We have interviewed 58 people who have overcome struggles with the help of social support from others. These stories show that friends, family and colleagues are vital to overcoming struggles of mental health.
đ Help thousands of people around the world by sharing your own story. We would love to publish your interview and have a positive impact on the world together. Learn more here.
Iâve interviewed 58 people who have been helped by support of others, 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 canât offer advice for every situation.
Thatâs 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.
“At 22 years old, I knew that I was dying of alcoholism. I accepted that. The trauma symptoms I experienced were too overwhelming to stop drinking. When I was sober, I would sometimes experience 30 to 40 body memories of being sexually assaultedâagain and again in succession. I drank to feel numb.”
“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.”
“It was like starting life over again, except you know how to do things you physically canât do, which emotionally drains you. There was definitely a sense of resentment and feeling sorry for myself, I think that is natural. You wonder what you did to deserve that, you wonder if things are ever going to get better, you wonder how people will treat you. When you are confined to a bed for weeks on end, really all you can do is wonder.”
Struggled with:
Physical trauma
Helped by:
Self-improvement
“I absolutely did not want to talk to anyone about this. I found it easier to tell a stranger about my struggles because I knew I would not see them again. I felt that telling family or friends made my struggle real. I felt that they would now be able to hold me accountable.”
Struggled with:
Postpartum depression
Helped by:
Self-acceptance
“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
“Now as I was getting older, I felt I couldnât trust my own thoughts in the same way as before, and self-doubt would creep in. I would constantly ask myself whether my emotions and thoughts were accurate or not when reacting to social situations. As you can imagine this was a huge challenge and draining emotionally.”
Helped by:
Medication
Therapy
“I wasnât sure how to feel better for a while. People talk about âgetting helpâ but thatâs a blanket term and unfortunately itâs not a band-aid you can just put on and suddenly be yourself again. It takes time to find the right therapist, medication if thatâs 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
“When one is home alone, all day, with nothing to do, nobody to speak with, stuck with their thoughts both good and bad, itâs easy to slip back into a depressive state. Feeling unneeded, unwanted, no happiness, no joy, no reason to get out of bed â just suffering with âthe blahsâ.”
Struggled with:
Depression
Loneliness
Helped by:
Self-improvement
“I do not recommend having a breakdown when trying to raise boys. I would cry, eat all the time, and feel like my brain was full of fuzz. I could barely function. There was that day when I got home from taking the kids to school, and thought to myself that if there was a gun in the house, someone else would have had to pick them up from school that day.”
Struggled with:
Depression
Divorce
Stress
Helped by:
Journaling
Therapy
“I used to have a mindset of: âpoor meâ – âIâm just a victimâ and ânone of this is my faultâ. 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.”
