We have interviewed 74 people who have overcome struggles with the help of self-improvement. These stories show that self-improvement is one of the most powerful ways to overcome struggles of mental health.
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I’ve interviewed 74 people who have been helped by self-improvement, 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.
“I was hospitalized for my eating disorder and my depression several times throughout my college career struggling with the will to live… I was desperate to be “normal” but my brain really got in the way of that.”
Struggled with:
Anxiety
Depression
Eating disorder
OCD
Suicidal
“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
“My mother said she wanted to end it in bloodshed and she waited for him to come home from his late-night meeting. She thought better of it when he was late arriving home. She was overwhelmed with thoughts of her in prison and me in foster care. To say that she made the right decision in achieving the goal of a good life is an answer I struggled to answer for many years.”
Struggled with:
Abuse
Anxiety
Childhood
CPTSD
Depression
“When one is home alone, all day, with nothing to do, nobody to speak with, stuck with their thoughts both good and bad, it’s easy to slip back into a depressive state. Feeling unneeded, unwanted, no happiness, no joy, no reason to get out of bed – just suffering with “the blahs”.”
Struggled with:
Depression
Loneliness
Helped by:
Self-improvement
“Over the past decade, I have struggled with substance abuse immensely leading to anxiety, depression, and PTSD. After losing thirteen corporate jobs and ending up homeless, beaten up, and absolutely broken on the streets I have finally come to terms with my situation and am finding a path towards long-term sobriety and happiness.”
Struggled with:
Addiction
Anxiety
Depression
PTSD
Helped by:
Mindfulness
Rehab
Religion
Self-improvement
“This suicidal edge coupled with stress, anxiety, and loneliness made me stop working as a human being. In just two months I had spiraled down into the darkest hole which has ever existed for me. There didn’t exist Marina anymore, merely a depressive and neurotic copy of her, who was unable to laugh and sleep.”
Struggled with:
Anxiety
Depression
Panic attacks
Stress
Suicidal
Helped by:
Self-acceptance
Self-improvement
Therapy
“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
“I used to have a mindset of: “poor me” – “I’m just a victim” and “none of this is my fault”. 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.”
“I used alcohol to deal with stress, anxiety, boredom–essentially any negative feeling that I didn’t want to experience. I was also using it to try to generate positive feelings–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
“So now I’m still having migraines and nerve pain, have been removed from my job and friends, was ordered to not contact anyone from my unit, my future livelihood was at risk, and my leadership was only willing to try to remove me from sight. This lasted for almost three years.”
Struggled with:
Chronic pain
Depression
Stress
