Things that no one tells you about being a mental health blogger.
- It is a very sensitive subject. - That sounds completely obvious right? "of course it's sensitive. It's people's mental health" Well as simple as it sounds reading it, writing this posts is anything but easy. It takes a lot of planning, writing and re-writing posts to ensure that we have not made the subject come off in the wrong way. writing posts for over a year about mental health has been very hard. A blog in my opinion (especially our blog niche) should be easy and fun to read. The things that we talk about are the complete opposite. We cannot make it sound like light-hearted conversations with you via a computer screen because it's simply not possible.
- There is a very narrow topic choice. - When we started this blog it was because we wanted to help others. It was also like a therapy session for us because we had to turn our negative feelings and actions into positive ones. The whole meaning of the blog is to promote recovery so we cannot include any negative messages no matter how we are feeling. This is very restricting when it comes to writing posts.
- We are not qualified. - whatever is said on this blog, we have to check it thoroughly. Any person that is in any kind of mind-frame can stumble across our blog. If we post promoting certain objects, techniques etc or someone takes our advice the wrong way then we are in deep doo-doo. We are in no way qualified to talk about mental health the same way that therapists are. (Although I do have an online certificate in mental health). We are not qualified. That is why we constantly remind people that the things that we talk about are from our own personal experiences and what has worked for us.
- it's hard to keep digging up the past. - Part of my recovery was going to therapy to find out where the root cause of my problems were. This inevitably meant that I would have to go through my backstory because that was the logical thing to do. Writing posts about problems that I would rather leave in the past or about very difficult times for me is very hard. We cannot live in the past, we have to learn from the past but not let it control us.
-We have very little privacy.- We share some of our deepest darkest secrets on here. These are the kind of things that people never want to share with anyone, sometimes even their friends and family. Yet we share our full stories. This means that we have very little privacy when it comes to our life.
-A lot of hate. - There can be a lot of hate on the Internet. There are many people who could say that we are doing this blog for attention. That of course isn't true. Just like real life, the Internet can be used as a force for good or a force of negativity. So all of these things sound very negative. I have one thing to tell you all though... There is nothing in this world that I would trade for doing this blog. It has been our saviour. Do not forget that with every bad thing in the world, there are more good things happening.
What are some of your favourite things about blogging or owning a helpful social media account?
-Louise xoxo
