We have interviewed 87 people who have overcome struggles with the help of therapy. These stories show that therapy is one of the most powerful ways to overcome struggles of mental health.
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I’ve interviewed 87 people who have been helped by therapy, 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.
“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 assaulted–again and again in succession. I drank to feel numb.”
“Raising four young children and battling a chronic illness with no cure was challenging for me. On the outside, I looked OK. But I wasn’t and in some ways today still have flare-ups and struggles, the difference is, I now know how to maintain it, especially knowing this will be the rest of my life regardless!”
Struggled with:
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
“When the next depressive episode hit in 2018, I was devastated. How could this happen again when I thought I had it all figured out? I experienced some of the darkest moments of my life and a nearly complete loss of hope.”
Struggled with:
Anxiety
Bipolar Disorder
Depression
Suicidal
Helped by:
Medication
Therapy
“I felt prettier, smarter, funnier when alcohol entered my body so I simply continued numbing through the years. The progression of this disease of alcoholism turned into a nasty drug habit and those feelings of insecurity turned into deep darkness when I was “off my meds”. Or in other words, without alcohol or drugs.”
Struggled with:
Addiction
Depression
Suicidal
“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 couldn’t 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
“The diagnosis I longed for finally arrived, but it didn’t bring the expected empowerment. While it sheds light on my struggles, it also serves as a reminder that this is a part of me that won’t simply vanish. Though mental health can be managed, I know it will always leave its mark. The most challenging part is not always pinpointing why I feel the way I do.”
Struggled with:
Depression
Negative body image
Helped by:
Medication
Therapy
“When my body changed so drastically and rapidly, it broke my sense of self-identity. About a year into my weight loss, I began to experience early dissociation, depersonalization, and dissociative amnesia. I broke into two people. Me of now and her of before.”
Struggled with:
Depression
Dissociative amnesia
Helped by:
Exercise
Self-improvement
Therapy
“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