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Posts tagged with “mental health”

When You’re Tired of Fixing Yourself: How to Stop Treating Healing Like a Full-Time Job

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“True self-love is not about becoming someone better; it’s about softening into the truth of who you already are.” ~Yung Pueblo

One morning, I sat at my kitchen table with my journal open, a cup of green tea steaming beside me, and a stack of self-help books spread out like an emergency toolkit.

The sunlight was spilling across the counter, but I didn’t notice. My eyes kept darting between the dog-eared pages of a book called Becoming Your Best Self and the neatly written to-do list in my journal.

Meditation.
Gratitude journaling.
Affirmations.
Ten thousand steps.
Hydration tracker.
“Inner child …

The Whisper That Saved My Life When I Was Drowning

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TRIGGER WARNING: This post references rape and suicide attempts, which might be distressing for some readers.

“Our lives only improve when we are willing to take chances, and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.” ~Walter Anderson

This was my third psychiatric hospitalization after my suicide attempts.

On this visit, something shifted. All I knew at that moment was, for the first time, I wasn’t in a hurry to leave.

There was no window or clock. Just blank, pale walls I’d been staring at for twenty-one days.

I lay there, shattered and …

If You’re Struggling with Your Mental Health

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How I’ve Found Relief from Panic Attacks

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“Don’t assume I’m weak because I have panic attacks. You’ll never know the amount of strength it takes to face the world every day.” ~Unknown

I was just eighteen when it happened. Sitting in a crowded school assembly, my heart pounded, my chest felt constricted in a vice, and the air seemed to vanish from my lungs. As my surroundings closed in on me, my inner voice muttered, “I think you are dying.”

That was the day I experienced my first panic attack.

Terrified, I fled from the hall. “I need to see a doctor now,” I gasped tearfully …

How I’m Learning to Live with Anxiety, Not Against It

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“Your anger? It’s telling you where you feel powerless. Your anxiety? It’s telling you that something in your life is off balance. Your fear? It’s telling you what you care about. Your apathy? It’s telling you where you’re overextended and burnt out. Your feelings aren’t random, they are messengers. And if you want to get anywhere, you need to be able to let them speak to you and tell you what you really need.” ~Brianna Wiest

For half of my life, anxiety has been my constant companion. I went from a confident, fiery, and fearless girl to a woman plagued …

4 Ways to Help Someone with Mental Health Challenges

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“Just being there for someone can sometimes bring hope when all seems hopeless.” ~Dave G. Llewellyn

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where someone told you something deeply personal and traumatic and you were stuck on what to say to them, how to act, and how to behave?

This happens to me regularly, and it’s not that I don’t have feelings or emotions about what’s happened to the person. I feel deeply sorry for them. But I sometimes freeze and don’t know what to say or do.

When it comes to mental health issues, this can be even …

8 Ways Life Improves When You Value and Prioritize Yourself

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“Every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, ‘This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!’ And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart, and say, ‘No. This is what’s important.’” ~Iain Thomas

As someone who believes in the healing power of self-care, I absolutely love this quote. But I didn’t always believe it was true. And it didn’t feel good to do it.

My heart was too tender to be touched for long. And …

Please Don’t Tell a Depressed Person…

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3 Popular Myths Around Having and Healing Anxiety

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“Never fear shadows. They simply mean there’s a light shining somewhere nearby.” ~Ruth E. Renkel

Before I started healing my anxiety, I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. Every panic attack, every morning filled with dread, every social event that I would mentally prepare myself for made me feel like I had some inner deficiency that no one else had.

I used to work as a cashier at a grocery store and would avoid hanging out with people twenty-four hours before my shift. Yep. That means if I worked on Saturday morning, I wouldn’t hang out with …

Depression Isn’t Always Dark Rooms and Crying Endlessly

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7 Pillars of Mental Health: How to Feel Your Best (Almost) Every Day

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“Sending love to everyone who’s doing their best to heal from things they don’t discuss.” ~Unknown

When I was twelve years old, I planned on taking my own life. I had a plan, I had the means, and I thought about it every single day for months. No one was aware—not my family, not my best friends, not my teachers at school or my peers. It would have been a huge surprise in my community had I attempted it, because I didn’t appear as someone who was severely depressed.

Thankfully, I never acted on it, and fifteen years later I …

Don’t Feel Guilty About Needing Breaks

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How I Calm My Anxiety Octopus at Home with My Aquaponics Zen Zone

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“Stay in the moment. The practice of staying present will heal you. Obsessing about how the future will turn out creates anxiety. Replaying broken scenarios from the past causes anger and sadness. Stay here, in this moment.” ~Sylvester McNutt

Like many people, I have an anxiety disorder that twists my thoughts and feelings. I call it my “anxiety octopus,” as it feels like there are tentacles in my brain triggering fear-based reactions for no reason. In everything, even things that I am confident in, I suddenly feel insecure and unsure.

It takes time to realize that the “anxiety octopus” has …

3 Lifestyle Changes I Made to Overcome Dissociative Panic Attacks

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“There is no greater wealth in this world than peace of mind.” ~Unknown

A few years ago, I had what could safely be deemed a “bad year.” My live-in partner left me out of the blue, I became un(der)employed and racked with debt, I got in a car accident that totaled my car, and then…my dog died.

After the year that I’d had, the death of that dog, my most treasured friend, was the final straw. It was the final straw for believing that things might turn around soon, and it was the final straw for my mental health.

Shortly …

Releasing Fascia: A Simple Way to Reduce Tension, Pain, and Disease

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“Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live.” ~Jim Rohn

I hear this happens to so many, but when it happens to you, it’s unsettling. I didn’t know what was going on with me, and I wasn’t getting any satisfying answers either.

Most days were good, and I felt fine and went about my regular routine wearing my many hats: mother of two young kids, human mom to three fur babies, a household-manager-of-all-the-things and full-time dental hygienist. And then out of the blue, it could hit me like a ton of bricks… the backache, neck …

How I Claimed My Right to Belong While Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

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TRIGGER WARNING: This post briefly references sexual abuse.

“Never hold yourself back from trying something new just because you’re afraid you won’t be good enough. You’ll never get the opportunity to do your best work if you’re not willing to first do your worst and then let yourself learn and grow.” ~Lori Deschene

The year 2022 was the hardest of my life. And I survived a brain tumor before that.

My thirtieth year started off innocently enough. I was living with my then-boyfriend in Long Beach and had a nice ring on my finger. The relationship had developed quickly, but …

Thinner is Not Better – Healthy, Connected, and Happy Is

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“Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don’t match our own beliefs about how we should look.” ~Martha Beck

I have so many women around me right now—friends, mothers, clients that are on a diet—constantly talking about their weight and how their bodies look, struggling with body image.

I am profoundly sad about the frequency and theme of those discussions.

At the same time, I deeply get it; it is hard to detach from our conditioning.

I too struggled with body image at one point in my life, and for a very …

How to Ease the Pain of Being Human: From Breakdown to Breakthrough

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“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know” ~Pema Chödrön

We are all works in progress.

We all have skeletons in our closets that we may wish to never come out. We have all made mistakes. We will all make mistakes in the future. We all have our scars.

None of us are close to reaching that mythical ‘perfect’ status. Never will be.

None of us should consider ourselves fully evolved. Not even close. There will always be space for improving an area of our lives.

Truth be told, most of us are a …

How Yoga Helped Heal My Anxiety and Quiet My Overactive Mind

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“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you really are” ~Carl Jung

Yoga is often celebrated for its physical benefits: greater flexibility, increased strength, improved circulation, and so on. But nothing could have prepared me for the transformational effect that yoga has had on my mental health and well-being.

I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression when I was fourteen, and I have struggled with both for most of my life. My mind was my worst enemy, constantly worrying and criticizing to the point where it became hard to do anything. Even the things I really wanted to …

8 Ways You Can Help Fight the Loneliness Epidemic

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“The antidote to loneliness isn’t just being around random people indiscriminately, the antidote to loneliness is emotional security.” ~Benedict Wells

Emotional security. The feeling of being at home in the presence of another. Safe to be who you are, good times or bad. Feeling seen and seeing the other clearly, accepting the other’s whole lovely mess. It’s good stuff, and it can be hard to find.

In fact, ever-increasing loneliness stats have led many experts to describe the problem as epidemic. You might assume it was caused by the pandemic, but it was a crisis long before lockdowns and …