THE ULTIMATE Q&A WITH A RAPE AND ABUSE SURVIVOR FOR THE SEXUAL ASSAULT AWARENESS MONTH'S DAY OF ACTION 2026

After everything you've done
I can thank you for how strong I have become

'Cause you brought the flames and you put me through hell
I had to learn how to fight for myself
And we both know all the truth I could tell

Ke$ha – Praying

In a huge and random scrolling session on Instagram, I came across a post about Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) 2026 by an Actress (Sasha Pieterse from Pretty Little Liars) – which you can view here – that I shared to my Stories (@aimes_wilson). A while later, my best-friend and fellow Blogger; Martin Baker of www.gumonmyshoe.com messaged and said that it had inspired him to look back at his guest post for a project I was doing back in 2024 about supporting a survivor of sexual violence – you can read it on his blog (the project’s website it was originally published on was deleted): I Believe You. It wasn't Your Fault. You Are not Alone. Being There for a Friend Who's Survived Rape or Sexual Abuse. And from that, I began to consider ideas for creating I’m NOT Disordered content about the topic/for the awareness Month, and I came up with the idea of a Q&A. Finally, just three little side notes: Firstly, the questions below were all created by AI (Chat GPT specifically). Secondly, please be responsible when reading this post in terms of being triggered by this content and using safe coping skills. Finally, if you’re struggling with the topics discussed in this post/regarding this awareness Month, please see this old blog post which includes a ton of helpline contact details and supportive information: JOIN A RAPE & ABUSE SURVIVOR AT A HUGE GYNAE APPOINTMENT | VLOG & A COLLABORATION WITH AMAZON UK INCLUDED! | I'm NOT Disordered. Without further-ado, for the SAAM’s Day of Action, here’s the Q&A…

35: AN AGE NO ONE THOUGHT I’D REACH | HOW REPORTING MY TRAUMA WAS MORE LIFE-SAVING THAN MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES | IT’S MY BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!

“The best revenge is the massive success.”

Frank Sinatra

It sounds dramatic to say that I can’t believe I made it to 35, but when I tell you that, on numerous occasions, even the professionals – mostly Psychiatrists, but also two ICU Doctors – made comments that they couldn’t envision me making it to my ‘next’ Birthday (mostly between the ages of 18 and 23!) … perhaps now you’ll see the rationale to my surprise that I’m still here?! It meant that I was originally going to centre this Birthday blog post around reasons why I believe I managed to make it to this age, but I found out that I’d done something incredibly similar for my 28^th Birthday (you can read it here) and my 31^st (which you can read here)! In thinking about the reasons, I made it, I realised that I’d list reporting my trauma as the first one – even though I had interactions with mental health services before that which most would probably assume should getting help and support, should have been the first life-saving thing to happen. So, I decided to focus on that…

EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT DISPUTES IN MENTAL HEALTH | INCLUDING ARGUMENTS AMONGST PROFESSIONALS & HELPFUL LINKS

“The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing.”

Kim Stanley Robinson

 There was a point in my mental health journey – not necessarily the recovery part – where I had this sudden realisation that disputes were becoming so frequent that they were almost natural reactions to anything even slightly worthy of disputing. The development of that automatic response meant that I actually wasn’t even realising or aware that I was doing it half of the time it was happening! Through having Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) as a psychiatric hospital inpatient, I learnt a lot about properly handling yourself to be the best possible version of yourself during a dispute, as well as learning the whole saying of choosing your battles and these are lessons, I still stand by. I – and my mental health in particular – have benefited a lot from this improved understanding and change in attitude and behaviour so I wanted to spread the new-found knowledge to others…

MY JOURNEY FACILITATING TRAINING IN MENTAL HEALTH WITH ADVICE TO HELP YOU DO IT TOO!!! | LAUNCHING UNDERSTAND WITH IND

“The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.”

Herbert Spencer

A number of years ago, I was asked to co-facilitate mental health training for the new recruits of my local Police force (Northumbria Police) in partnership with Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). It was my first experience of doing something like that, but it remains one of the most enjoyable, influential, and educational opportunities I’ve ever had in the entirety of my blogging career! So, since then, I’ve gone to take on a number of additional, similar commitments and with those experiences and a recent decision in mind, I have created Understand with IND and its five Training Programmes. To launch it and acknowledge its feature in the brand-new pages on I’m NOT Disordered, I’ve put together this piece which is full of accounts of my experiences in facilitating training around mental health as well as things I’ve learnt from them, and advice I would give to budding facilitators…

WHEN & WHY IT STARTED, WITNESSING IT IN OTHERS, & HOW I CAME THROUGH IT | SELF-HARM AWARENESS DAY 2025

“Resilience isn't a single skill. It's a variety of skills and coping mechanisms. To bounce back from bumps in the road as well as failures...”

Jean Chatzky

This year, for Self-Harm Awareness Day, I thought I’d create this slightly(!) jumbled-up post and it is honestly, mostly a mess because I actually just found out it was this Awareness Day at about half three in the afternoon on the day of it! So, this post is basically full of bits and pieces about my experiences of self-harm, things related to self-harm which I’ve learnt and witnessed throughout my mental health journey, and advice I would give to someone who is utilising it as a coping skill…

ABANDONMENT & HOW TO COPE WITH IT | IN COLLABORATION WITH CATS PROTECTION

“When you feel abandoned, don't let painful feelings fester. Instead, use them as a catalyst to grow and to become more compassionate.”

Amy Morin

So, collaboration number two with the wonderful Cats Protection – this time, however, the post is in partnership with the charity on a national level rather than with my local Tyneside Adoption Centre (the collaboration with which, you can read here). So, as I mentioned in that piece, the Winter Campaign theme for Cats Protection this year is ‘abandonment’ and the reason for this (which I don’t think I mentioned in the other post) is that cases of abandonment of cats have massively risen by over 30%! Additionally, Cats Protection have found that those cats spend on average, around 39 days in the care of the Charity before finding a ‘furever’ home. With donations of as little as £5 feeding a cat – and last year, they helped around 500 cats per day! – in the Charity’s care for 25 days (other funding equivalents are that £15 would cover worming treatment for three cats, and £20 would fund ten blankets to keep the cats warm and safe); this Winter Campaign is aimed at raising funds as well as awareness of this hugely important issue. Now, to bring this Campaign into relevance for the typical content of I’m NOT Disordered, I thought I’d use this post to write about how to cope with the largest instance of abandonment that I think a psychiatric service user can experience, feeling abandoned by mental health services…

EVERYTHING I’VE ACHIEVED SINCE BEING SECTIONED ONE YEAR AGO

On this day (February 18^th) one year ago, it was the beginning of my most recent detention under section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act, and so I obviously wanted to create some content to mark the date. I had a huge brainstorm of what angle to take with the blog post, and I was stuck between talking through the complaint I’d put in regarding many different instances through the admission and the polar opposite of looking at all the achievements I’ve made in this past year. Eventually, I decided to do both! But, they’ll be in separate posts because I wanted to post the achievements piece on the actual anniversary of being sectioned so as to really enhance the idea that it’s actually an achievement in itself to have not been sectioned since then too!

HOW I’VE MADE IT THIS FAR | MY NEW BOOK IS AVAILABLE TO BUY NOW!!! | PART 2 OF 4

*This post is the second of 4 which will be posted every day for the following two days!*

Buy You’re NOT Disordered NOW!!

The three most obvious, go-to answers that you seriously just expect to hear when you ask someone how they have recovered from their mental illness: hospital, medication, and therapy. Fortunately – or unfortunately, I guess, depending upon how you look at it – for me, all three are true…

When my mental health deteriorated it did so in the form of auditory hallucinations, which I somehow ‘tolerated’ for around ten days before finally making my first suicide attempt. After passing out at school I was taken to hospital in an ambulance and then I ran away. The Police were called and when they found me when I had almost reached the nearby bus station, they detained me under section 136 of the 1983 Mental Health Act and I was pretty much thrown into their car and driven back to hospital where a Mental Health Act assessment promptly took place in a little room I’d never been in before in A&E. I honestly don’t’ remember much about it, just that I was told the Police could finally go and if I continued to try and leave the hospital then the staff were now allowed to restrain me, sedate me, and force me to finish the necessary, potentially life-saving medical treatment to counteract my suicide attempt.

THE SECRETS BEHIND THE POSTS, THE PROCESS OF CREATING THEM, THE STATISTICS, FAVOURITE CONTENT, ADVICE, & SO MUCH MORE!!! | AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK INSIDE I’M NOT DISORDERED IN THE MID-YEAR REVIEW

“It takes more courage to try and fail than not to try and never succeed.”

Nanette Avery

So, I was writing a blog post about my new job (Head of Marketing and Communications for a brand new Company!) and had to go through my archives to ensure I wasn’t repeating myself when I came across a Mid-Year Review from 2020 (you can still read it here) and one from 2022 (which you can also still read, here). And seeing them, has obviously inspired me to create another review from January 2023 – June 2023, but – as is the norm with my blogging ethos – I wanted to create one that was a bit different and (hopefully) better! So, I’ve decided to really delve into the nitty-gritty of the blog posts published during the last six months; to talk about the process of creating them, the statistics of them, advice and additional thoughts around them, and I’ll be including some favourite photos and reels from the last six months of content on my Instagram account (which you can follow here) and my Twitter (which you can follow here). I really hope that it provides insight into all the passion and dedication that truly goes into I’m NOT Disordered…

THE ESSENTIALS TO LIFE AFTER BEING IN A PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL

Instead of saying “I’m damaged, I’m broken, I have trust issues;” say: “I’m healing, I’m rediscovering myself, I’m starting over!”

Horacio Jones

Some of you may know, but some of you may not… On February 18^th I was detained under section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act and admitted to a psychiatric hospital for ten days. Whilst I have been sectioned before (the longest admission lasting for over two and a half years), it has been a long time since I was last hospitalised, and I have the distinct belief that the admission last month was so completely different to any other. Not just because it came about in a different way, but also because I was admitted to a ward I had never been on and it was literally terrible. I think the easiest, most general way to sum that up (without giving examples) is by saying that I was never listened to. I honestly felt like I had become half a person because what I said seemed to neither matter nor be believed. I felt completely dismissed and hopeless.

LESSONS LEARNT FROM I'M NOT DISORDERED'S FIRST POSTS | MARKING EIGHT YEARS SINCE BEING SECTIONED FOR 2.5 YEARS

Earlier this month (July 17^th), it was eight years to the date of me being sectioned and beginning a two-and-a-half-year long admission in a psychiatric hospital which specialised in Personality Disorders...

For the three years previously to that admission, I’d been in and out of both psychiatric and medical hospitals because my local NHS mental health Trust had no services specifically for someone with a Personality Disorder diagnosis. The lack of understanding from the professionals who – in my opinion – should have actually been the most knowledgeable people in providing help and support, contributed to a number of other reasons why I had made two suicide attempts and self harmed on a number of occasions. The lack of services in my locality was also a reasons why, when I ended up on life support after a third suicide attempt, the professionals made the decision to admit me to a private hospital over 100 miles away from home, where the ‘average length of admission, was 12 – 18 months.

After around six or seven months in the hospital, I had a really positive 1:1 with my Key Nurse and it felt like such a productive step toward recovery, that I decided I wanted to document it in some way. And so, I’m NOT Disordered was born and my blogging career began.

FIVE SCARIEST MOMENTS OF MY LIFE | HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2019

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Halloween is all about making people jump in shock and scaring people half to death; but no one ever really uses the opportunity to talk about how fear can be positive and beneficial too! Being afraid can be a natural reaction to a situation – think along the lines of ‘fight or flight.’ So, for this reason, I didn’t want to use this post to only discuss the really negative parts of my life; I also wanted to talk about how positive fear has been for me sometimes… How it has often resulted in something positive:

1.    The time I stopped breathing in 2008

I had a weekend job at my local Primark (a huge retail store) and had been folding clothes when I got a huge pain in my tummy and passed out. I remember paramedics coming and giving me morphine and then they took me to the local A&E where they gave me more morphine. After seeing a Doctor they decided that I needed to be transferred to the local Gynae ward at another hospital and en route, in the ambulance, they gave me more morphine and then failed to tell the new hospital how much I’d had and they gave me more. 

A CHAT ABOUT TRUST IN MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES | TW

After self-harming over a week ago I was put under the care of the Northumberland,Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team (or the Crisis Team basically!) and on the day before I was discharged from their caseload I self-harmed again. When I did it the staff arrived to see me and ended up taking me to A&E for stitches. When they went on to their next visit with another service user, they ended up leaving my care plan at that person’s house and as soon as they realized they returned to the house and got it back. Then I got a phone call with an apology to tell me what had happened and that the Team had reported the breach of data protection. The support worker who called me asked if I wanted the complaints procedure and it didn’t take me long to reply with ‘no.’ I think he was surprised but I came to that conclusion because I knew that the Team had done all that they could to rectify the situation; they’d realized what had happened, gotten the care plan back, reported it, and apologized to me. It was that last bit that really helped in my decision not to make a formal complaint. I’ve talked before about how important apologies are to me and how I think they’re essential in mental health because they’re the cornerstone of building – or maintaining trust in a person or a service. The Manager of the service called me and asked if there was anything else they could do because she didn’t want me thinking that I couldn’t trust the Team and therefore wouldn’t utilize them as support in a crisis. But that trust has been maintained with the apology.