As you may know, Founder of Shake My Hand; Aimee Wilson, also has an award-winning mental health Blog which is currently ranked number one in the UK for Borderline Personality Blogs and has over 1.3 million readers. It was actually partly through all the benefits Aimee has experienced as a direct result of the popularity of her blog, that she was inspired to create the Media Campaign. So, we took a look at her blog post archive and statistics and managed to determine the five best blog posts about rape and abuse on I’m NOT Disordered, and we’re handing it over to Aimee to provide a little bit of behind-the-scenes insight into each of them...
You
CAN Get Through Reporting Your Trauma | I'm NOT Disordered
(imnotdisordered.co.uk)
Even if
this blog post hadn’t been determined as one of the best from my blog, I would
have definitely pushed for it to have still been included. It’s actually the
most memorable one for me because a short while after publishing it, I received
an email from a reader – the best email I’ve probably ever (not only from those
sent by readers) received! It was from a lady, quite a few years older than me,
and she said that she’d been sexually abused by a family member when she was
younger and that it had gone on for a number of years, but she still hadn’t
told anyone. She said that on reading this blog post, she had found the
reassurance and courage to finally report the abuse to her local Police force
and before she knew it, he was arrested, and admitted to everything! He was
going to prison.
In the
process of him being questioned and getting a court date though, several of her
friends told her he had hurt them too on sleepovers. So, him finally being imprisoned
for all the charges, meant that she and her friends might have saved so many
others from being hurt by him too! And do you know what? Yes, yes, I’d like to
think that I’d be classed as having somewhat of a contribution in that too… And
to be fair, whenever I’ve told people about this blog post and the email, that’s
been a comment they’ve always made – that I was an integral part of it too! It’s
typically led me on to talk about how this is a massively powerful illustration
of the influence that writing, and the digital world, can have on a person’s
life. That thought has served as a massively helpful motivation for my blogging
work.
The
part of this blog post which still really stands out – but is no longer true – was
when I wrote about how no matter how many readers my blog reaches, it will never
‘disqualify’ what my abuser has done to me. Now, with this post being written just
over five years ago, it’s quite predictable and obvious that there’s going to
have been some changes in my mindset, my thought process, and my actions and
behaviours. I think this is especially possible and predictable when it comes
to a traumatic situation because you go through an enormous number of stages of
your thoughts, feelings, and actions changing in the process of coping with,
and recovering from, a trauma. I mean, in the immediately aftermath of the
trauma, within the same day my thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about my abuser could
drastically change. I could go from absolutely hating him and registering all
the blame for the situation on him, to blaming myself and finding ways to punish
myself for deserving everything that he did to me.
So, the
thought that changed in this instance with this blog post, was that in the
piece I explained that no matter what I achieved in life and no matter which
reader milestone my blog reached, it wouldn’t just negate what had happened to
me in any way. You know? Like, I couldn’t think ‘well, at least this came out
of it…’ or even think ‘this is so much more important that the abuse is nothing
compared to it.’ Whilst I know that those thoughts, beliefs, and feelings would
be completely understood and appreciated by people who would likely recognise –
or be able to reasonably predict or correctly assume – my rationale behind them;
they have changed. I now find it really important and powerful to mark and celebrate
milestones and achievements – yes, particularly those around the popularity of
I’m NOT Disordered and reaching huge figures in my readership and the size of my
audience. I now see these achievements and celebrations as massively
inspirational in minimising the impact of the rape and abuse on my mental health.
It's
important to recognise that I’m not about denial and using these huge moments
to ‘forget’ what has happened to me or even to ‘block it out.’ Tried that – didn’t
work and wasn’t helpful! It’s more about moving the focus and doing something that
I know for a fact will put me in a better place in so far as maintaining my
safety and my mental health. I’ve come to recognise that sometimes, I can put
attention on the trauma and all that it meant – and means – in a way that is
negative and detrimental for me. A way that just leads me down a sad and lonely
path of horrible and terrifying memories that almost inevitably, eventually
leads to me coping with them in an unhealthy or unsafe way. So, unless I’m using
my focus on the rape and abuse as a means of helping others or in a way that
will be therapeutic for myself, it’s so much more important and amazing to
think about the achievements that have come – not because – but in spite of; all
that has happened to me.
So, in
direct contrast to the previous post, there’s actually two things in this one
which I still agree with and massively support discussing them in a bid to talk
about their significance. They are that it can sadly and obviously very wrongly
be incredibly easy to somehow blame yourself when you’ve been raped or sexually
abused. For a lot of Survivors, it’s almost like a natural instinct – to search
for a way or a reason why you’ve deserved what has happened to you or why you
were actually entirely responsible for the whole traumatic situation!
For me,
I found it really difficult to differentiate how the fact the change in my attitude
and behaviours was a result of the abuse and not the reason why it happened.
That I wasn’t a ‘bad person,’ but that the abuse had turned me into feeling
like a completely different person from myself. And yes, perhaps I’d say that I
did become a terrible person. I was rude to my abuser’s colleagues… But I
recognised that it really was a direct result of the fact that I couldn’t
accept or rationalise why they weren’t stepping in to protect me and to stand
up to him. The bit that made me the angriest though, was that I spent about
three years telling myself that they can’t have realised what was happening or
they definitely would have stepped in. Except, when I told the Police and they
questioned the colleagues, the Police came back and said that literally everyone
made comments that were one of two variations; the first was: “I wondered if
that was happening…” and the second: “I didn’t witness it, but I can believe it
happened.” And I literally couldn’t have felt angrier! I mean, angrier than I’d
felt throughout the entirety of the six-month-long abuse! The way I coped with
that anger just left me feeling like an even worse person.
So, it's
taken a blooming long time for me to recognise that I was in no way responsible
for the disgustingly wrong actions that my abuser committed. He’s the criminal.
He’s at fault. He holds all the blame. Initially, making that huge progress
wasn’t exactly straight forward – nor was it immediately ‘huge progress!’ It actually
meant that something sad came from it – the recognition that the blame I’d put
on myself for so long had almost destroyed all those years. Or, if not ‘destroyed’
then at least, definitely affected and influenced. And that was enough. Enough
to sadden me. But also, enough to motivate me to put an end to that – to ensure
that thoughts and beliefs like that, would no longer rule or dominate my life
in any way. And this links to the second thought I voiced in this blog post and
which I still deem to be true – that no number of scars on my arms or my body
would erase what had been done to me. What had happened that was influencing me
to self-harm. It made me think, if that was the case, then why was I doing it?
Realising that, provided me with a key, important opportunity to consider
whether I actually had any motivation to do these things, and if I couldn’t
find any – or, if I could poke holes in any that I thought existed – there was
no need to continue using it as a coping strategy!
A point
I mentioned earlier actually came up properly in this blog post; when I blogged
about the fact that a rape and/or sexual abuse Survivor might end up needing to
really forgive those who didn’t stop what was happening or what was being done to
them. As I said earlier, when my abuser’s colleagues were questioned by the Police
to determine any witnesses or someone who could, in some way, corroborate my claims
and counteract his cowardly insistence that he was innocent. Obviously, as I’d
warned the Officers, no one could, but I was actually surprised when they told me
about the various responses around the fact his colleagues had questioned the
possibility that he was abusing me. As I said earlier, I had spent years
telling myself that they were clueless, or they would have helped. Years trying
to convince myself that they weren’t bad people. And all that time…?!
My
abuser and I used to argue a lot in public and since one of his colleagues
actually mentioned to the Police that it didn’t feel like a typical hatred or
rebellion between us. I had an idea this would be voiced because on the day
that the abuse ‘ended’ (April 20th 2007), we had been arguing in a
building and just as I shouted “think of your wife and children!” his employer
appeared demanding why I felt I had the right to speak to my abuser that way.
He was someone who typically commanded respect and was highly regarded amongst
literally everyone in my life. I mean, there was one point when someone very
close and important to me said “he’s such a nice man! He genuinely cares about
you!” And I just wanted to scream “how does no one see it?!”
To
recognise that I needed to forgive everyone for missing all the signs (which I actually
talk about in the last blog post), came from the pure realisation that I couldn’t
carry all the hate around with me for the rest of my life. I had to let it go –
and it sounds so stereotypical and as though I’m a Therapist or something
(because Therapists and other mental health professionals have said that to me
millions of times; but I honestly believe it’s one of those things where you have
to realise it for yourself in order for it to make any difference). I realised
it by finally seeing that I was starting to feel exhausted almost 24/7 and with
no medical cause, I came to the conclusion that I was just using so much energy
on trying to control and resisting acting upon, all this anger and hatred for
those who didn’t stop the abuse. And, understandably, I didn’t want to live my
life feeling like I needed to nap every few hours! That wasn’t a life.
As I
talked about earlier, focusing on the rape and sexual abuse I experienced, is
helpful for me when I’m doing it to benefit others or in a therapeutic way for
myself. This post did that – it was helpful for me. I actually really enjoyed
getting to thoroughly analyse this huge moment in my journey because I won’t
lie – there have been times when I’ve completely regretted reporting my
experiences to the Police, and in writing – or typing! – this blog post, I was
reminded of all the good to have come from making that decision. I liked going
through all the ways in which I’d coped with the difficult results of reporting
it e.g. the worries that I wouldn’t be believed and my abuser claiming to be
innocent. And sometimes, you need these little reminders to really feel
motivated and reassured that you made the right decision in reporting your
trauma.
I mean,
the entire mission or goal of Shake My Hand is about increasing the number of
people who report their experiences of rape or of sexual abuse so, I don’t want
to say – or type! – anything that might completely undermine that. But, at the
same time, I’d like to think of myself as an extremely honest person and so I
want the content and the Campaign I create and produce to emulate and reflect
this. It’s no secret that reporting experiences like this isn’t a walk in the
park, and to just ignore that or leave it out, would be a disservice to all the
extremely brave and special people who have gone through that process.