We have interviewed 50 people who have overcome mental health struggles with the help of self-care. These stories show that self-care is one of the most powerful ways to overcome struggles of mental health.
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I’ve interviewed 50 people who have been helped by self-care, and here are the top 5 struggles that these people have overcome:
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 can’t offer advice for every situation.
That’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.
“My struggles with unworthiness came from deep childhood wounds which stemmed from generational trauma on both sides of my family. I grew up in a multicultural home—one parent a Colorado native with UK roots and an immigrant father from Algeria. From a young age, I felt very different from my peers because of my unique cultural background.”
Struggled with:
Anxiety
Racism
Self-doubt
“While I have a great support system, I did not feel like they truly understood what it felt like to be me. I really wished I could talk to people unfiltered about how sad I was and how I did not see a light at the end of the tunnel. I was still on my medicine and in therapy, but I had quit my fancy finance job, ended my relationship and urgently needed to work on myself.”
Struggled with:
Depression
Helped by:
Medication
Self-Care
“I experienced burnout. It was so severe that I could barely get out of bed or feed myself anything more than a bag of chips. I had also ground my teeth so badly that I was experiencing shooting pain in my jaw. When I saw the dentist, she told me that the damage to my teeth was permanent. To this day I often have pain when eating or drinking very hot or cold items.”
Struggled with:
Burnout
Helped by:
Self-Care
Self-improvement
“Despite experiencing severe depressive symptoms, including suicidal ideation, I made a concerted effort to appear upbeat and engaged in social settings. This involved forcing myself to smile, laugh, and participate in conversations as if everything was fine, even when I was internally battling intense emotional pain that I felt I was not safe to reveal.”
Struggled with:
Childhood trauma
Depression
People-pleasing
“I’ve learned that finding the right people to confide in, those who offer genuine support and empathy, can make a significant difference in navigating these challenges. It takes time and trust to build those connections, but they are invaluable.”
“Then something happened. On about day 3 or 4, the group spoke and I realized that their way of thinking around food, their rituals, and their tendencies, were all the same as the things I would do. It was wild because I thought I had made these things up myself and here I was with a room full of people who did the same things.”
Struggled with:
Abuse
Depression
Divorce
Eating disorder
PTSD
“My relationship with myself was pretty broken and I had no self-belief, I had low self-esteem and I resented my family. 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
“I remember being floored with a horrible throat infection, and I was just crying. I was done suffering, I couldn’t do it anymore, I was really broken down. That was about 2 years ago now, and it shifted something in my brain. Instead of going down the drain – and keeping that negativity going – it suddenly hit me that I’m the only one responsible for how I feel.”
Struggled with:
Anxiety
Chronic pain
Panic attacks
Stress
“I’m sure that other people around me knew that I was struggling, but I only shared this with a couple of people. People in my immediate physical ecosphere didn’t offer up any kind of empathy either. In fact, the exact opposite. Which I think made the condition even worse.”
Struggled with:
Chronic pain
CPTSD
Helped by:
Journaling
Meditation
Self-Care
“I clearly remember feeling like I was stuck deep down at the bottom of a dark hole where I could barely breathe. It was especially disturbing because I didn’t care if I stayed down there and never saw light again. Looking back, I realize that my severe depressive episode had been building for years, but I didn’t really notice it.”
Struggled with:
Anxiety
Chronic pain
Depression