DAY SEVEN | A SECRET BLOGMAS 2025

“So much can be achieved when ideas are created, and people come together to bring them to life.”

Paddington Mbumbgwa

Welcome to A Secret Blogmas 2025!

Today is Day Seven and this seventh post is all about the benefits and sense of achievement you can receive or experience from a successful collaboration in your content creation career. The post will look at the fact everyone can have a different definition or understanding of both ‘successes and ‘achievement’ and I’ll discuss how much this can matter in content collaborations. Keep reading to find out why and how collaborations can impact the success and popularity of your content and/or your platform…

“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

With every fall, I learn to stand, In the face of fear, I take command

Through the storms that try to break, I'll rise again, for my own sake

With fire in my soul, I'll light the way, In this journey of life, I'm here to stay

Feel the power, it's building inside, With every heartbeat, I won't hide

No more chains, I'll break them free, In this moment, I am me

I'll rise up stronger, no holding back, With my head held high, I'm on the right track

Rise Up Stronger: Beat-Creative

After around fifteen years of having a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) stuck to my records, I began questioning its validity a year or so ago and began seeing a Psychiatrist from Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). After around one year of appointments, on April 1^st 2025, the Psychiatrist told me he had finally concluded that I was right; I no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for BPD and that it would now be listed as ‘historic’ in all of my records! In ascertaining that I didn’t meet the criteria (which is to have at least 5 of 9 possible symptoms) we established I had just one and when I was diagnosed, it was with the determination that I had all 9! So, considering this meant I’ve recovered from 8 symptoms of BPD, I thought I would do this blog post to chat through how I managed it in the hope that it provides advice for others and also hope for those to know you can overcome BPD…

HOW I’M COPING WITH THE PROSPECT OF MORE SURGERY | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | AD

http://www.newcastle-hospitals.org.uk/

https://twitter.com/NewcastleHosps

In January I talked about the connection between mental and physical health after needing tendon surgery at the Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI); part of the Newcastle Hospitals Trust. For those who missed that post, on Boxing Day 2019 I was attempting to open a bottle of Prosecco by wiggling the cork out with my thumbs when all of a sudden, I couldn’t move my right thumb anymore! I thought it was dislocated and went to my local Minor Injuries where – after an x-ray – I was told that it was ‘fine’ and to ‘put it in warm water and slowly start moving it.’ 

After a few days that feeling that something was really wrong became intolerable and I took myself to the RVI. When I was being triaged by a Nurse I actually said to him “I feel like such an idiot for coming to A&E because of my thumb” because I honestly thought I’d just be laughed away and told to follow the advice of the Nurse in Minor Injuries but in fact, the exact opposite happened! The Nurse sent me to the RVI’s Minor Injuries and literally as soon as the Nurse there called my name and I stood to follow him to an exam room, he looked at my thumb and said “well, there’s definitely something wrong with that, isn’t there?!” I honestly couldn’t have been more grateful and comforted – which sounds strange that I was comforted by the thought of something being wrong but it was more about the fact that I’d been right the entire time and that I was especially right in coming to A&E. It was actually such a relief.

COMPLETE A WELLNESS RECOVERY ACTION PLAN WITH ME

“When the group developed WRAP, I was so impressed that I went home and wrote one for myself!”

– Mary Ellen Copeland

As someone who regularly puts almost her entire life out there for the general public to consume, I’m so interested in hearing/reading about the lives of others and seeing inside the most mundane of things! As someone who really struggles with completely mixed feelings of loneliness - sometimes all I want is to be surrounded by people and other times I can only tolerate the company of my pets – I mostly enjoy the YouTube ‘Get Ready With Me’ videos or ‘Speed Clean My Flat’ or ‘Come Shopping With Me’ because they enable me to have control over the company and how long it lasts! The important thing is the impact loneliness can have on a person’s mental health and so, in a desperate bid to help others experience the same positive things I feel when I watch similarly formatted videos. Though, of course I had to make my version mental health themed… Ever since I was discharged from the specialist psychiatric hospital in 2014, I’ve heard so many good things about Wellness Recovery Action Plans, but it wasn’t until recently that I – and my Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) – realized that I’ve never done one! And as with most documents in mental health, it has the chance of triggering negative thoughts and feelings by making you think back to hard times so I thought that maybe it’d also be helpful to me to feel that I sort of have someone with me while I complete it... 

WAYS TO COPE WITH THE ANGER FROM ABUSE

“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it?”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Have you ever seen the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie? It’s basically a spin-off to the Harry Potter series and in it, there’s this thing called an Obscurus which is the manifestation of violent, destructive energy from when a young Witch or Wizard has to repress their magic ability. That’s how I’d describe the anger I was left with as a result of the abuse because I repressed it for a while and so it eventually erupted into this powerful, detrimental, life-changing fury.


The first anger I experienced from the abuse wasn’t the first one that I reacted to. That sounds complicated… The first source of my anger that I actually responded to, was the anger against others; particularly, against my abuser’s colleagues. They were the people who saw myself and my abuser together the most and yet they didn’t stop the abuse. During the abuse, part of me thought ‘how the hell do they not realize what he’s doing?’ and the other part hoped they’d never find out. These two contradictions led to a lot of confusion for me and I struggled to accept that I was ‘allowed’ to be angry with these people. I wondered if I had no right to because I was doing all in my power to ensure they didn’t find out what was happening to me so how could I be so put out when they didn’t stop it?