At Tracking Happiness, we’re dedicated to helping others around the world overcome struggles of mental health.
In 2022, we published a survey of 5,521 respondents and found:
In order to break the stigma that surrounds mental health struggles, we’re looking to share your stories.
They say that everyone you meet is engaged in a great struggle. No matter how well someone manages to hide it, there’s always something to overcome, a struggle to deal with, an obstacle to climb.
And when someone is engaged in a struggle, that person is looking for others to join him. Because we, as human beings, don’t thrive when we feel alone in facing a struggle.
Overcoming your struggles is like defeating an angry giant. You try to throw rocks at it, but how much damage is one little rock gonna do?
Tracking Happiness can become your partner in facing this giant. We are on a mission to share all your stories of overcoming mental health struggles. By doing so, we want to help inspire you to overcome the things that you’re struggling with, while also breaking the stigma of mental health.
Which explains the phrase: “Let’s throw rocks together”.
Let’s throw rocks together, and become better at overcoming our struggles collectively. If you’re interested in becoming a part of this and sharing your story, click this link!
“I used my journal a lot at this time. Being in gratitude would truly help me cope with the anxiety. At the time, everyone was reaching out to us. But it was really something I had to process myself and in my own way. I was also trying to hold it together for my son. I never wanted him to feel how stressed I was or that there was anything wrong.”
Helped by:
Journaling
Mindfulness
Self-Care
“If you struggle with social anxiety, the best way to overcome it would be to take small steps to face it. Go to places that make you uncomfortable and take a look around. You’ll realize no one is looking at you.”
Struggled with:
Anxiety
Helped by:
Exercise
Self-improvement
“When I was in the garden photographing the red squirrels I could forget everything and I found peace with myself and in my head. I also reached the national geographic finals in 2019. That motivated me to enter more photography contests and take my photography to the next level. I totally stopped drinking in 2022 just to focus more on my photography.”
Struggled with:
Depression
Grief
Helped by:
Self-improvement
“Accutane came on the market in 1982, I began taking it in 1985, and in 1986 I was feeling very depressed. Accutane had a number of side effects, but the one that impacted me the most was depression; the stats say only 1% of people will have MDD while on Accutane. I was that 1 percent.”
Struggled with:
Addiction
Anxiety
Depression
“After a very emotionally taxing month for me and my fiance, I had an actual mental breakdown. Unable to stop crying, I voluntarily admitted myself to my local psych ward and stayed for a couple of days, ultimately being released after assessment. I realized that I didn’t want to die, I just didn’t want to feel the way I was feeling.”
Struggled with:
Abuse
ADHD
Childhood trauma
CPTSD
Helped by:
Medication
Self-Care
Therapy
“Don’t hate yourself for the trauma. The path to happiness is not a single one. There are many ways to be happy so the impossibility to turn back time before trauma does not mean you can never be happy. You can be happy again. You can trust others again. Don’t lose your hope to survive. Someday, you will be thankful for your past self who did not give up your life.”
“Now, we can identify our emotions easily, we don’t get attacks of emotion so overwhelming we just have to pause the world. We do have feelings that creep up and we do still have some things to work over, but also some of that is caused by the emotional dysregulation caused by our neurodivergence.”
Struggled with:
Autism
Depression
Dissociative Identity Disorder
Panic attacks
Helped by:
Meditation
Reinventing yourself
“I can’t begin to explain the depth of hatred I had for myself. I was working 80, sometimes 100 hours a week with overtime and I still couldn’t make it. Why? I had no friends. Why? I had zero prospects of a relationship and felt zero love from anyone. Why? I hated myself.”
Struggled with:
ADHD
Anxiety
Depression
“When I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, I was elated to finally have a label for my issues. After suffering through the symptoms for my entire life, there was finally an answer as to why I had experienced them.”
Struggled with:
Abuse
Borderline Personality Disorder
Helped by:
Exercise
Journaling