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…

ALL MY CURRENT THOUGHTS & FEELINGS AFTER TWO MASSIVE FAILINGS BY THE CRISIS TEAM

A lot has gone on recently in my mental health journey, and as I came to recognise that I hadn’t posted any new content in over one week and started trying to think of what to blog about, I realised that it’s been a long time since I’ve talked about recent goings on! Like, I feel as though a lot of my most recent posts have largely been collaborations and reflective, regarding advice I’d give or things I’ve learnt rather than what’s actually currently happening in my life. And now that a number of pretty big things have happened this past week, I felt inspired and – to be honest – compelled to blog about them. I really want for this post to take I’m NOT Disordered back to its very roots in the fact that it was created to blog about my mental health and what was happening for me in the psychiatric hospital I was an inpatient in at the time, and I don’t want the very valid fact that blogging is (still) therapeutic for me, to get lost among adverts, awareness dates, freebies, events, and complimentary experiences…

THE POWER OF ‘NO’ AFTER RAPE

Trigger Warning: This post will contain discussion of rape and sexual abuse, if these topics are upsetting then please don’t read this post. If the topics become upsetting, then please seek professional support and advice!

You've got the words to change a nation
But you're biting your tongue
You've spent a life-time stuck in silence
Afraid you'll say something wrong

Emeli Sande – Read All About It

This piece was inspired by a little something one of my inspirations; Victoria from the blog and YouTube channel; InTheFrow. You can read her piece about the importance of saying ‘no’ to things like favors for people, event invitations, and other tasks and opportunities, here. The piece left me thinking about just how powerful saying ‘no’ can be to someone who has experienced the ultimate act of betrayal. The one act where ‘no’ is so essential that without it, the act becomes a crime…

In 2018 the Director of Public Prosecutions; Alison Saunders, made the heinous comment that unless you have clearly said ‘no’ to sex, it is not rape. You know when you’ve had this thought in your head and literally everyone has told you that it isn’t true and not to worry about it? Then someone confirms that thought and agrees with it? And it completely throws you because now you question the reliability of all the people who reassured you of the opposite?! One of the many reasons why I didn’t report the six-month-long abuse and one instance of rape any sooner was because I couldn’t remember ever saying ‘no’ or ever fighting back or screaming for help. I worried – no, I obsessed over – this fact and that if I were to tell someone, their response would be that I should’ve done one of those things in order for it all to have been illegal. I think that the utter shock that something that was rarely talked about at that time (2006)

“HOW CAN YOU BE SO HONEST ON SOCIAL MEDIA?”

I was recently telling a neighbor about my latest post: ‘THE REALITY OF LIFE AFTER ABUSE | TW’ and describing what I’d talked about in it when she asked me that question; how could I be so honest so publicly? And it got me thinking… then one of my inspirations; Victoria from InTheFrow wrote a piece titled ‘The Problem with Social Media & The Removal of Instagram Likes’ and I was even more confident about writing a piece on my thoughts and rationale behind being honest and upfront on social media.


You know that whole saying about having ‘a weight lifted’ and ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’? I had no idea what that meant or felt like until I started blogging on, I’m NOT Disordered. From November 2006, I wasn’t being 100% honest until January 2013 when the blogging began. That includes the times when I first told someone about the abuse, when I reported it to the Police, and when I had to tell my Mum what had happened to me. Yes, I was telling them something I’d kept a secret, but I wasn’t honest about all of my thoughts and feelings surrounding the abuse. I guess that I was still warming to the idea of talking about what had happened to me and so talking in more detail and in more depth? Well the only reason that didn’t scare the hell out of me was because I didn’t consider it would ever happen. If we went back to that day I was being interviewed in the horrible, falsely home-y room at the Police Station, I could never have imagined that I would end up writing the posts that I write these days. Keeping a huge aspect of my life a secret and then talking about it only halfway…? Well I hadn’t realized what a weight it had been until it was lifted.

THE REALITY OF LIFE AFTER ABUSE | TW

Funny you’re the broken one

But I’m the only one who needed saving

Cuz when you never see the light

It’s hard to know which one of us is caving

Rihanna – Stay

After the popularity of my post; ‘THE REALITY OF LIVING WITH SELF-HARM SCARS | TW’ I thought I’d write a different post but with a similar theme because whilst I promote content being original and unique, I think that it’s also important to harness a success and use it to inspire future work.

So, here’s a few things that I, and some abuse survivors, go through following the abuse… 

First speaking up…

With the title of this post being ‘after’ I’ll start with the day it ‘ended’ - when I first told someone I’d been abused, and I was called a ‘manipulative liar.’ It’s difficult to explain this day because, for legal reasons, there are details I have to omit so as not to give away this person’s identity but what I can say is that my abuser put me in a position where I was almost forced to disclose what he’d been doing. It’s frustrating because I know he would only do that if he honestly thought that he would get away with it and that I wouldn’t be believed. Part of me has always wonders if he believed that because he had convinced himself that there was nothing wrong with what he had been doing to me. Another part of me thinks that he probably did know it was wrong and just didn’t care. And he didn’t believe the person I reported to would care either. My abuser was a very powerful and well-respected person who people looked up to and even in our public arguments about actual, appropriate things, he was defended. People took his side. And the fact it was for the most unimportant issues and completely trivial matters meant that my head was filled with doubt that anyone would believe he could be capable of abusing someone. Of abusing me. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was called a ‘manipulative liar’ but I must have had some hope that I’d be believed by – someone who seemed to be - the only person in a higher position of power than my abuser. By the time I reported it to this person the abuse had been going on for six months.