AUTHOR

Hugo Huijer

I'm the founder of Tracking Happiness, which I started in an effort to find like-minded people from all over the world. The goal of Tracking Happiness is to help you better manage your mental health. I started by writing about tracking your happiness in a journal, but the content quickly grew into many other topics.

I interviewed over 100 people about mental health struggles, in an effort to destigmatize mental health issues. Together with my team, I try to turn these stories into actionable insights, lessons and tips to better help those who are struggling with similar challenges.

I'm from the Netherlands, love skateboarding, ran 5 marathons, with one of them in under 4 hours (3:59:58 to be exact). I consider myself to be a data junkie and have tracked my happiness for over 10 years!

You can read more about my backstory here.


Tracking Happiness editorial guidelines

Our team is committed to bringing you mental health information that you can fully trust. We want you to feel confident that Tracking Happiness provides unbiased, trustworthy, and accurate information about your mental health, which is why we’re so committed to our editorial process. This means that we don't depend on any AI tool to create our content. Unlike other publishers, we steer away from using automatically generated text, to protect you and ourselves from misinformation and unactionable content.

Finally, we try to include real examples and stories from our community. Mental health advice can often seem unactionable and ambiguous. We always aim to give you actual steps to help you incorporate best practices into your life.

Read more about our processes here.

All articles of Hugo

Angela Philips Featured Image

Case studies

Navigating Baby Blues and Depression in My Postpartum Journey and Breaking the Stigma

“I was in a fog, so confused, and felt all over the place. I had to relearn myself when to anticipate these challenges occurring and plan for prevention, do more outreach for support and be really open with my partner about all of the above. This is really difficult to do all while trying to figure out what’s going on with your body and brain, and a new human to care for.”

Kathy Mou Featured Image

Case studies

Akashic Records Helped Start My Recovery From Depression and Anxiety Due to Endometriosis

“I came across an Instagram post about Akashic readings and was intrigued by the positive feedback, so I decided to give it a try. During the hour-long session with the practitioner, she guided me to prepare questions that my spirit guides could help answer. Naturally, one of my pressing questions was whether I would ever become a mother. To my immense joy, she affirmed that I would indeed have a daughter and even mentioned that I would produce ample milk for her.”

Alana Van Der Sluys Featured Image

Case studies

My Story of Overcoming Binge Eating and Negative Body Image to Achieve True Health

“I couldn’t allow myself to be happy. Even at my lowest weight (which is considered “underweight”), I hated who I saw in the mirror. It was never enough and it would never be enough because my actual body wasn’t the problem. I would never feel worthy until I gave that feeling of worthiness to myself. I always felt I was never enough. I was always anxious and nervous about food.”

Jonathan Featured Image 2

Case studies

My Journey From Alcoholism to 1 Year Into Sobriety and Better Mental Health

“Being sober or being ‘okay’ isn’t about becoming perfect. A lot of people expect to look better or earn more or fall in love and so on. Sure, it can happen – but those are not pillars to build yourself on, because they can fade. You need to do an inventory with yourself or a therapist, look into who you are that brings you such shame or guilt, and start confronting that.”

Monica Machera Featured Image 1

Case studies

A Purpose Mentorship Helped Me Overcome Anxiety Disorder and Psychosis

“When I started recovering, I realized that I had lost myself during that time. Not in a bad way but I had lost my confidence, purpose, and hope. That was when I came across a purpose mentorship program by a Zimbabwean author, entrepreneur, and purpose mentor Ralph Kadurira who has still remained my mentor to this day. The program was everything I needed to get back on my feet.”