the young person’s life and how he’d lost so many people from such a young age and then over such a short space of time. There was some really moving footage, and everyone had a five minute opportunity after the showing of their short film, to talk a bit more about their project and to answer questions the audience had.

There was a part after the Eating Disorder services film where there was some questions being asked and I was so proud to introduce everyone to one of my guests; the Chief Executive of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust, John Lawlor. He was able to provide more behind-the-scenes information and improvements that were still in the discussion phases.

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to the amazing people who showed up to support me; John and Mrs Lawlor, Ronnie, Lauren Dewar, Rachel Wilson, Ellen White, my Mum, Martin Baker, and a few LEAPS members.

AD | PRESS RELEASE: GARY JAMES MCQUEEN RELEASES MENTAL HEALTH CARDS - "ARE YOU OK?" | AD

After studying Textiles as a GCSE student, I’ve had a passion for fashion; and as I grew older I became addicted to reading Vogue and Elle for style inspiration and the amazing photography of runway shows that I knew I’d never get to see in real life. Then, in my twenties, I moved onto makeup and beauty products (still with a jam-packed wardrobe!) and developed a keen eye for designer bargains (because there’s no money on the trees in my garden) in T K Maxx – particularly Valentino bags!

As I moved into blogging and the online mental health world in 2009, it became clear that most blogs were about fashion and beauty. It was a good thing at the time because it provided a gap in the market for I’m NOT Disordered to fill and at the time there were only four popular mental health blogs (and none of them were written by a current inpatient).

Like I said, the fashion and beauty bloggers took over the internet and seemed to be the ones who collaborated and were approached by organisations who wanted to use the blog as an advertising opportunity with the belief that when readers saw the blogger wearing a particular shoe, or talking about a new mascara; their followers would want to buy the same thing.