I’m grateful to my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson for suggesting this collaboration for Mental Health Awareness Week 2025. We’ve each answered the same ten questions about different aspects of our blogging experience. Aimee’s answers are below. You can find mine on her blog I’m NOT Disordered.
AIMEE’S ANSWERS
1. How do you handle time management and prioritisation when it comes to content creation?
Time management and prioritising is actually an area that I’m still – yes, even after well over twelve years! – learning how to manage, regulate, and cope with. I do find the need for balance sometimes when I find myself juggling creating multiple pieces of content at the same time and I realise that I need to balance working on the bits I’m enjoying the most as well as keeping an eye on the content which has more of an imminent deadline e.g. where it’s for an Awareness date or an anniversary etc.
2. What impact does blogging have on your mental health, emotional wellbeing, thoughts, and feelings?
Blogging has been truly lifesaving for me due to the number of beneficial impacts it has had on my mental health, my emotional wellbeing, my thoughts, and my feelings! For some time now, I’ve found writing to be a really therapeutic release of a lot of my pent-up thoughts and feelings and blogging has proven to not only encompass that quality, but also the ability to provide me with a safe means of processing difficult experiences.
3. How do you feel about receiving feedback, comments, and input from your readers? How do you handle negative feedback or responses?
When I first started to blog, I did so with the sole focus of the benefits it would have on myself and my loved ones; I paid very little mind/attention to the thought of complete strangers reading my content. So, when I began receiving feedback and comments from those people, I struggled to put it into my consideration in terms of content creation and balancing the thoughts of my posts affecting strangers with the benefits it could have for me own mental health recovery. Fortunately, in all my years of blogging, I’ve only received two negative comments, and I think a huge reason for this, has been that I massively stay clear of controversial topics and angles for content – I do this by typically weighing up the importance of expressing my opinion with the chance of it receiving negative comeback.
4. How much attention do you pay to your blog statistics? What do they mean to you?
A heck of a lot! I once got asked why I care so much about ‘the numbers’ and it was meant as a dig at the time by a very cocky girl whose own blog was more founded, but a lot less popular. I think that she – and any others with this question – forget that each ‘number’ is actually a person! A person who could benefit from my content. A person I have the opportunity to help. And I massively recognise that in this industry, the size of your following/audience, has one of the largest impacts on the opportunities e.g. collaborations and event invitations etc you can be offered as a Blogger or online influencer.
5. Where do you find inspiration, ideas, and motivation?
Literally everywhere! Typically, though, from everyday occurrences and life events. I think these are the most inspirational areas because they are often common ground for a lot of other people too e.g. so many others have had a birthday, or an argument with a professional! Having a quality that readers will appreciate, empathise with, or understand on a deeper level, can really contribute to the popularity and success of a piece of content.
6. What are your favourite moments and achievements in your blogging?
100% giving my speech at the National EMTA Conference for the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in earlier this year (February 2025)! It was the most recovery-defining moment and I’m certain I wouldn’t have been afforded it if I hadn’t made the original connection to the doctor who invited me, through blogging at an event she was hosting years ago.
7. What do you feel about blogging collaborations, guest posts, and events?
Absolutely love them! I honestly feel really honoured to be able to supply a platform for others to use as a bit of a soapbox too! To be able to provide someone with the opportunity to tell their story or to promote their organisation or campaign to literally millions of people across the world, is a very huge privilege. One which not many people can say that they are able to do.
8. How supported do you feel as a blogger? What kind of support do you find most helpful, and why?
In life on a whole, my greatest support has always – and likely will always be – my Mum! She’s the greatest person in my life, but if I were to focus solely on blogging, Martin is 100% my greatest support there. He’s literally the only person in my life who ‘gets it.’ The only person who can actually identify with me and with both the challenges and the wonderful moments I face on a daily basis in my blogging career.
9. If you could give one piece of advice to a budding blogger, what would it be?
Stay creative.
10. How has your blogging changed over the years, and how do you see it changing in the future?
The blogging industry is massively saturated now, when I created I’m NOT Disordered there were no well-known blogs written by a current psychiatric hospital inpatient (as I was then) so I almost immediately – and without a lot of thought or planning – found a niche. These days, it’s so much more difficult to find a footing in the industry and to find a quality that really differentiates you and your content from literally everyone else doing it! I only see that as becoming more and more challenging, but I believe that will attract more interesting, creative, and imaginative people to the industry – which could only be a good thing, really!