26 Interviews With People Who've Been Helped By Exercise

We have interviewed 26 people who have overcome struggles with the help of excercise. These stories show that excercising is one of the most powerful ways to overcome struggles of mental health.

Most recent stories of people helped by excercise

Exercise, Therapy and Religion Helped Me Climb Out Of Alcoholism and Unhappiness

Exercise, Therapy and Religion Helped Me Climb Out Of Alcoholism and Unhappiness

September 3, 2024
Helped by: Exercise, God, Therapy
How Yoga Became My Lifeline in Navigating Depression and Building Self-Love

How Yoga Became My Lifeline in Navigating Depression and Building Self-Love

May 2, 2024
Helped by: Exercise, Meditation, Mindfulness, Self-Care
How Boxing and Therapy Help Me Recover My Identity After Extreme Weight Loss

How Boxing and Therapy Help Me Recover My Identity After Extreme Weight Loss

April 24, 2024
Helped by: Exercise, Self-improvement, Therapy

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Are you looking for stories on the benefits of excercising?

Iā€™ve interviewed 26 people who have been helped by excercise, and here are the top 5 struggles that these people have overcome:

  1. Depression (14 posts)
  2. Anxiety (12 posts)
  3. Addiction (3 posts)
  4. Grief (3 posts)
  5. Insomnia (3 posts)

In our many years of publishing helpful mental health content, we always received questions from our readers about specific situations. While we have a lot of helpful tips to share on how to be happier, we simply canā€™t offer advice for every situation.

Thatā€™s why I’ve set out to interview folks with every type of mental health struggle. My job as an interviewer is to categorize these interviews and present them in a way that is most helpful to our readers.

Read all the case studies

Case studies

Exercise, Therapy and Religion Helped Me Climb Out Of Alcoholism and Unhappiness

“The moment I felt something change for the better was when I was sitting at a bar sipping on a beer, and I called my father. I told him I truly didnā€™t want to drink anymore and really wanted to get sober. He sighed and said, ā€œWe tried to help you. Now itā€™s up to you just to stop drinking.ā€ I asked him how that was going to be possible considering all of my options ran out. He screamed into the phone, ā€œJUST STOPā€ and hung up.”

Struggled with:
Addiction
Assault

Helped by:
Exercise
God
Therapy

Echo Wang Featured Image

Case studies

How Yoga Became My Lifeline in Navigating Depression and Building Self-Love

“My relationship with myself was pretty broken and I had no self-belief, I had low self-esteem and I resented my family.Ā It was through yoga that I found the truest feeling of comfort, self-compassion, and courage to move forward, grow as a person, and fall back in love with myself and life again.”

Struggled with:
Depression
Insomnia
Stress
Suicidal

Helped by:
Exercise
Meditation
Mindfulness
Self-Care

Kristin Addis Featured Image

Case studies

Healing From Postpartum Depression With Therapy, Friends & Exercise

“I wasnā€™t sure how to feel better for a while. People talk about ā€˜getting helpā€™ but thatā€™s a blanket term and unfortunately itā€™s not a band-aid you can just put on and suddenly be yourself again. It takes time to find the right therapist, medication if thatā€™s what you decide to do, to find a new rhythm with family, and in my case, I really needed friends locally.”

Struggled with:
Postpartum depression

Helped by:
Exercise

Therapy

Aaron Burros Featured Image

Case studies

Surviving a Workplace Shooting and Navigating PTSD, Insomnia With Marathons and Prayers

“My symptoms began immediately following a workplace shooting on Saturday, November 28, 2015, and were exasperated due to the activity of the company, the criminals, and the cops. The company treated me as if I were a criminal, the criminals attempted to kill me three additional times, and the cops (Houston Police Department Organized Crime Unit) treated me as if I was a thorn in their flesh.”

Struggled with:
Depression
Insomnia
PTSD
Stress

Helped by:
Exercise
Religion
Treatment
Volunteering

Sam Featured Image

Case studies

How Sobriety, Therapy, and Self-Care Help Me Navigate BPD and Bipolar Disorder Better

“I used to have a mindset of: ā€œpoor meā€ – ā€œIā€™m just a victimā€ and ā€œnone of this is my faultā€. Eventually, I knew I had to change that narrative to one of control. I had to take accountability for the things that I could change, and be honest about the things I was doing that were making everything worse.”

Struggled with:
Anxiety
Bipolar Disorder
Borderline Personality Disorder
Depression
Suicidal

Helped by:
Exercise
Religion
Self-Care
Self-improvement

Therapy

Marci Rossi Featured Image

Case studies

Conquering Alcoholism and Hopelessness And Helping Others Do the Same

“I used alcohol to deal with stress, anxiety, boredomā€“essentially any negative feeling that I didnā€™t want to experience. I was also using it to try to generate positive feelingsā€“to celebrate, to have fun, to socialize. Turning to alcohol for so many different reasons made it hard to control. I started by setting rules for myself, like only drinking on the weekends and only after a certain hour. But I consistently broke those rules, so they kept getting looser and looser.”

Struggled with:
Addiction
Anxiety
Depression

Helped by:
Exercise
Rehab
Self-improvement

Therapy

Summer Willis Featured Image

Case studies

Overcoming Grief and Assault With 29 Marathons and Now Helping Others Do the Same

“A man spiked my drink and assaulted me, leading to a diagnosis of PTSD and depression. This event fundamentally changed my life, leading me into a violent relationship and a period of repression and struggle. Despite these challenges, life moved on. I got married, and had two beautiful boys, but then faced another intense period of grief, losing seven loved ones in just a few months.”

Struggled with:
Abuse
Assault
Depression
Grief
PTSD

Helped by:
Exercise
Medication
Religion
Self-Care
Self-improvement

Jonathan Wallace Featured Image

Case studies

Confronting The Stigma around My ADHD and Embracing It to Reinvent Myself

“I finally came to grips that if I ever wanted to succeed, I would need to acknowledge my ADHD and get help. This was around the same time my son was diagnosed, and we started treating him. I talked to my doctor and started taking medication again. After a few weeks, I noticed a difference. I was finishing tasks, I was proactive and productive.”

Struggled with:
ADHD

Helped by:
Exercise
Medication
Reinventing yourself
Self-improvement