Hey kiddo,

So yeah. I don’t think I’ll ever say this stuff out loud so it might as well be something you pretend I’ve said to you on my behalf.

Wow. You’ve done some amazing things despite how your mom and I set you up. I know you’re a parent yourself now, so you get that we did the best we could. The best that was in our mental capabilities. But you’ve also come to realize that we absolutely could have done better had we been capable of self-reflection and self-insight that is needed to even want to try.

I wish I had the capacity to care to research, to ask others why they took the steps they did with their kids. But asking others would have forced me in a weird way to admit that I was doing something wrong. Or that I didn’t know what I was doing. And as you know from trying to talk things out so many times in the past decade, I can’t do that. I just can’t. I don’t have the vocabulary, the insight, and honestly the interest in doing that. So that’s really cool that you do.

Every time you’ve tried to talk to me and make repairs, you’re asking for a lot of vulnerability. I can’t fix the past. I can’t fix how I’ve been. But admitting fault would mean I also have to work on myself in the future. And that’s hard. That’s a commitment I just can’t make. Sorry. I mean, I’m not really sorry because you’re asking for a lot by asking for that, but I am sorry in concept.

You tried to come at it fairly, but oh boy, there’s lots of big feelings in there, huh? Maybe I should not have asked you to make a list of things I’ve done to upset you, only to refute every item on the list saying that it was because you were a tough, even rotten, selfish kid. Sorry.

I had to tell myself that I was protecting myself from your awful behavior. But really, you were just a kid. You got great grades, were surrounded by friends, passed your SATs decently, got into a good school without any of my help. (Well, not without any help. I got you into this country, didn’t I?) That’s gotta be a sign that you were a half-decent, capable human at least.

But it was also a mark of you getting better than me at this whole human-ing thing. I saw you volunteer, absorb every ounce of knowledge you could. I saw you struggle with your sexuality and identity and honestly it looked really hard to deal with. No one told me that kids come with their wants and needs. In our day, they were just made knowing you needed someone to take care of you when you got old. But now that you don’t want to do that, I’m realizing that maybe that wasn’t the best idea.

Looking back, maybe if I was there for those hard things instead of mocking you, you’d want to spend more time with me now. If I didn’t tell you everything about you, who you liked, who you did/didn’t sleep with, what you liked, then, maybe once you embraced those parts of you, you’d still want to talk to me. But they were all so ridiculous and hard for me to understand that it was easier to mock you than self-reflect. I wish I didn’t now.

You, on the other hand. You’re so insightful. You are so caring. You are so deliberate and thoughtful. So smart. It must be all the reading and talking you do. I don’t know. I used to think that this was because you were just trying to trick me to admit fault. But it’s really because you needed a dad that was motivated to teach you and care for you because he loved you. And I do love you. But I love the image I have of myself way more.

Look if I really thought about it, I’d realize it was so messed up that I made you live with your sister because I really couldn’t fit you into my new family. (Actually, to add to that, she was really the one who helped bring you back to US after your mom kidnapped you, huh?).

She was only 23 and you were 14. That was asking a lot. It was also messed up that I blamed the both of you for not getting along better. That I continually forced a wedge between you two by speaking to each of you behind your back.

But it really was because I saw the bond you two had. I saw that you were also struggling monetarily and emotionally because of how much was expected of you and I kind of realized it was my fault. But I really didn’t want to handle that so it was easier for me to blame both of you and drive you apart, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the feelings it brought up in me.

Now that you have your own kid, you likely understand the depth of my self-importance to see that I must really not even be able to comprehend the needs of others. That’s the only way to explain how I treated you because I don’t think you’d ever hurt your kid like I hurt you. You’re an amazing, caring mom. You’ll mess him up in some new way, but at least it won’t include generations of trauma passed onto you too.

I know it takes real, hard, exhausting effort to not take your anger out on him for everything he does wrong. I don’t know or understand how you do it. But it’s really cool that you do.

I never tried unless it was in front of other people. But man, that must have messed with you because you would then constantly second guess what I actually meant. And other people would tell you how ungrateful you were when your dad was so amazing. Again, I did it out of self-preservation. But I am sorry because seeing it laid out like this, it seems pretty messed up.

With all of that, I still say you are choosing to stay the person you are. You’ve made up illnesses for yourself because you want attention. ADHD, Anxiety, those were not things I understand. Both as an immigrant from Russia and just like, as a normal guy, you know?

I’ve never been depressed. I’ve found that drinking some whiskey at night helps quiet any buzzing thoughts or extra energy I have any time of the day. Maybe a beer. It’s weird that you don’t drink, but I’m sorry I don’t get it enough that I mock you instead of listening. Even if, when I do listen I find you so insightful.

You’re so smart. I tell you all the time. I wish that was a reflection of my raising you. I mean, in a way it is, because my making things this hard on you meant that you always wanted to be better. I think you can be perfect one day. I really do. Sorry, I might not see it.

I wish you talked to me more. I wish you called more. And I know you’ve said that if I worked on myself, talked to a therapist, screamed less every time I saw you and blamed you less for situations are you not even present in, you would. But also, listen, listing all of this out, it sounds really hard. And I just… I don’t have the time or energy to deal with that and my own needs.

I’m sorry I’m not the dad you need now. Or the dad you needed. But I am so grateful for the men in your life who you’ve found fulfill that role better. Whether that’s your father-in-law, who listens and gives caring, self-less advice. Or the boss that mentored you into believing you could be more. Or your husband who got you to go the therapy. I’m sorry you had to find a dad all piecemeal. But so glad you did. You do what you gotta do, right?

Sorry kiddo. You know. I really am.

I learned about writing such a letter from Dr Becky. She recently had a guest on her podcast, Good Inside, who’s father passed and who wrote a letter to himself of all the things he wished he said. My dad is still alive, but I wanted to try writing a similar letter. It’s a very open-ended exercise. Think of someone who’s hurt you and work through what you wish they could say to you.

Or maybe a letter you wish you could write to someone you have hurt, that really, truly owns up to and apologizes for the action you regret.

I’d love to read your letters if you choose to write one too. Please comment and link me to them!

Warmly,
 M

How Did We Get Here?

I’d spent so much emotional effort not wanting to become my parents, especially in scenarios where my under-two-year-old child was present. Yet, here I still was, screaming at the top of my lungs in our kitchen instead of looking for common ground, practicing empathy, literally using any of my other emotional skills.

As soon as the angry, spiteful words came out of my mouth I regretted it. My husband, my partner of fifteen years got quiet. He had just added his own fuel to the fire but my last remarks apparently took the gold in this awful Olympics I didn’t ask to rank in.

We’d run out of emotional, physical and social capital months ago and with our little one still needing so much, there was no way to replenish it with anything that wasn’t resentment. There’s no help immediately around that we don’t need to pay for, no village to help ease things to help us find time to rekindle our own flames. So there’s been plenty of anger to go around. Resentment that I had to quit hobbies. Postpartum anxiety and a tumultuous pregnancy had already started putting us to the test.

Here come the Four Horsemen of the divorce apocalypse: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling. I fear them, but yet I am helpless and too exhausted to stave them off.

All the evening catch up walks, all the drives for a quick ice cream or 10 pm grocery fun-runs to add silliness to tough days — gone. Replaced with compassion fatigue and burnout from always being on. And the weird, unrecognizable feeling of wanting to devote every second of your life to make sure the tiny person you created has the best experience while also having no reserves to draw from to replenish the limitless amount of energy that requires.

So, you resent, but never the child of course. So, you resent your partner asking for an hour away to see his friends. You resent yourself for asking for two hours of frivolous shopping. You resent your partner’s work trip for four days because you know you’re sleep deprived, but he will potentially also get uninterrupted late-to-wake sleep. You resent going away for your second job when your child might be home missing you, and especially because you miss them. You miss them so much after wanting nothing more but just a moment alone to breathe.

Let’s Do This

We had gone through couple’s therapy before we even got married, as a way to talk out our big decision. Both of us have individual therapy under our belts too. And yet, all I could think this time around was, this is it, the last step before divorce.

What does it say when someone who has been through therapy and is on medication with updated diagnoses as late as 29 years old thinks that couple’s therapy marks the end of a relationship instead of its improvement? I don’t know any couples who divorced after couple’s therapy personally.

Where did I draw that from, socially? I feel ashamed because I like to think of myself as someone open to constant self-betterment. And yet, when it comes to my pairing it seems I feel like I failed to practice my best knowledge if we need to do therapy together.

But we did fail. In the BIG, dubious sense. But not in any way I would judge someone else.

Would I expect someone else with a child to always find time to talk, perfectly, and calmly after three sleepless nights in a row? No. Would I commend a friend who said that all of their old tools to communicate are not working so they need help from a knowledgeable third party to help find new ones; especially given that this is a new situation? Yes.

Having a baby changed everything.

After acknowledging that, it feels unreasonable to expect people to not ask for help.

But when it’s me, the bar is incredibly high. I should be able to keep a perfect house, follow all of my hobbies, cultivate and keep friendships, maintain a job and a hobby and more, all while attending perfectly to my child’s needs. Not too much, not too little. Just right. And did I mention, perfect?

I’m tired just writing that out.

We’re Trying

The moment we both agreed it was time to start the arduous process of selecting an in-insurance-network couple’s therapist was a turning point for both of us individually and us as a couple as I’d never seen before.

Resentment replaced with relief. Stonewalling replaced with a new resolution to stay and try harder. Defensiveness replaced with patience, contempt with extra empathy.

The amount of fights we had had that included the words “that’s rude! Be nicer!” shouted loudly or were wholly dripping in sarcasm. It turns out that instead of yelling about it, resolving to try better tomorrow works as a way to humanize your partner once more. Who knew? I swear I did at one point.

I went to the internet and found all the horror stories. The doomed before you try ones. And instead of just sitting and stewing in them, I went to my partner and told him how afraid I was that we would become part of the 10–30% statistic. I expected dismissal. An “I’m busy” or “can we talk about this later[never]?” Instead, I got a hug and a reminder that we are not just anyone.

We are the same people who fought through suicidality, post-traumatic flashbacks, panic disorder, emetophobia, and post-partum anxiety together and ended up victorious on the other side. We did it before, and as long as both of us were ready to keep fighting (which also was the opposite for those couples I read about on Reddit), we could do it again. I wish we didn’t have to, I wish it was all as simple as just recognizing the problem.

What I’ve Learned

I wish it didn’t mean we would have to learn new coping skills, dig deep into ourselves or rethink how we currently talk to each other. But you can’t recognize that you don’t like where you are, want things to change, and do nothing. There’s no skipping the work you need to do to get to a new place if your current circumstances aren’t working for you anymore.

I could not keep pretending the problem didn’t exist. I could not continue to make myself busy instead of dealing with it. I could not drown myself in work instead of thinking about it…unless I wanted my worst fear — having to let go of someone who used to make my life have a purpose — because I gave up on us right as it could have gotten better.

Where We’re Going

I’ve been working hard to let go of the expectation that either of us can raise our son perfectly. When he was born, I scoured through books, articles, and research with the intent to “fix” everything wrong with my parenting. My default was to assume I needed to fix it. The same way my default before we got married was to assume I’d mess that up too.

I didn’t start with a good example for parenting or coupling, and I wasn’t sure I had anywhere to turn to for that information.

I’ve learned that I absolutely was not alone in these fears and feelings, but they are also very much in line with thousands of first-time moms and even mothers with more than one kid.

Neither of us is going to be perfect. But life is made worthwhile by two struggles:

1. Trying every day to be a better version of yourself than you were yesterday

2. Being kind to yourself in order to encourage yourself to keep trying.

It’s not about approaching parenting or marriage from the perspective that you’re already doing everything wrong. It’s about trusting that your intent to make reparations once you fall short will always supersede your pride. And it’s about showing your kid that shouting, anger, mistrust, and being the worst version of yourself, is still worthy of someone else’s love because you’re both doing your best to be better.

Pregnancy was a beast for me. I started with awful nausea that prevented me from eating for 2 months. I went into early labor 32 weeks in, and the remaining 8 weeks were spent overtired, afraid, and trying to meditate as much as possible while I experienced contractions almost every night. And as I went through all of that, I got on edge anytime I’d hear the words, “Oh, you’re just a first-time mom?”

Lovingly, the forums I joined used the acronym FTM or FTP (first-time parent), which I eventually also came to loathe.

So now, being called a FTM, while absolutely factual, is also anxiety-inducing. I know I’ve never had a baby before. But I’ve also felt unheard, had my worries reduced to ‘just’ anxiety, and had to argue that my needs were valid — all of which get worse if people think your worry is only due to inexperience.

So, Instead of Supported, You Feel Dismissed.

My anxiety often earns me the “overthinker” label from others, but personally, the hardest aspect of it is being unable to trust my intuition. This manifests itself in my assuming I do everything wrong or, at the very least, wouldn’t know what the right thing to do is. This only gets worse when a nurse walks into the triage room I’m in, declaring, “So this must be your first pregnancy?” before asking me anything else about the situation that caused my hospital-phobic self to enter a hospital.

She’s already assumed I just don’t know what contractions feel like, that these are Braxton Hicks, instead of the fact that I have been dilatating and having contractions for the past two months every night.

I always assumed I mistrusted my judgment. I shamed myself for being too weak and overworried to not just brush something off. I really wish that also didn’t come from doctors, nurses, and even other previously pregnant people around me.

Did I Mention Anxiety?

Once you conceive, you’re anxious about being able to carry to full term as you learn that miscarriages are more common than not. Then, as nausea set in, I was worried I wasn’t eating enough to keep the baby, but once the nausea was gone, I was worried I had lost the baby.

Then, you learn about all the things that can happen during labor. All the judgments people will assume if you decide you don’t/do want an epidural if you don’t/do want to deliver in a hospital, if you mention that you are/aren’t comfortable with the idea of having a C-section… there is no winning. There are only carefully made personal choices that often result in needing to be flexible anyway.

Having to make those tough choices while someone thinks your opinion doesn’t matter because you don’t know enough anyway does not make them easier.

It Is OK to Not Know

For me, this swelled over the course of my immediate postpartum period, culminating with our pediatrician gently asking me, after I burst into tears in her office, if I ever heard about postpartum anxiety. Oh boy, did I?! But as part of being a first-time mom as well as a mental health advocate, I was too proud to admit it because of whatever else that might mean about me when I talked to people about my experience.

Because admitting I didn’t know or that I had a mental health problem meant someone could take another choice away from me. Because it would imply something about me to them.

So, Here’s My Reminder To You

You may be doing this for the first time, but you DO know some things. You know a whole lot about the body you’ve lived in.

You know what your body feels like outside of pregnancy. You know when things you're experiencing are not adding up to what you’re reading others to have experienced. And yes, you definitely know if the baby inside of you seems to be moving less compared to when they were planning soccer with your organs 24/7 since 12 weeks of gestation. But for most of this, you can’t be certain about any of those things until they are in hindsight.

But it’s so easy to believe the folks who tell you (you know they have experience) that something’s in your head.

Until your baby comes out and kicks you in a very familiar way on the outside, as you felt around 12–14 weeks. Or you go into labor with Pitocin, and it feels exactly the same as it had for the past two months, almost every night. I am now ever more convinced that my water broke, but kiddo’s head was in the way because once my water was broken by my GYN, it felt exactly like it did the day I went in worried it broke early after a particularly bad night of contractions. I was freakin right.

Society tends to dismiss women’s health issues.

Which, if you’ve had a decent amount of them growing up, forces you into a weird game of “Did I make this up, or do I need to go to a doctor who might tell me I made this up until I provide enough evidence otherwise?” Which who even knows what that evidence would be?

I was diagnosed with endometriosis when we thought only 1–3% of women worldwide experienced it. I needed to trust my gut to keep searching for a doctor who would believe me for long enough to want to try to help.

Now, I am ever more convinced that I did know what was going on, while others just didn’t have the capacity to validate me.

I was right to be worried, and telling me I wasn’t only made me more so. But whenever a doctor took the time to sit with me, give me space, and validate my fears and exhaustion, whatever I was dealing with usually felt a whole lot more manageable—better for them and me when treating me.

Now that my child is on the outside, I’ve followed the same intuition to rush him to doctor’s visits he may or may not need. To know when he needs to fuss it out in bed to help him learn to fall asleep vs when attending to his crying because he truly needs something.

I have been wrong in both kinds of scenarios because what do I know? I’m a first-time mom. I am happy to be wrong and self-validating rather than wrong and self-loathing for “doing it wrong.” Because, at the end of the day, I have to live with the consequences of being wrong. So safe over sorry sounds like a point towards self-validation to me.

In this article, I refer to being a mom and a parent interchangeably to try to remain inclusive. I understand that not all birthing parents are moms, but since I am, that is what I can relate to and explain the best. You are valid, and your experience is valid as you know it to be.

You post about the vacation you took but will probably skip posting the failed meal (unless it’s to roast the dinner prep box company that sold you on the idea that you could cook, as long as all your ingredients were pre-portioned). You post after getting a fresh dye and cut but will probably skip your morning #wokeuplikethis look.

You may have seen headlines or even dug into some research around how social media is just “a highlight reel.” And truly, there are a lot of serious reasons that someone should be skeptical of what they see: deepfakes, visual filters, some influencers aren’t the best at disclosing when they’re paid to endorse something.

But sometimes the reason I only share the good stuff is a lot more benign. And some of it is middle-of-the-range-benign with little ways to control it.

A Few Reasons Why I’ve Felt I Had to Stick to Positive Posts:

• I feel like too many people I know are having a hard time

• I feel like I’ve overshared my bad times “too many times”

• I might just be tired, man. Be overworked, have other stuff going on.

• I see something else unfold and don’t feel like it’s my time to speak. Period.

• Look, not all of me is everyone’s business

• I feel like it’s not something people expect to hear from me about

• I forgot and just lived my life instead

• I’m tired and when I post something I know it opens me up to people’s opinions (which of course they’re entitled to) on things going on with me. If I don’t want to hear opinions, I just don’t share.

• I actually posted but it wasn’t picked up by the algo

• Did I mention I’m tired?

And while it may sound like I’m explaining my reasons to complain, after all, who cares about some micro-mental-health-advocate? It’s really more just me here saying, Unless you LIVE online, as a poster or a viewer, you’re never going to get the full picture.

That doesn’t mean I don’t post real stuff. But if you’re looking for second to second now you’re ok, now you’re not, I’m not sure who you expect to find. Even the most dedicated influencer can’t do that for long. Right?

The Comparison Game

It’s normal, even necessary for us to compare ourselves to our peers so that we continuously push ourselves to do better as a society. And while you’re probably not posting specifically to encourage envy and competition, that’s what socials end up doing in a micro-chasm. And the hours we end up spending on platforms to fill time gaps between activities (or to distract from less engaging ones), certainly don’t help.

All of me doesn’t want all of you

As someone whose entire online presence is based around talking about what mentally hard days look like and how it’s ok to be kinder to yourself, I’ve put myself on display quite a few times during my bad days.

So, weirdly, I’ve also gotten nervous about sharing my good times.

There’s some guilt peppered in there. There’s definitely a response to the odd comment I may have gotten while finally celebrating my one good day to the effect of “Good for you, but I’m still struggling!”

Some folks will definitely reply with encouragement and celebration, seeing a post about a good day from a mental health advocate as maybe even aspirational (it is possible to feel better!). To others, it can feel like I’m rubbing in your face that I’m having an ok time while you’re not.

Since my posts normally are meant to encourage folks during difficult days, the algorithm probably has gotten used to reaching folks it thinks are struggling. Now, when I celebrate, depending on what mindset you’re in, it can feel like a weird “punching down.”

So what I did for a while was mold into that need. Which, unsurprisingly, made me feel not great. It made posting harder and harder whether I was sharing researched facts or something about myself. The algo didn’t know what to do with my multiple human dimensions, so I felt like I had to hide, or avoid parts of me, certain moods, certain feelings to stay consistent. So, instead I just shut down and stopped posting which felt awful too.

I don’t think social media is an intentional highlight reel. At least not by everyone who posts.

Those reasons above are just from one person. Imagine all of the reasons every person who’s ever written on social media has. Doesn’t matter if they’re an influencer or just a family member on Facebook.

Now, also imagine all of these reasons, but someone is committed to their community, brand, and fans enough to keep regularly posting. That’s all the more impressive! Please be sure to cheer them on.

But for everyone else, for everything they post, there are 15 things they omitted.

Every area someone excels in is equal to 3 areas they’re not amazing in. That’s science (I don’t actually think it is, but it is in my head).

For every post I make about how proud I am that I have a wishlist for every one of my friends so that I can give them what I hope is the perfect gift during the holidays/birthdays, there’s me being late to important meetings with clients because I was making a list instead of watching my notifications.

For every instagram-perfect pantry, there’s a shoe closet that’s a mess. Or a pile of clean clothes that have been waiting a week to be put away.

Unless you’re posting every single thought, every single moment, you will never get all of it.

And who even would want that? I feel overloaded reading everything I do already.

You know how when someone is afraid to speak publicly we tell them to imagine the audience is naked? When someone posts something perfect, before you feel bad, imagine all the things that aren’t perfect in their life.

Imagine their messy drawers. Imagine they left their flat iron plugged in and singed their countertop. Imagine their mornings as they try to get themselves out the door but then spill coffee on their pants.

They just changed their pants before their mirror selfie. Or they took the pic with the stain for relatability. Either way…

People are people. Keep online life expectations in line with your reality. Or, look up.

Once again, a well-meaning member of my family sent me a link with something to check out. “Have you seen this? It seems right up your alley?” And while I always reply respectfully with a “Thank you, I’ll take a look,” if it’s about some easy solution to mental health issues, internally I’m usually getting pretty heated.

It’s often a video where someone explains how being more positive can “cure” (yes cure is a keyword in this case) depression and anxiety, or one proclaiming that really Soy, Dairy, over-the-counter Tylenol, Gluten is the main problem. The solution is always so simple. Don’t you want to “live without Depression”?

And if you ever imply that this might not be possible for you, that maintaining my life with Depression is key, I always get some kind of answer implying that the Helper understands I actually just don’t want to help myself. I must just like the attention and the self-pity the condition comes with.

Considering a lot of the “attention” I receive, is encounters like the above, I would like to officially clarify: No, I do not.

Having Depression Doesn’t Mean I Like More Attention

No, I don’t like it that friends imply that my life goal should be to remove all unhappy, uncomfortable to them feelings. And for so long, I internalized that myself. I really did think I was just broken for not being able to do so. But if you really want to know what my ‘cure’ has been, lean in close, I’ll tell you right now.

It’s accepting that some days, I’ll get up and be unable to accomplish the smallest tasks. I will have to talk myself through every single thing that just the day before came easily: brushing my hair, going outside to walk my dog, feeding myself intentionally. Every one of those tasks might feel like carrying a lead ball and take a lot of internal battling to do. Battles no one will ever see.

Scientists agree that Depression in many folks can’t be cured. It’s not the same as having a bad day, or month, or dealing with grief or other temporary conditions.

I tried cutting out foods. I tried so hard to get good at exercising that I went and got my yoga teacher certification in 2019. But does every person who sends me an article know that? Absolutely not.

Do they mean well? Likely! Sometimes, I can see through their implication when what they actually mean to say is “Hey, when you canceled plans on me last week that really hurt. Maybe if you cut soy, you’ll be less likely to do that?”

Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe I will cut all cheese (and remaining joy) in my life and never cancel a plan again. But more than likely, all the soy, dairy, gluten, medication, therapy, exercise in the world won’t permanently solve that issue for me.

Because Depression is not caused by any one single thing. And Can’t Leave After Doing One Single Thing

And I will need to own my mistakes, my cancellations, my anhedonia-induced shortness of temper, apologize for all of them and do my best to not have you be the crosshairs of them again. It sucks. I’m sorry I’ve had to do that. Sometimes I avoid making plans altogether, knowing I might hurt someone by having to take care of myself, because they won’t know what’s going on with me. But will feel hurt I left them, changing plans last minute. It’s not fair to them.

Funny thing about Depression is that it will also use these exact mess ups and mistakes to keep me depressed, hating myself, watching Disney movies on repeat instead of enjoying my life. So, the link just ends up adding to the cycle of “why can’t I just—“thoughts. And you sink deeper and deeper. Until both myself and the Helper are frustrated enough to give up.

It’s Not Wrong to Wish Someone Be More Positive, but…

One of my favorite things to watch unfold is when someone on socials declares that everyone who’s depressed needs to just get up and exercise, leave the house, touch grass. As though Agoraphobia (fear of leaving your home) doesn’t exist, or that Depression does not literally try to preserve its state by messing with your mind to ensure you don’t ever want to get up or leave the house. Or that people with physically inhibitive disabilities might be Depressed only due to their lack of movement.

Being Positive Vs Being Depressed: It’s Not That Simple

On their own, all of these can be amazing individual solutions. One of which might hit the spot and be the thing that finally gets you up and away from Depression. But the accounts I’ve seen are not dedicated to encouraging people to meet themselves where they are, try something new everyday to see what tool they can add to their ‘Living with Mental Illness’ toolbox. They always peddle their ONE truth. The one solution of try harder-ness. And it’s not working yet, it’s definitely the trying that’s the issue. Not that one solution to mental ails cannot possibly fit all.

What if we did this for other things?

Knees hurt? Well, you must need knee replacement surgery. NO OTHER OPTION!

Diabetes? Let’s put you on high amounts of insulin and not adjust them at all for your liver and pancreas.

Need glasses? Only the strongest script will do! If that gives you a headache, teach your eyes to see harder.

I write this and laugh, because, actually I’ve heard from folks with all the above issues that they often encounter the “one truth peddlers” both in their day-to-day life and online.

Point is.

There is no simple solution to life’s (and our body’s and mind’s) woes.

There is no one truth. There is only learning about yourself and seeing what will help you.

Of course, being sedentary, eating “sometimes foods” all the time or not keeping your space tidy and organized can hurt your chances of feeling better. But on the other side, could someone who does all those things correctly still have health issues? ALSO, YES.

It’s the message that’s the issue. That you are just not trying hard enough. That you must not want to feel better if you haven’t tried these simple lifestyle changes. That your laziness is directly responsible for your continuing to feel bad. And, that frankly, you should be able to not feel bad in the first place.

Sometimes, people do need a bit of a push in the right for them direction.

But to argue that if your solution does not work for the person you’re trying to help, means they’re the problem… I mean that’s the problem.

It's not always about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.

Often, it comes from people whose empathizing with your experience ends at how they once felt terribly, they grieved or they were in a rut because they were out of a job and then they just did [insert simple method] and were able to move on with their lives.

Or maybe they did go through the worst imaginable aspects of humanity because they were able to believe, not think about it and pull through.

Presuming that others are simply clones of you: “If I did it, so can you.” And when it comes to both doctors and pseudo-psychologists, the thesis is usually “if you follow my method, you’re guaranteed to feel better (while hopefully making me specifically tons of money).”

Truly, if something works For You That’s Awesome for you! I’m rooting for you!

But your being upset that someone else doesn’t want to apply your method to just “be better” doesn’t imply laziness from them. It implies a push for control and power from you.

There are still a large number of people who have chemical imbalances, have lived through repeated trauma, who have genetic issues, or severe brain trauma that can’t just do whatever it was that helped you.

It seems everyone in this world is bent on curing me of my Depression, Anxiety, ADHD, you name it. And while I’m hoping it’s not because they feel it’s a nuisance to them, I am absolutely positive that they assume I’ve never thought about the things these videos suggest. Which triggers all kinds of past hurt of feeling not as smart as my peers, etc.

Perhaps it’s no big shock that I have a chip on my shoulder about folks who focus on alternative only methods for treatment of medical conditions. Considering when I recount my experience with alternative solutions, and frankly a lot of traditional medical solutions, the Helper always boils it down to “Well, you’re just not trying hard enough at the solution I offered you.”

Whether that was cutting out sugars, soy, salts, lactose, gluten, whatever it was in a world where 90% of commercial good products included all of those, or being told that I just wasn’t doing enough to motivate myself. After 5 or so years of hating myself because I couldn’t do enough or wasn’t good enough at following instructions, I finally got fed up. Maybe the solutions weren’t right for me. And pressing myself to keep trying them only made me feel shittier overall.

While, sure, a bigger effort can always be made on the end of the person who is seeking help, some things a Helper can do instead are:

1. Listen with intent to listen more

2. Assume positive intent and maximum effort. Let someone disprove this to you. Don’t assume the worst. Assume the best and then go from there

3. When offering solutions, give context: “It was a bummer I didn’t get to see you last week. I know nothing is simple, but I tried this when I was low and it helped (with link).
   This starts with validation and also explains your reason. It still might not be welcome, but it no longer implies the other person just isn’t trying hard enough. It does require us to be vulnerable in our feelings and reasons. Which is mega hard.

We need hope. We need to know we might feel better. But we also need to be invested in a narrative closer to ‘remember, socially perceived failure is not failure.’ As a society, we need to learn to both embrace multifaceted solutions as well as multifaceted people. It’s ok to mess up in the eyes of what others think was your best solution. When you send me that link, let me know it may not be the best for me. That you know, I’m trying my best, and this might be something in line with things I’ve already tried.

Let me know that how I feel is not an inconvenience to you.

That you’re trying to compliment all that I already do and all the other things I am.

Not change me.

How do you respectfully let folks know to stop assuming you need to be saved? Let me know in the comments!

While reading Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, a beautiful book about the journey to understanding our emotions, I unlocked a memory, I, nor (I’m pretty sure) Brene didn’t mean for me to unlock.

Brene talks about how she’s been studying emotions for over 20 years and where it all started. How she learned that she had superpowers as a kid growing up in a turbulent home—she could tell the future. For me, I can recall how I felt growing up in a turbulent home—all I desperately wanted was to predict the future. But also more importantly for me, answer the question Why do people (including me even if I didn’t mean it) hurt other people? That’s how, I too,

…became obsessed with psychology.

And I mean all of psychology—from the pseudoscience of phrenology to existentialism, to dream interpretations from Freud—all of it. When I should have been reading Beowulf, I was laser focused on Jean Paul Satre. Of course, I was also geeking out over Lord of the Rings, Disney movies and reading Rolling Stone magazine religiously, and other normal early ‘oughts stuff—but all my interests were through the lens of understanding how people felt. Why each character of my favorite fiction made the choices they made. Why politicians lied. Why Samwise wasn’t the one meant to carry the ring.

Obsessed with Why and What Reason

My stepmom was the source of most of the instability in our home. If I had a sibling argument with my half-sister (normal stuff, who gets more computer time to watch Rihanna’s music videos online), I could have been sent back to stay with my older sister. If I tried to weasel out of a chore, I was liable to be banned from seeing the family for at least two weeks. Once I had a knife thrown at me because I asked my younger sister not to open mail with my name on it.

By sixteen, I was desperate to understand, no, to predict what might cause a minor “hey, that’s a silly thing to do!” versus a full-blown fight.

If I could predict it, I could prevent it from happening by being perfect.

If I couldn’t predict it, and I got into trouble, I’d always feel shame. I felt it was my job to solve every emotional mystery. To have known better and been one step ahead. And anyone in my family being upset meant I failed at it.

I also wanted to know why I couldn’t stop myself from being curt with my dad, who always took my stepmom’s side—even on days when he was nice to me. Why did I get a sense of dread when he was kind, that made my stomach hurt and my hands shake? Why was I always expecting the other shoe drop?

And all the chamomile tea in the world, which I became obsessed with drinking as it was the only acceptable medication in our home, didn’t seem to help? The information I heard over and over again from family was that: “No one truly needed medication, it was all a matter of will.” In which case, I again, was failing.

Why couldn’t I predict the future when it was clearly so patterned?

And yet, the rules were ever changing. As soon as I thought I had figured the rules of conduct out there would be an exemption per person. Or per things I couldn’t control (how the day at work went, interactions with other family etc).

A Careful Student of Psychology

As I started writing this, I also recall how I had seen psychologists since I was twelve. My mother brought me to one when I told her I was seeing a black cat around our house. Later, I was referred to one for being ‘troubled’, and talking back to a teacher. In both cases, my mother was told nothing was wrong, but to consider that I was a “sensitive” kid. Sensitive being code for “Depressed” in 2002 Russia.

As a teen I took every psychology, child rearing and emotional wellbeing class my high school offered. I religiously tried to see the school counselor once a week after being referred to her by another teacher who was concerned about my eating disorder.

When I was done with high school, I did the same thing in college. First even while I was attending The Fashion Institute of Technology, later when I transferred to a liberal arts state college. I took classes that made sense at the time as I was convinced I would be getting a teaching degree, but were really there to answer the question: Was I really the bad kid, and how could I make it easier for others to tolerate me since I was sure the answer to the first question was “Yes.”

It took me decades of therapy and self work before I realized the problem was that no one was talking about their expectations, how they felt, taking ownership of their mistakes. Even the basics like no lying, no taking what’s not yours, no hurting someone, were not discussed. But then if someone stepped on a landmine of pent up unmet expectations, of course it would explode.

No adult set rules because it was uncomfortable to deal with a child that might not like them. Let alone deal with another disagreeing adult. And I asked Why, a lot. Upsetting everyone who was not comfortable second guessing themselves. So instead of setting clear, yet sometimes uncomfortable expectations upfront, they’d blow up when an unspoken rule was broken because of pent up frustration. And around we went. The result was a ever full minefield of should haves.

The irony of skipping an uncomfortable conversation about expectations upfront saving everyone from an even more uncomfortable explosion of feelings later was lost on us all.

So no matter what I did, there would be no understanding the rules. There was no textbook that explained my home, or any other traumatic home to anyone.

But that doesn’t stop us from trying.

It Still Took Years to See Something Was Wrong

I’m sorry to report that all of this was still not enough for me to see the signs of suicidality in myself when I was eighteen, twenty three or twenty six. It was, however, just enough to raise flags during my first psychiatry appointment at nineteen, that maybe the diagnosis I was given didn’t make much sense. Because “not having enough sex (true story)” is not really in the DSM.

While I loved my professors and feel my history degree actually paid off very well for the work I do now, I do wish I was not talked out of studying psychology (or journalism for that matter) by my parents.

It gave me the foundation to know that, in 2010 when I had my first flashback, I was no longer in the territory of “just a troubled” kid, but rather maybe possibly a depressed one, and at the very least I should be open to try talking to someone at my college’s counseling center.

Which ended up saving my life. In 2009, it also helped me see past another “just troubled” kid, who felt alone because while he was otherwise fine, he had to live with the shame of leaving college to go home before his second semester due to debilitating panic attacks. He’s the one who pushed me to walk into the counseling center in 2010.

I don’t believe that you need to be obsessed with psychology to make sense of your trauma, or, in my case, be worrying about preventing it. But I do know that this foundation set me up to know when something was more off than just being “troubled,” “the blues,” or “being a hormonal teenager.” My interest in psychology started as a way to try to preserve myself, and in a way that’s exactly what it did.

It set a foundation, that after about eight years of therapy, not only was I ready to share my story, but I knew where to go looking for info. As I started Mxiety on a whim after feeling all other hope was lost, I had a foundation of research to bank from to help others learn what tools might help make their minds make more sense to them.

Brene describes not understanding your emotions to be akin to being gagged and tied up right as you go to the doctor to get relief from pain, as you are unable to describe the pain to them.

My attempt to be the perfect student of psychology and predict the future is what gave me enough armor to save myself and have one.

Am I sure, I have ADHD? How I remembered I was neurodivergent and learned to love myself as I am.

The days are long

Alright, if I could just breathe and take a moment, I’m sure I can finish—when I went over to my computer what I was starting to do? Oh, that’s right! –wow there’s a sale on those? We’re running out better grab them…--OH SH** that email. …thanks so much for your message, please find attached my bio and headshot. To answer your question—OH SH** I forgot the meeting! (joins Zoom) I’M SO SORRY!

Honestly, this has been my mind works and my day has gone for years. Eons. Ages. For as long as I can recall what (takes long pause, remembers that she was writing this and was trying to find a word) “finding focus” has meant to me as an adult who went to college, graduated with honors and got a job right out the gate. I overachieved because not only did I have to compensate for the way I am. But I had to go higher, faster, better.

This wasn’t a perfectionism problem. This was a -I cannot function unless I overcompensate problem- …or so I thought.

Of course, I found a career entirely dedicated to organizing myself and others. I’d become amazing and quite efficient at it. And when I didn’t do so well? Well, that’s when I could utilize my old friend self-loathing again. If I was born with ADHD, and born into a world that didn’t accommodate that, then I was born to be a Project Manager. And honestly, as dark as that origin story of my career is, I’m quite proud of the PM I am.

But now it was all breaking down. Caffeine isn’t it for my anxious mind. Mindfulness is important but doesn’t quite cut it. It’s time that I took my need for medication to function seriously. Again. Last time I took medication was right after I was diagnosed at 28, a little before I got pregnant. And I didn’t have a chance to get far with it before I had to come off so as not to hurt an incoming baby in my belly with the stuff my mind needs to function.

What a choice.

Pregnancy and ADHD are Rough Together

When I got pregnant the brain fog settled in quite quick. And it never left. And the weight of that, plus making a person and feeding him made everything buckle. That’s it. No more just maybe figuring it out when it comes to living with myself. I can’t. And it’s ok BECAUSE I know I’m neurodivergent. I have ADHD. I honestly, truly, pretended so good that I don’t in front of others that I forgot for a moment. Or 2 Years.

Or I just wanted to forget so that it would be easier. But it made is so, so, so much harder.

My ability to do anything. To accomplish anything right out the gate is just awful. Which means I have to work harder than most people I grew up around to do things that seemed seamless for them to do. And if I was ever tired of working on bettering myself to get to the level everyone else was at? Well, I just needed a reminder of how lazy I was for feeling that way and eventually I’d get back to kicking it up a notch again.

Trying to Push Through, With Lots of I SHOULD be able to do this

But I was fine, right? In college, I was assigned note taker for someone in class with a learning disability. I got everything in on time. In high school, I did a bunch of after and before school extra work in math to try to keep up. But that’s normal, right? Everyone’s bad at math!

The Self-Loathing, Wanting to be Normal

All while hating myself. All while hating that I couldn’t “just do it.” IT in this case including: slow down, go faster with less mistakes, slowly re-read while still making mistakes, sit down and accomplish the thing I wanted to do first even second try, be able to read at times when I wasn’t physically exhausted so I could slow down enough to pay attention to a book, work without headphones playing--the list goes on.

Next time you assume everyone just wants a diagnosis for an Easy way out…

I’ve heard every metaphor about being neurodivergent, but the one that really gets me is that having ADHD is like having a quadcore computer processor that WON’T run unless all sections are running a task. A computer functions better if in a quad processor has 2-3 quads full of tasks. 4 out 4 will still run, but it will definitely slow it down.

My processing system needs all 4 to be full up (with at 2 at LEAST having a faint humming noise) to accomplish the basic things I need to do.

And when I tell you I HATE that about myself, I mean it. But I also feel sad. Girly, I think, no one should hate any part of themselves. I say that to others all the time. And, I add, if you notice self-loathing, that’s information telling you it’s time for a change.

So here we go. It’s a change.

Self Compassion, We’re Back!

No more, on again, off again taking things. The same way my suicidality in 2017 made me get on and commit to anti-depressants. The same way it’s time to confront my need for medication in 2024 to manage my ADHD.

Being late diagnosed (28) means a lot of things. But more than anything, it’s being later at catching up with why I should have been kinder about my inabilities to do the things listed above and more.

I started the journey of accepting how I feel about needing medication late.

I started working with myself late.

Since learning I was diagnosed I’ve learned to work with myself in so many ways:

• I don’t expect my writing to be linear. I follow my instinct and then proofread and reorganize to ensure things are legible.

• I don’t expect to remember things and don’t get mad at myself for it. I do my best to write things down and then let go of things I forget if I don’t.

• I let myself follow the distraction instead of force myself into a task that doesn’t feel right in the moment. Yes, sometimes this ends up sucky. But I’ll take the sucky over self-loathing any day.

• When I sit down to do things with my kid, I take out a few activities I can do next to him/with him when he wants to play. This way I don’t scroll my phone when I get bored and can stay engaged and excited as he discovers and plays within his ability.

• I remind my husband that I don’t mean it if I zone out when he’s talking. While he makes sure that I confirm he has my attention before he starts sharing something important.

The list goes on and on. And writing it out… damn that’s a lot of amazing growth. High Five me!

To The Future Full of Grace and More Self Kindness

In the same way, taking medication doesn’t mean that I’m weak or not smart enough to figure out how to focus and slow down on my own.

It means that I will be trying to see if medication can help me not feel like writing an email is an Olympic- level competition with myself. It means I’m smart enough to want to work efficiently instead of in constant self-hatred and overdrive.

It means I can give my kid the attention he deserves as he discovers his own mind and the world around him.

I want ALL of me to be around for ALL of him.

And I want you to know, someone else is having a tough go with it too. I’m an advocate and I should have known better. I could have gotten here sooner. But this is how long it took, and if I’m challenging myself to meet myself where I am, and not where I hope to be… I’ll have to learn that’s ok.

If you like my writing and would like to see these posts a week before everyone else, consider supporting my work at https://ko-fi.com/mxiety.

Do you hate parenting influencers?

Ugh, I’m so done being told that I am doing everything wrong. That I’ve already messed up my kid! These influencers are just praying on parents who are already stressed and giving them a problem to need to solve in order to keep growing!—I’ve thought it too. My anger of choice was directed towards “sleep coaches.”

This kid is just not going to sleep, I haven’t slept for more than 3 hours in 3 days, and I will rock him to sleep if I want to even if you imply that my kid will go to college needing to be rocked if I keep that up! That will show you!

Spoiler he didn’t. He already doesn’t. And the coaches don’t even know I exist. I wouldn’t even comment under their posts. I would just read them angerly.

But what changed isn’t that all the influencers were wrong (idk they could be!) but rather that I learned how to come to terms with my anxiety. The influencers are just there doing their thing. While I would have kept being stressed about them even just existing, if I didn’t come to terms with what was going on with me.

Anti-however I grew up

I grew up with super mega stressy depressy trauma with a capitol T that therapists and other doctors came to diagnose as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

So, I became obsessed with making sure that every interaction with my child was perfect. Not in any way traumatizing or hurtful and just in general, by the book. Who’s book? Well, it depends. I had books and PDFs friends shared to get him to sleep perfectly. I had books, Instagram posts and facebook groups to tell me how to feed him perfectly.

But as you may have guessed, he didn’t read the books (posts, comments, groups), I did. So, he had no idea that he was doing X to get Y. But the assumption was that I would know, so I could regulate myself and help him figure it out. Ok.

If all went according to plan, he would have a perfect childhood and grow up perfectly whole, untraumatized and unscathed. While mom was an anxious wreck and assumed she already did everything to F**ck up and oh jeez, did he just go away for college and tell me he didn’t want to visit this weekend? I KNEW IT. I still f**ked up and he will never want to see me! Well, of course I did!

The parenting blogs and posts are there not because they need to fear monger, but because many, like me, have been socially programmed to assume we’re the problem.

It started when ads sold us on the idea that bad breath was the reason no one wanted to date you (but wait, there’s a cure! Listernine!). And today, we’re so used to blaming ads for selling us on a problem and giving us a cure for said problem, that we assumed this trend stayed true.

But most of the parenting blogs and posters were parents just like us. Some so over-occupied with parenting perfectly that they got degrees to answer their questions (sorry PhD friends, but I know you’re not arguing and know I was also in that boat). They’re not “selling us on problems.” The “problems” are there, regardless of a “solution” even existing.

Because you can’t “solve” parenting.

You, a human, are raising another human. You’re both flawed, and the first year of their life, you have to decode what they want and need. So essentially, parenting influencers are just folks who think they have the key to the Morse code of raising a kid.

And some of them have a code that works for you, and others still feel like they’re definitely missing key decryption info. But at the end of the day Morse code is just that, Morse code. And there’s a lot more detail to language that is way too hard to get out is dots and dashes, quickly and flawlessly. The dots and dashes (how your kid communicates their needs to you) might be universal, but how you interpret the words that those dots and dashes put together is never going to be straightforward.

Add to that an assumption that you must be always screwing up, and you have a recipe for nuclear weapons going off when they shouldn’t have.

Are you done with the Morse metaphor? Oh yeah!

Parenthood is hard.

And so often I’d hear: “but it’s amazing, all this information is out there!”

To which I would reply: “Yep. And so are everyone’s opinions. Who do I trust?”

I started parenting already deep in the hole of “I can’t even be pregnant right.” And once I came home with the baby, it didn’t matter that I already did “correctly” what I was most worried I would not be able to do correctly, breastfeeding. But already I moved the goal post. Hurry! There’s still so much to potentially mess up!

[In case it’s not clear. There is no perfect or correct. It’s only what I thought I HAD to do to not break this fragile little person. Nothing is or will be perfect or correct other than taking care of your baby. That means feeding them however you can and they will, eat. Formula, boob, some other thing or whatever else]

And Mess Up I did.

How Did I Mess Up?

Food

I went back and forth about whether my kid had a dairy protein allergy [not the same as lactose intolerance which is an allergy to sugar in milk, not the proteins that make it up].

The fear? That my breastmilk was actually hurting my kid, no matter how often I was told it couldn’t be by my trusted doctor.

I recall a day where, during every newborn nap, instead of resting myself, I was re-reading the same six pages on baby food from the book Baby 411 [good book, link gives me a kickback]. I actually remember thinking Maybe it will say something new? Something I obviously had not thought of but of course the answer existed. It must.

Sleep problems

I tried to be chill about sleep until he was about 4 months old, then I became so regimented, folks in the military might have taken notes from me. I’d yank him from whatever activity we were doing and start the wind down process, which was the same every time, for his nap.

When it was time to drop a nap I would be just as strict on adding those additional 15-30 mins until we changed. At just the smallest hint that he was getting too much sleep, I’d calculate and re-calculate the hours from day to night, using all the apps I had at my disposal. I had a week window schedule on my wall (with cited sources).

And as though having a baby that doesn’t sleep on account of being a baby isn’t enough, I was exhausted. The amount of brain power it took to count, recount (as the world ended if we were late of off schedule)

Yep, It’s Post Partum Anxiety (PPD)

I’m pretty sure it’s clear at this point, but I was not well. I had postpartum anxiety. I talked with my therapist the whole time. I was ready, I knew all about it being a thing and I still burst into tears when my pediatrician asked me the daring question “are you ok?” at one of our appointments. I was quite literal about exemplifying the expression “burst into tears” for her to reply.

I did it all out of love. But if I’m also completely honest, out of punishment for myself. Because of course, I didn’t deserve for a happy and healthy baby to exist. I assumed I deserved bad things. So, around every corner, I expected proof that that’s exactly what was going on.

Then I forgave myself. I don’t recall exactly the day, but I just boiled over. The pressure was too much, the sleeplessness was too much. I decided that I had read enough because everything I read started saying the same thing in more or less terms. And yet the chasm inside of my telling me that I messed up was still not full.

Maybe it wasn’t the info I was getting. Maybe it was me.

You Are Doing Enough, Mom

What if I couldn’t figure out this parenting thing and kept messing it up because it’s not figure-out-able? Because to figure it out is to figure out human-ness. And we’ve been trying to do that since we made cave drawings.

There will be no answers, only best guesses, and that was going to have to be enough.

Which meant I was doing enough.

I cared enough to read. I cared enough to try. I cared enough to worry.

So Much To Be Anxious About, Mama

I am raising the future. Don’t I have the pressure of all of humanity on my shoulders? And what a planet he is inheriting. How unfair of me to put him in this space but not make it perfect and unproblematic for him. School shootings, global warming, homelessness, cancer, viruses. This was not all figured out for him by ME before he came to be. How horrible am I to do this all to him?

Or am I just a person, who made a new person to keep trying at this human-ing thing? The way I was also made a person. Except I know I’m trying to give him more tools to handle it all. Resilience, vigilance, empathy.

That’s why it’s so hard. Parenting, adulting, overthinking, mental illness, ADHD—it’s so impossibly hard.

But oh, it’s so beautiful too. If I stress about the perfect sleep, I will miss that little smile as he falls asleep being held (but NOT every night haha). If I stress about not being mindful enough about missing it all because of how fast it all goes, I’ll still be stressed, yet, it will still go fast.

I’m meeting myself where I am.

Anxious, occupied, trying my best because sometimes when I look at my kid, my heart all but bursts from love.

And the influencers? They’re also trying. Ofcourse some are bad actors, but we will move on and ignore those so the algorithms can eat them away. If I don’t think of the rest as perfect beings that are better than me because they know all the answers, suddenly the info they give me isn’t all good, or fear mongering, it’s just info. I can take it in. Try it. Or not.

Sure sometimes they’re a bit more aggressive than others. DON’T DO THIS! IF YOU WANT ___ DO THIS INSTEAD! But I can filter that out as noise and see if there’s anything that resonates enough with my family and how it works to consider trying.

I am trying. My kid is trying. We’re both going to suck at it sometimes. At this point in his life, probably he’ll suck at it slightly more than me even. But, hopefully, I’ll stay humble enough to learn from him too.

You’re trying too, mom. And I promise, that has to be enough. Because it’s all you’ve got to give. 

This World Mental Health Day marks the 6 year anniversary of starting Mxiety as a blog with live streams dedicated to advocating for openness in mental health.

2020 was a HUGE watershed moment for mental health online, with information on the topic, influencers, start ups and everyone else finally coming around to openly discussing and making things around it. The 3 years of work I did before COVID are dramatically different from the 3 years I’ve done since (and not just because I learned to take burnout-forced breaks).

Inevitably, this means nostalgia, introspection, and thoughts about the future have made home in my mind for the time being.

Here they are laid out to make sense from:

There is just a lot more content and it’s a lot more matter of fact. That doesn’t mean The stigma is gone.

There’s a huge difference between volume of info vs public acceptance

Mental health is still a scapegoat when it comes to talking about gun violence, trans rights, and violence and video games. Meaning that mental health gets blamed for all of those issues being as hot as they are right now, but with little actual reason to (but those stats need their own post).

In great news, lots of folks, especially on socials are talking openly about mental health. As a new mom, I’m seeing a lot of folks being open about the reality of not just PPA/PPD but how tough being a parent, being a default parent, being a working parent etc. As a streamer, there’s a lot more conversations that are being had about content creator mental health.

Countries are dedicating more funding to expanding mental healthcare. Venture capitol is being directed for new companies in the space. It feels like everyone is paying more attention.

But that doesn’t mean that rude comments about people’s mental health are not rampant online.

For one tiny example, there’s a huge surge in how many people are being diagnosed with ADHD, Autism. Which means now lots of people have opinions about whether it’s all made up “for attention” which is honestly straight out of the mental health ableism 101 rule book.

Similarly, anytime you see someone make fun of people using pronouns in their bios, or representation in a movie, you’re witnessing re-traumatizing of folks who need those things to be seen and be validated. Those people are being silenced. Which brings me to my next point…

People have finally connected that true mental health Awareness means caring and seeing folks as they are with all the public/Social issues Connected to that

• Housing

• Transphobia

• Racism

• Homophobia

• Lack of representation

• Being overworked

• Pay inequity

• Climate anxiety

When we ignore those issues, or leave them unresolved, we create new mental health concerns for folks on the receiving end. The person who’s experiencing microaggressions at work is way more likely to experience burnout and depression. The person who doesn’t have access to insurance to access a therapist, is way more likely to experience homelessness than someone with access to those things. Addressing inequity can reduce the number of folks dealing with mental illnesses drastically and we are just now finally making a dent in that fight. And in some industries, that’s worse than in others (here’s looking at you, gaming even if there’s hope).

Globally, Attention around mental health is still not where it needs to be.

According to a World Health Organization report from 2022:

• Countries dedicate less than 2% of their healthcare budgets to mental health.

• More than 70% of mental health expenditure in middle-income countries still goes towards psychiatric hospitals.

• Around half the world’s population lives in countries where there is just one psychiatrist to serve 200,000 or more people

  So yeah, tons more work to do compared to cracking the thing that I started out Mxiety for: having open conversations about mental health. Globally, it feels like mental health is in it’s “ok now what?” stage. We’re here for it. But the work going forward is just different.

Additionally, when I say we’re more comfortable about mental health conversations and conditions, what do you think of? It’s likely not Bipolar, Borderline Personality, Scizophrenia, etc. Depression, Anxiety are more discussed and understood, but everything else in the DSM still has a ways to go before being largely accepted. There’s a ton of stigma outside of those concepts.

Goals going forward

I honestly don’t know what I thought in 2017 past, “not talking about mental health is literally killing people (namely almost me), we should start the convo publically.” Probably I thought that alone would fix a lot of things. Oh she was so silly.

The more I did, the more I learned that access to care and equal care/equality is way more likely making folks su*cidal now that we have started to talk about it. But honestly, without that conversation starting, and getting a …err boost? in 2020 during the pandemic I am not sure that folks with more privilege (namely like me) would have even known to look here.

I’m sure my looking around for more issues is also informed by my own mental health being in a much better place. Over the past 6 years I’ve:

• Gotten a more accurate diagnosis of ADHD (instead of the alphabet soup I had at one point)

• Found community with those like me

• Connected to the LGBTQ+ community and come out as part of it

• Had a kid, who is a white male

• Done research on content creator mental health, wrote a book, and been part of other’s books/consulting

That’s not to brag, but more to say, if I didn’t see a conversation before, of course I would have thought that was the 1st step as it’s the one I needed the most. Now that I’ve gotten my feet underneath me a bit, I’m dusting off and ready for the next fight.

I’m not talking about the goal being world where mental illness does not exist. That is so beyond my lifetime, it’s silly. Sadly, I’m also not talking about a utopia where everyone is always fair, people get to live the way they want/know themselves to be without being bothered.

Truly I just mean the work cut out ahead for us lies in equity above all. Let’s get folks better healthcare. Let’s get folks better access to info whether it’s the mental health of 5 year olds or 105 year olds. Let’s not tell people who they can and can’t love and who they can and can’t be based on how they were born. The cognitive pain is most terrifying when you know something about yourself to be true, while understanding that the world will never accept you that way.

In the next 6 years and beyond, let’s learn to meet and help people where they are and for what they need.

Love and Light,
Mxiety

PS Like what you read? Didn’t like what you read? Let me know in the comments!

And I say this first and foremost—I am not OK with people coming onto to Twitch to play Dr Phil. It’s not my cup of tea and I don’t think it’s right for the person who is put in a vulnerable seat, even if it does bring attention to mental health stigma. I think the cost is too high.

I am also not ok with companies exploiting mental health (abbreviated to MH going forward) as a means to get into this market, raising funds that don’t end up being used to actually help those in need with half trained coaches and such.

And please don’t ask me to be more specific than that. If you know, you know. If you have the power to fix any of the above things, please do. Otherwise, I will not be feeding a mob. People who can do something already have specifics on the above and are doing all they can to combat it.

That all being said, the ethics around talking about mental health on Twitch are tricky and ever important to uphold—while there’s not a specifically wrong way… Advice that may mean well but is not informed through profession-specific ethics, a board and lots of training has potential to hurt a LOT of people. Add to that the parasocial aspect of streaming [check out research from Dr Kowert and Dr Daniels on this] and things get tricky really fast.

Tons of folks have written about how content creation, specifically streaming often makes the creators MH frontline workers whether they like to or not. But I promise you, the folks who are truly grifting through talking about MH online are few and far between. People may come in for the money, until they realize that algorithms suppress these talks because companies don’t want to be liable for deaths as the idea that you can give someone the “idea” perpetuates. And most of those who do it because they want to help others end up burning out.

Not only does content creation take a HUGE toll on you (working with no breaks, limited feedback and support, in addition to having a mental illness will really do that to you), mental health content creation is 4x that. You take on the problems of your community as well. Imagine how scary it is knowing someone is suicidal? Now make that a monthly occurrence. Hearing about people’s heartbreak, and family abuse etc with no training, usually no content warnings before people detail these things in chat. [Check out research on how COVID affected streamer Mental Health] As well as seeing people need help, wanting to get it, but not have access to it—it takes a toll on you, whether or not you’re trained on how to deal with it—but definitely if you never received such training, as most advocates have not.

For years I held myself to an impossible standard of absolute perfection when it came to this. The result was also that I’d go into other advocate’s streams “policing” what they should and shouldn’t be saying. Textbook garbage behavior on my part. I was so worried about being called out that I called everyone else out first. I was so stressed about gatekeeping that I gatekept as I was writing how gatekeeping is bad.

Cut to 2021. I was getting into some bad burnout territory. I couldn’t keep up with my perfectionism and expectations and I was drowning while pushing everyone else away for not being perfect either. I spoke to every person who’d listen about how I was burning out. I restarted therapy, I felt suicidal again, it was not awesome. I was friends with some not great people. I took actions I still regret and apologize for… And then someone I trusted and cared about told me that despite all of my efforts, I was being a bad advocate. All of that work being perfect and someone still didn’t think I was. It broke me to hear that I was behaving in such a way that they wanted nothing to do with me. That they’d follow up so we could talk. They never followed up. Instead, they removed me from their spaces and told others to avoid me.*

Surprise! I spiraled! I emailed EVERY SINGLE Mental Health Professional I had access to (which was many because at that point I’d interviewed many for my show. I want to say at least 20 people off the top of my head) and asked them to honestly evaluate me. My work. Whether I had passed any ethical boundary. Not one person. Not one could understand where my question was even coming from. I sent VODs and asked friends to review them. I pleaded with my Mods to not sugarcoat anything as they were kind and trying to support me while being honest about anything they saw. Over and over my friends told me I should maybe start therapy again because this panic was unhealthy.

That maybe one person’s critique shouldn’t break your mental health like a house of cards—regardless of whether it was warranted.

That was it. I broke. I took my first long break from streaming and spiraled out further as I felt myself falling out of relevance from the space.

If Depression told me my work didn’t matter. Then falling into irrelevancy, with colleagues unfollowing me, stream numbers dropping was the perfect “proof” I needed to confirm how infinitely awful I knew I was.

But this story does have a happy (for now) ending. I’m ok. Better than ever actually. Priorities shifted. Therapy has been AMAZING. I dove further into research and focusing on content that mattered to me the most. I have clarified my ethical boundaries. I work to support up and coming mental health advocates in finding their voice instead of policing anyone. I do help companies better understand the needs of streamers/creators in my consulting work too. I have a healthier relationship with my work and how important it is to me and where it stands in my priorities.

All of this to say, “fork yes,” it is extremely unethical to give people the impression that you can offer them a therapy-like setting in a live stream.

You know what’s not unethical? Creating a space for people to care about each other. Where we encourage them to remain themselves while caring for others and feeling cared for themselves. Where we offer insight about what we did in similar scenarios. Or compassion when we know we’ve never experienced something but it sure sounds like it sucks to have to deal with that. We need those spaces more than ever. So, if you’re offering that, congrats, that’s a good mental health space.

Some people call those fortnite streams, others horror variety streams, some are make up streams, some are Apex streams, or streams full of Sims challenges. I call those people creating spaces where other folks know they can relax, feel ok being whomever they know themselves to be as long as they promise to let others live their lives unbothered as whoever THEY are. And you cannot tell me that in the age of anti-LGBTQ laws, gun violence, drag show banning and extreme poverty and isolation those online spaces are not exactly what’s needed.

You want mental health awareness? You don’t even have to call it that. You have to create content in a way that doesn’t inhibit or judge others from being themselves. Doing anything that helps reduce suicidality (acceptance, housing), loneliness, offers access to care (even just info on where to get that) is mental health awareness.

*to be clear I don’t blame them for this. I wasn’t nice, but also it’s everyone’s right to decide who they want to associate with.

I heard my friend note on the call: “That really seems like a rough week, huh?” But I wouldn’t let her finish. “But wait, there’s more,” I quipped as I inhaled.

I went into the next thing. About how, sure, things were stressful in general, but then my body was also failing me, and dealing with figuring out why my liver wasn’t doing so great while I was already overbooked and stressed was just too much.

Finally, I exhaled.

“Wow, that’s a lot.” She didn’t give me advice about what to do to relax. She didn’t tell me how I should have handled it all. She didn’t talk about how she’d been doing the same. She just agreed that I had a tough week, with way too much for one person to handle, and that felt like it gave me permission to finally breathe. It felt like eating chocolate after a rough day. She fixed my craving. I was validated.

I did it. I did everything I had to do, and someone acknowledged that I could have feelings about it. There was relief, but most sweet was the ping of validation that washed over my brain.

I was finally allowed to feel…everything.

That flood of emotion was a lot. Exhaustion from holding it in for so long. Pain from berating myself as I pushed and pushed, telling myself that I should be able to take more. That there was no room or time to admit I was tired and rest. So, I just denied that I needed it.

And for a while, that strategy holds up. You plug up the emotional hole with denial. The problem is when the feelings come bursting out later somehow else. Once the seal is broken, I’m just repeatedly crying. But because I’m so deep in assuming the original stress causing that isn’t real, I have no idea why. The tears feel like they must be for something else, something that otherwise feels completely innocuous. But, it’s all the same emotion, just coming out where I’m allowing it to—where it has permission to do so.

While I went through the hell week, as everything happened and emotions would come for me, I was doing extremely well pushing them away. I messed up at work, and I just sat and cried for hours without feeling anything.

My boss called to ask me if I was ok, sensing some tension. Before I knew it, I burst out crying again. Before I could register that this emotion was not the one I wanted, before I could stifle it to avoid looking bad or weak in front of her.

Her validation that I did well and didn’t underperform (see: my assumption that I should always be tougher) as bad as I thought I did, freed me. Of guilt, of berating myself as I was completely incapable of regulating my emotions if I perceived someone to be disappointed in me.

With that, I finally had permission to turn the logical side of my brain on. Only then did I admit I took on too much.

Even if I previously knew I was being too hard on myself, I couldn’t admit to it until someone else confirmed I was, that I was actually right to feel overwhelmed. Only then was there relief. And how unfair is that to all my hard work?

In the same way I’d refuse to give myself credit until someone praised my accomplishment, I had denied myself a moment of respite until someone had pointed to my right to be tired. 

While growing up, the message I received was that most of my feelings were wrong.

“Why are you crying over a stupid boy, stop crying.”

“Why are you mad at your father, he’s your father, he doesn’t deserve that.”

“People die all the time, it’s not that big of a deal.”

“Don’t be angry at your sister for using your toothbrush, we’re family.”

“You’re doing it wrong. Don’t give me that attitude, you should’ve known better.”

This caused my personal compass for my feelings to be perpetually off. If it’s supposed to point north, but is consistently redirected to where someone else says your north should be, it stops pointing all together for fear of being wrong.

And with the speed our world moves, when are our emotions convenient for anyone else at all, including ourselves?

There are errands, other people’s problems, your pet’s needs, your kid’s, and/or partner. Expectations from other people you can’t let down. Even knowing my health issues, emotional and physical doesn’t give me permission to chill out a bit.

If you just shut off your access to accepting your needs, it seems so much easier to hear and give to others, especially in trying times. And who are you, if not someone to give to others what they need first?

There are always things to do, news to read, and emotions from others to internalize.

How can there be room for your own actions, when you need to be reactive? And just when you think you’ve figured out the reaction someone wants from you, you meet new people, new scenarios and you have to restart and re-learn to be reacting in a way that makes sense and is correct for that new group.

But You need you too.

You don’t have to wait for validation for your turn to feel. You can control how long you wait and how much you put up with while you do. Even if others need you. If you have not given to yourself, what you’re offering them is a husk of a person left after everyone else has already had their turn to pick your emotions dry. 

You can learn to control them. But you don’t have to wait to release them in a way that’s acceptable to others, just in a way that feels safe to you.

I cried in front of my boss because, incredibly, I knew she wouldn’t judge me for it. I laughed a bit while I told my friend about my week because I wanted her to be entertained as she had to endure my ranting (and not just because I was afraid she would be nervous to listen to me). But I still put on a stone face as I catch up with my dad to protect myself from hearing “so what.”

Next Steps. 

I get off the phone and felt a thousand pounds lighter. The week was behind me. Next week will bring its own challenges, but this week’s issues are over. The pressure is off of me to perform for myself, to prove myself that I am not any of the things I call myself.

I remind myself that it’s ok to seek validation when we’re hurting, but it shouldn’t be the only reason I know it’s ok to feel what I feel. 

Next week I can try to, once again, stay away from telling myself that I don’t do enough. Even if the push to overschedule myself is strong, to continue to barely keep afloat with everything I expect myself to accomplish and complete.

Already I can hear the voice in the back of my head saying I didn’t even do the whole list this week. I know it’s trying to invalidate me, so I keep pushing, keep moving the goalpost as that’s the only way I set goals for myself.

I take in a breath. I remind myself that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing with my to-do list. 

I promise myself that this week, since there are naturally a few less things on my agenda, I’ll finally catch up with my needs. My plate won’t be overflowing with extra things I put on there, but just the series of things I need to regularly accomplish in order to live as a functioning adult in society.

I still have laundry and groceries and online shopping and work tasks. But those don’t count, right? Everyone should be able to do those, so I cannot feel pressure over those (oop it’s a trap!). I will not only give myself permission to feel pressure when there’s too much of it, but rather as soon as it starts to be less manageable. And oh boy, that’s the most impossible ask I have for myself. 

Do you think that’s too much to ask?

Stranger Things Season 4, Volume 1—Vecna and Running Up That Hill of Trauma

Stranger Things season 4 wowed in quite a few ways, but to me, the mental health angle in the subtle commentary around post traumatic experiences and growth, stuck out the most.

Spoilers below for season 4 vol 1, so beware! (mostly relating to the villain and how he acts, no resolutions). I won’t be discussing Vecna’s background in detail since it appears there is more to touch upon in season 4 vol 2, so, maybe we’ll circle back on that after July. I’ll also be talking about trauma, post-traumatic growth and suicidal ideation, so please do take care for your needs if you find either of these topics uncomfortable at this time.

 The set up

For now, here’s the set up since season 3. Eleven is living in LA with Joyce, Will, and Jonathan and not having an amazing time due to school bullies and lack of powers in the aftermath of the last season. Meanwhile, the teenagers of Hawkins are still being hunted in fresh ways by the hellish creations living in the Upside Down.

This time the victims start seeing hallucinations, followed by weird headaches, all accompanied by memories of trauma they’ve been trying to suppress. The hallucinations all end the same—a demon, who we learn is actually the lich, Vecna, summons them to the upside down, breaks their bodies, takes their eyes out, and then puts them on display in his hellscape. Pretty standard Stranger Things fare so far, if maybe a bit spookier than previous seasons.

Here's what’s particularly interesting about Vecna’s gruesome methods.

A list of his recent victims:

This is Vecna’s second hunt for victims in a few decades. As we zoom through the town in the Upside Down, catching snippets of conversations, we see that he stops on those who spend a lot of time thinking about their past.

His first victim in this round is Chrissy, who seemingly has a complicated, painful relationship with her (possibly deceased?) mom.

The second is Fred, who feels immense guilt after surviving a car accident his friend did not.

While the third attempted victim is part of our usual Hawkins gang. Max, who just last season witnessed her brother, Billy, get brutally harpooned through the heart as he sacrificed himself during the final mall battle.

There is one more victim, Patrick, who is suggested to have experienced abuse from his family, without much detail being given around the specifics (we don’t see his flashbacks as much as the others were shown before their murders).

Common criteria for Vecna’s targets:

1)      All of them are running from intense, painful emotions such as grief, fear, shame, and guilt.

2)      Vecna uses these emotions as a means to make them feel hopeless and give up on escaping their fate. He tells them that he is actually ending their suffering, forcing them to submit, before stealing their lifeforce and mangling their bodies.

Vecna is the most terrifying villain I can imagine in the Stranger Things universe, where the kids are living through perpetual traumatic experiences.

And I think it’s really cool that the Duffer brothers chose to explore this side of horror that’s usually overlooked. I mean, how many teenagers in classic horror (Friday the 13th, Halloween) movies go through repeated trauma without anyone noting it?

I would imagine for most people watching, it’s scary enough seeing a creature from Dungeons & Dragons lore that can show you flashes of your past and then you know, break all your bones and make your eyes pop out. For me, I’ve never had anything in the horror genre hit home quite the same way, because I could deeply relate to the all-encompassing feeling of reliving your past experiences, wanting to run away from them, only for them to quite literally be the reason for your demise. It’s one thing to feel like your past is haunting you. It’s another to know that it is actually the reason you might die.

Escape is possible

Music has been the only thing so far to help pull Vecna’s prey back to reality—out of the Upside Down, and back to safety into their own bodies. It’s unclear if the second volume of the season will explain in further detail why this is, or if we are to accept it as simply part of the lore.

It’s hugely significant that only Max was able to escape Vecna’s grasp successfully in volume 1 of season 4. Max, who at the time of the attack is surrounded by friends, her favorite song (bless Kate Bush) on a Walkman and has been pushing herself to be vulnerable. Prior to starting to see the telltale hallucinations, she was shown to be closed off to talking about how she felt over her brother’s death. As she gets more vulnerable and writes letters to say final goodbyes, she finds that she actually grows closer with her friends who have been trying to be there and help her all along. It’s also important to note that Vecna finds her as she is speaking to Billy at Billy’s grave, as she’s describing her guilt and pain and going through her memories.

But it is incredibly difficult

Our mind tells us that if we run away from pain, keep it all bottled up inside and tell no one, we can escape the haunting and shield our friends.

As someone who, for years, experienced heavy suicidality, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress (some of which was at first, undiagnosed), everything about Vecna’s attacks felt familiar. When you fall into a flashback, first you feel like you’re no longer within the dimension others are in. Reality melts away, and you are unequivocally in the past, living, breathing, and experiencing with every sense your previous trauma.  

I re-lived my trauma until I learned through years of therapy that I couldn’t change my past. There was no way I could just change X and prevent Y. That the point was not to keep running but to accept certain aspects of my experience and deal with the accompanying emotions. This is a crucial pain that most of Vecna’s victims experience and have no way to resolve before it’s too late.

I’ve also learned that the best way out of those flashbacks for me was re-grounding in the moment. Re-grounding is our ability to became aware of where are and root ourselves in the present, usually through senses. Sometimes that takes help from others, sometimes that would take something breaking the “reality” of the moment (like when in a dream you realize some real-life logic is too broken for it to be real) on your own.

You can re-ground by grabbing onto an item you carry around with you, literally feeling the ground if you’ve fallen down or hearing music you associate with something outside of that memory. For me, it was anything that engaged my senses once again in the true world instead of whatever I was recalling. In the show, for Max, it was hearing the Kate Bush’s hit, Running Up That Hill.

As far as I know there was no Lich in my mind. But part of my flashbacks were people in my life who had said things like “the world would be better without me” or that I should “give up.”

For the characters in Stranger Things, Vecna works as that voice.

When I stayed too long within the flashback, I would usually become suicidal, as I felt there was no other way to stop this pattern and was desperate to not hate myself while I went through the traumatic events I was remembering. That’s why Vecna’s “I will end your suffering” was so real and chilling—It’s a sweet promise.

While I have not read at this time that anyone working on Stranger Things season 4 specifically meant for people to make this clear connection with what it’s like to live with trauma, it certainly connected for me. 

Creating fictional work like this does such an incredible job offering nuanced representations of trauma without directly calling it out. And as a result, does a wonderful job to reduce stigma. So, if nothing else, I just wanted to make sure I thanked both Vecna and the Stranger Things team for giving us all space to think about it.

Mental health content reviewed by Elizabeth Kilmer, PhD

Why I’ve Chosen to Share

To start, it might seem obvious, but this is MY journey.

YOU do not have to follow this as your timeline in any shape or form. I didn’t follow a timeline anyone else advised either. I just did what felt right when it felt right.

I’m sharing because I felt a bit lost to start, so if I can show anyone how to take this process one step at a time (at least for over-planny folks like myself), it’s worth it.

Content Warnings: Discussions of suicidal ideation, medical issues

Knowing My Risks

Having a child was not always in the books for me. I came from a broken home and while I don’t think anyone needs to be a perfect parent, I started out only with a “Don’t Do This!” book, instead of a “Maybe these are some good ideas…” one. That in addition to understanding that my kiddo would be starting out with DNA with potential for glitches and figuring out how to come to terms about how I felt about that (because WHOA so many feelings).

How Did You Know You Wanted Kids?

I didn’t, but something clicked one day. As a kid, I was certain it was “what girls do” and I grew up in a big Greek family with lots of babies. In my teens, I was certain that I was “too broken” to have any. By my early 20s, I’d met my now husband and we’d discussed what we both wanted. The agreement was we weren’t sure if we even wanted to have children, but having at least one was something we’d both be open to.

This discussion was spurred by the two surgeries that diagnosed me with endometriosis in 2009 and 2010.

Then in my late 20s, something clicked. I knew I wanted a kid, but with one HUGE caveat, I had to make sure I felt like I’d accomplished (reasonably) all I wanted to by whatever the time would be when I was really serious about it.

In 2016 I had my last scare with active suicidality. It was something I was hoping I could learn to handle before I put a child into the world.

In 2017 I was expecting to have to make a basically final decision on whether or not I want to have kids based on my ability to do so, due to the aforementioned endometriosis diagnosis. Instead, during my appointment, my doc told me I had more time because my symptoms were under control. I was relieved because I didn’t feel ready to be a mom nor did I know yet if I wanted a child at all. But I also knew based on my excitement that I absolutely wanted to have kids once ready.

2020 was a big year for Mxiety and as I turned 30, it felt pivotal. I asked myself over and over again if I was ready but sometimes always felt like it wasn’t the right time.

The litmus test I used for myself about once a month or whenever a nosy relative inquired was, “when I’d finally get on with kids” was the following:

- Do I want a baby for now or do I want a baby forever? Because it's definitely a forever commitment

- How would I feel if I didn't have a baby in the next x months?

- Was my partner ready to have a baby?

- Most important: What would I regret more. NOT having a baby or missing something I knew was coming up (career move, life change, personal goal)?

In May 2021, I had a good, long talk with my partner and we decided that we were ready to start exploring more about what it would mean to have a kid.

For both of us that meant expenses, career choices. For me that meant dealing with changing medications that had previously saved my life, particularly focusing on how I would handle my mental health without them (as I had been unsuccessful to come off them three times in the past). While I felt my Depression was largely under control, I knew pregnancy hormones could change that. I also knew that I was on medication at the time with a large “DO NOT TAKE IF PREGNANT” label on the bottle. So there was no way I could stay on that med if we were going to start trying.

I made appointments with my Therapist, Psychiatrist (to discuss medications), General Doctor, OBGYN, and Dentist and saw all of them by Aug 2021. I also bought some books which recommended that I start on a multi-vitamin, which felt like an easy enough first step.

With my therapist I specifically set up to work on 3 goals:
1) To acknowledge my fears and learn coping skills to address them
2) To assess how I felt about potentially being a parent
3) To help me assess what being off of certain medications would do for me. This one was most important as I wanted to come off medication before I was pregnant and had the hormone variable to consider.

With my psychiatrist I worked on getting off medications responsibly and which ones were safe to be on while pregnant.

By July 2021, I had come off of the medication that would be most harmful to a fetus and was assessing how I felt without it, including what additional coping skills I would need. I re-assessed whether I would be able to function without it. I am lucky to say that after taking it 3 years and tapering off slowly, I was ok.

By Aug 2021, because I was ok off the first medication, I chose to lower the dose of my anti-depressant as well, just to be extra safe. This was a lot harder than the previous med and I think I still don’t feel exactly like me. As of this writing, I plan on returning to my previous dose once it’s safe for me and the baby.

Sept 2021, my partner and I decided we’d come off birth control and see where things go.

As the months went on, my anxiety and depression, and tendency to self-loathe ate away at me. I heard myself say that I’d be a bad mother, I didn’t deserve a baby, so we’d never conceive. Every week I’d have notes I’d bring to my therapist to digest as I learned what each thought represented to me and how to combat them.

Oct 2021, because I was off birth control and my body had a chance to re-calibrate, I started to lose a lot of hair and my acne came back. I chose to get a haircut to style my hair differently and look for baby-safe acne options (which are extremely limited) but my self-confidence took a huge hit.

Dec 2021, my severe pelvic pain returned, and I was worried my endometriosis was back to seek vengeance. After some tests, it was determined that it was a cyst on my right ovary, but I was ok to keep trying. I was told that due to the pain I’d need to consider medical help conceiving. My OB and I agreed on a timeline for this that would be shorter than typical (usually 1+ year of trying if you were under the age of 35) due to my history.

Jan 2022, After noting how awful my anxiety was every month during ovulation I realized that this process might be harder on me than some. And if one more person told me to just “relax or it won’t happen,” I was going to scream. My partner and I decided I’d focus on learning to be kinder to myself in therapy, while diving deeper into the significance of these feelings for me.

I decided that would not take any additional medication to conceive if I could not within 7 months. The risks were too great for my mental health stability. I started looking into fostering and adoption options for us as well. [This will be particularly different for every person. Do not shame people for knowing and searching for what’s right for their bodies at a particular time in their life, their orientation, and their body’s needs]

Feb 2022, I learned we had been successful super early, just 3 weeks and 5 days after my last period. I had a super weird dream which I took as a “sign” that I should try a pregnancy test. When I saw the faintest positive, my anxiety went through the roof. It was 2 more weeks before I let myself feel happy because I was convinced my joy would be short lived.

I wanted to tell friends, my community, and family, but I knew statistics were not in my favor, and while I am a mental health advocate, I also wanted to make sure I had space to grieve if I needed to before I spoke on anything going on with me publicly.

I was frantic in searching for answers and reassurance the baby and I would be ok. I had full-blown panic attacks because I would get into my head that my pregnancy was ectopic or that I would lose the baby because I didn’t deserve to be a mom. The anxiety was awful and I was constantly googling random symptoms and calling my GYN office to ask them if the symptoms were normal. I was extremely nauseous and could not keep most food down.

I finally stopped googling after reading a few articles on how some of the expecting apps were actually perpetuating my anxiety because their goal is to keep you reading. They would send potentially nerve wracking questions through on-screen notifications, and then send you links with potential answers which would keep you on their page, engaged for longer.

I deleted the What to Expect App, bought some books and downloaded Ovia, which I found to be much more helpful about giving me answers without producing more anxiety.

Additional Thoughts:

But you know your child might have Depression/Anxiety/ADHD!

Yeah, they could also not have Depression but be a complete jerk. And as I fight for a world with better options for people living with mental illnesses, I feel comfortable knowing that this kiddo will grow up in a home that will know how to address additional needs they might have should there be early signs.

But the world is literally at war:

This, actually, I still have a hard time reconciling (exhales)

I think I’m Ready For My Next Adventure / Disclaimers

I know we’re very lucky. The anxiety I felt once I found out we’d been successful, knowing many friends who had lost their babies, ate away at most of the joy I felt. I am grateful every day that I know the baby is progressing in their little nest. I am grateful for my support network. I am grateful for the privilege and access to care I’ve had. I am grateful for all that is yet to come. And most importantly, I am grateful that I am well enough to feel that gratitude.

Also, I am VERY fortunate that I have access to healthcare in the U.S. I am also white, cisgender, and married to a man (although I am bisexual). I understand my experience includes a lot of privilege, even down to the amount of time and tries it took for me to conceive. Although I understand these privileges are not accessible to everyone in the US (and I’m actively fighting to change that), I hope it might be valuable to someone to read it.

And I hope to continue to slowly, share more of this journey with you.

When I first started talking about mental health on Twitch, I quickly got pulled into the idea that my job as an entertainer was to be funny and uplifting to my audience, especially since they were going through a hard time. Chatters would come into the live show perhaps not feeling well, and I felt it was my role to make them feel better.

Over time it became very clear that acting like this was not only hurting me, but was also perpetuating the stigma that people who aren’t feeling well mentally need to be cheered up so that they can feel happy again.

Not only is this a common misunderstanding with advocates in general (I’ve learned my role is to share my story, not to make others feel better, although that may be a byproduct), but it also made me feel awful on days when I couldn’t live up to this false idea. How was I supposed to go live to sell the belief that “it gets better” if that day I didn’t believe it myself?

And that keyword “sell” was the big main problem. If you set out to sell anything on social media: hope, how to get rich and famous, happiness—you’re doing it wrong.

You cannot buy authenticity in any shape. You have to live it, be it, make mistakes, admit them, learn from them, and therein inspire others to find it within themselves. I spent way too much time presenting myself as what I thought people wanted mental health to mean when I should’ve been focusing on learning what mental health meant to me specifically.

Authentic and palatable to everyone are not the same. And I was trying way too hard to make mental health palatable to everyone.

It took me over 2 years before I totally broke down crying live on stream. I wasn’t me. I wasn’t who I wanted to be. How was I going to tell others to accept who they were and how they felt if I wasn’t doing the same?

I didn’t want to tell people everything would be fine all the time as I had learned I actually didn’t believe that. I wanted to normalize that it was ok to vocalize when things are not ok. Not brush my problems under the rug! I didn’t want to be perfect and happy all the time because I couldn’t be and neither can anyone else.

To some, that’s obvious. To me, I had to learn that through a live experience before I could help others understand it. And yet still, acting in such a way for 2 years wasn't inauthentic, it was authentic to what I knew and felt at the time.

For some, authenticity means being raw about their emotions. Which sometimes scares those who aren’t as used to that. Others think authenticity includes mostly showing your best side as a boss, friend, partner—the highlighted moments. That’s who they want to focus on being, and that’s ok too because that’s a real facet of them.

We learn what facet of ourselves we want to show on each social media. And in that way, we learn how to be authentic to that kind of audience.

It is absolutely not the same as learning how to be appealing to your audience, no matter the cost.

People are multifaceted. For example, you may be the kind of person who cusses at home and at work, but would still hesitate to do so in front of your mom. Does that mean you’re inauthentic in front of your mother? Or does it mean that there’s a facet of you, you may not show her always?

The things I share on my dog’s Instagram: his photos with reminders to take care of your pets, the slang I use (momo, doggo) will be totally different than what I share on my private account meant to show off my vacations.

In my opinion, being authentic on social media works in similar ways. You have to figure out where the line is for you. What aspects and facets of yourself you’re comfortable with sharing with folks you may have worked with before, vs strangers on Twitter behind user names. What will you share in an image with a caption on Insta that might just not be interesting on Twitch?

Let’s not forget that authenticity for some is putting up a wall. For some, it’s being your best self, because that’s what you feel you have to be in that moment. For others, it’s being silly. For some, it’s being very serious about human rights and accepting no compromise. That might not be authentic to you, but in that moment, with their passion, that is what’s authentic to them. And that’s wonderful.

Authenticity is an almost arbitrary score society gives you in social media spaces ( ie how well people connect with you on social media), but only you can know what it truly means to you. It’s then a matter of learning to project an authentic self onto the world.

That voice belongs to an unkind human who projected their insecurities, their pain, their bad day onto you. They made you carry their weight instead of dealing with it themselves. It might also belong to a society hellbent on making money from your feelings of inadequacy. One thing’s for sure, it’s not yours.

In carrying around someone else’s negative voice, you’re carrying their burdens, their heavy weight on your back. People don’t say hurtful things like “You’re stupid” or make comments about your body unless they themselves are hurt. Happy, confident, secure people don’t usually feel the need to be unkind. But those who have been hurt have no one to unload their pain, which is why they end up handing the whole bag over to you with a simple “you’re such a failure.” And then you have to carry their weight like it’s yours.

They’ll make you feel like you asked for their weight too because they cannot possibly take responsibility for the fact that they handed over such heavy things to someone else. They’ll unload that guilt onto you too, which phrases like “If you only were less like your [father/mother].” Or things like “you really should have just done [x] and then you wouldn’t have failed.”

The thing about burdens is that with some vulnerability, instead of unloading them, we can ask others to help carry them instead. But careful here too, as we might accidentally unload if we’re not gentle. It’s important to ask someone first if they’re open to helping with a question like: “I’m not feeling well, can I share something?” or “Is it ok to talk about _.”

Venting to people you trust is another great way of getting help for our burdens.

As you may have noticed, consent is key. If you didn’t consent to carry someone’s pain, you may end up carrying it like your own. Again, asking upfront “Is ok if I vent about what happened to me today,” is a great way to start that chat. And then you’ll no longer be alone in your worry and the other person will likely feel less heavy from having helped you.

You may think the voice in your mind which tells you that you’re stupid, or unlovable or undeserving of care is your own. We spend hours mulling over these words. They echo in our minds and determine what we decide we are incapable of doing. They sabpotage us when we need love, care and support the most.

So, if all starts to feel heavy, check the weight of the burden you are carrying. Check to see who it’s from, it was likely never yours from the start.

Dear Me, circa 2031.

I have done everything I can on the computer to try to avoid writing this letter to myself, while also getting myself hyped up to write this letter. Does that make sense, me 10 years from now? I’m sure it does. No one gets me like you do.

10 years from now it will be June 16, 2031 (HOLY SH) and I will be 40 years old (ALSO HOLY SH) which is silly a thing to write since you already know what date and year it is, I should just get to the all the good stuff and questions and reminders I have for you. I know you’re gonna cry too, so I hope you grabbed tissues.

Because of our endometriosis, I always worried if I would be able to have kids and I have no idea how long it might take of me to try to have one. So I guess what I want to know the most is, do we have a child? Did we adopt or are they a DNA match? I know we’re proud of them and are doing our best to be the parent we never had (while using tips from our sother [sister mother] we are lucky to have gotten).

I would say here that I hope we are happy but the thing I have learned recently is that happiness is not a destination, so I hope we have moments of happiness is more like what I want to say. Plus, it doesn’t help that we live with Depression. I tear up thinking about the life we could have had without this illness, but I am sure we did as well as we could to make sure we get to 10 years from now. And by the way, we should be SO proud of that because that is NOT easy by any stretch.

I do want to say that I am excited to see how my relationship with my sister grows too. She means the absolute world to me and to think that 10 years ago (sometime in 2011) we were barely speaking.

Speaking of not speaking to people, how are mom and dad. I don’t even know if I can open that can of worms now. Just take a moment to reflect on your relationship with them, are they healthy? Are they in our life? Why or why not? How much have we forgiven vs how much have we forgotten?

Hey, did they figure out flying cars yet? Or even are we better about sustainability at all? If not, that’s a freakin bummer. You always hope that the future is brighter, but it’s only going to get duller if we don’t do anything to protect the earth.

Have we had our first woman president? I know this is a far-off question since we are only like 3 elections off from today, but man I sure hope so.

And now for the doozies. Are we still friends with people I am currently friends with? I ask because they mean so much to me and being around them brings me so much joy, even though most of my communication with them is virtual because a) they’re around the world b) Coronavirus! I am so grateful for the people we DM daily and whom we lean of for support.

Did we achieve the goals we had in mind at this time? Today you applied for a job at Pixar on a whim. You’re also putting in so much effort into Mxiety, how does that pan out? I know how important mental health is to you, I hope your message is heard and the world is kinder to those with such illnesses finally.

Speaking of support, I know Pat is still there. Aging gracefully with you. Has his hair gone totally grey? Does he still like our butt? Listen I have my priorities and making sure the two of us are together is absolutely one of them.

I think this should be the end because I don’t want to drone on (and I know you won’t read it anyway Miss ADHD is probably skimming to start).

I hope we are proud of the person we have become. And if not, I hope we are actively working still to be our best every day.

With Love,

Marie

Therapy is a well-researched, proven method for help when someone is suffering with mental health-related problems. It’s not a one-size fits all scenario either, there’s Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Family therapy and so many more. It’s always been the avenue I recommend first when people ask me about what they should do with pretty much any problem they’re facing in life. In a good therapy session, a person will feel heard and validated and likely receive targeted help for their specific needs. When they walk out of the office they might have homework to work on before their next session.

I’ve met some bad psychologists and psychiatrists over the years, one of whom asked me intimate details about my sex life that had nothing to do with the topic, another whose appointments would last exactly five minutes during which I would get a new prescription and be sent on my way. It was always my assumption that this was “the way of the world”--you wade through some bad doctors before you get to the ones you need. Some therapists you just won’t be compatible with, while others might not be the right ones to treat your condition.

But It’s More of an Issue Than That

Recently, someone came forward outside of my immediate community on Twitch and asked, “what if you’re from a marginalized community and there is no therapist in your area you can relate to or what that treats your condition?” and I didn’t know how to answer them.

Then another person talked about the trauma they recently went through and how devastating it was to find that after looking for a month and finally getting a session with someone, the counselor advised that they need to talk to someone else as their experience was outside of their scope. Very reasonable, indeed, it was the responsible thing to do. They even offered to refer out to other doctors. Unfortunately, those doctors were out of network for my friend, so they had to keep the search on their own. And While this last issue might be specific to the U.S. it is still a barrier to accessing care.

As expected, this left the person vulnerable, still hurting dealing with trauma on their own as they searched for a new doctor. And even once they found them, they would have to wait until they could be seen possibly to find out that this doctor wasn’t right for them either.

Solutions for Access Issues

There are scholarship programs to help people access care, as well as sliding scales with therapists and clinics that offer affordable treatment but between the stigma to going to therapy, people not being ready to invest in their personal wellbeing, and how hard it is to find these if you don’t know where to look, cost is just a small barrier to care. Then there are also issues with finding a therapist who has the appropriate cultural competency to be helpful. And who can help if the issues the person are dealing with are systematic oppression, such as poverty?

Therapy is still, as of this writing, a privilege. It shouldn’t be. But it is.

The solution isn’t for therapists to see patients they are not qualified to help. Or that therapists have to work pro bono (although many already do). But rather to offer interim solutions to those who cannot access relatable or affordable care as soon as it is needed.

It is important for us to learn self-care however we can, as soon as we need it. And that often is not on the timeline of the world. As an advocate, my job is to move people towards therapy as well as personal care because the goal is to break down mental health-related stigma. Period. 

Forcing someone into therapy when they are not ready or the appropriate kind is not available to them is not helping the stigma or the cause. In fact, there is evidence that perceived involvement in therapy results in better outcomes. So yes, even if therapy is the proven method for best mental health care outcomes, if someone isn’t ready for it, their results might not be as fruitful.

Offering alternatives is not going to have the same outcomes. It might not be as effective, in some cases, but it is a needed (and I hesitate to use this word) alternative to therapy when that is not available.

Going forward, I will be providing those who ask for help alternatives as much as I will be trying to move people towards therapy. To not do so, would be failing to acknowledge my privilege and that is not something we can afford to do.

Every individual’s needs and access will be different and it is ultimately up to them to decide what experience they are willing to submit themselves to, physically, emotionally, and financially.

Some brief alternatives:

·         Workbooks written by mental health professionals*

·         Self-help guides*

·         Crisis Text Line and other emergency resources

·         Online Counseling*

·         Self-care methods

·         Physical activity

 [*some links above will offer a kickback to the author to support the writing of this article]

Reviewed by: Dr Rachel Kowert and Dr B

When you mess up in the public eye, the public now has the tools to correct you.

This is where canceling or the act of calling someone out to their fanbase, with the intent to remove their platform, comes in. The idea is that this forces the perpetrator to apologize at the very least, and hopefully answer for abhorrent actions. It started as a way to hold people accountable that had never before seen accountability in their lives during the Me Too movement.

But canceling Harvey Weinstein meant removing his ability to control other people’s livelihoods after being left unchecked for decades.

That being said, being canceled, and having a large group negatively and publicly respond to a hurtful comment you made publically, are not one and the same.

There are cases when people with a smaller platform, after having misspoken, given a bad take on a current issue or made a distasteful joke, are met with widely negative regard. Although not always done kindly, the latter is simply a call from the public to change. It is not the same as being canceled. Rather, it’s an integral part of learning and holding yourself accountable to become a better person.

Canceling is asking for a permanent fundamental reversal of oppressive systems.

Accountability is asking for a change of behavior and liability for negative actions.

All canceling includes a request for accountability. Not all requests for accountability amount to cancellation.

So, when dealing with a smaller scale, how do we get people to change their undesired behavior without making them feel like the victim?

Some argue that the solution is to correct the offending party privately. However, sometimes we make mistakes publicly, in which case, why would they not get called out publicly? Additionally, the nature of most relationships on social media is parasocial, which means we won’t have that kind of access to the offender. And worse, they may be volatile.

So how do we change people’s behaviors to do better without looking like a mob?

On the surface, the ways strangers correct you online are certainly in line with behaviors we have learned through centuries of time. Someone isn’t acting in a socially acceptable way? Set them straight by shunning them until they fall into line with everyone else. While this emotional reaction from the public does a rather good job getting people to stop a behavior, it is born from and feeds on fear, which means it won’t change things in the long run.

Does this mean that we can never call out people who are doing hurtful things to others? No, absolutely not. But it does mean that we have to wield our ability to do so with care and responsibility.

And how does one respond when they are being bombarded with negative comments (both hurtful and constructive) in a way that is productive?

At this point, often people double down advising that they were not wrong, saying everyone is against them because no one “gets them.” This protects our ego ensuring we’re safe from the scariest thing, having to change. Especially in a culture that preaches to ignore the trolls, it’s certainly difficult to suddenly feel like those same people we see as trolls (someone coming at us strongly) deserve to be validated even in the smallest way.

You can be correct, saying that people didn’t “get you”, while they are also correct that your actions were harmful. Both can be true at the same time. This means regardless of whether people “get you”, understanding your error and apologizing for it is still something you can do.

The other side is not responsible for calling you out with tact and kindness. Your side is responsible for accepting accountability and explaining yourself. Also bearing in mind that your intentions might not have lined up with the reality of the impact of your words.

The better move is to take the time to reflect, even as we feel pressed to act immediately to “fix” the problem.

In order to reflect, it helps to establish that the world is not against you, they are against the actions you have taken or the ideals you hold.

Both of which can be adjusted or changed. Perhaps a good start is removing the offensive action. Then, nurturing the ego and licking your wounds until you come to a place where you can recognize which steps should be taken next.

As with any self-reflective time, depending on the scale of what happened to you, it might be a great time to consider seeing a therapist. This isn’t to say, “you messed up and you need someone to fix you”. That’s just social hang up around therapy. It’s more to say, “you need an outside perspective that isn’t tied to any social structure or social media points (clout) that you are currently focused on”.

It’s extremely useful to have someone with an outside opinion and a professional ability to understand human behavior to help unravel the tangled mess of being publicly held accountable.

How could we all do better?

Sometimes when people feel vulnerable, they get defensive.

Both backing down easily or being defensive stem from a strong desire to be liked. Both need equal patience from the public (which many, rightfully, will no longer have). However, when someone does something truly terrible, the people they hurt are not required to root for them or even generally hope for their change.

But if we want to achieve a change, gentle correction usually sticks better.

If you’re someone who might want to focus on correction over simply calling someone out over an undesired behavior, something to keep in mind is that both negative and positive reactions to problematic behavior are needed for the best outcome of compliance.

Psychology says positive reinforcement (kindly reinforcing when someone is acting appropriately), along with positive punishment (explanation of things someone has done wrong) tend to better modify behavior in the long run. With a clear explanation of what can be done to better the behavior in the future (positive punishment).

 Unfortunately, they also require more energy and effort no one usually has at the moment. Being mad is an instant reaction that fires off quickly. Being mad while being kind, requires a conscious effort. As well as emotional labor, often from marginalized groups who are already dealing with too much.

It is important to remember that while apologies are great, accepting them is up to the hurt party. Period.

Personal Experience

I am obsessed with being liked and that manifests itself when I know I’m wrong. When I mess up, it’s almost impossible for me to focus on redeeming the hurt I’ve caused because I’m so set on emotionally berating myself as I used to be berated for mistakes I made growing up.

However, having been called out a few times for saying the wrong thing, or supporting a cause that hurt others (no matter how unknowingly), I can say that ultimately, my ego ended up being just fine.

While my initial reaction is fed from my depression, understanding mine is a behavior resulting from trauma, helped me move into the process of learning. Therapy helped me understand and get to this point, but it is by far NOT the only way to get there. Most people can learn to self-reflect with empathy on their own just the same.

Finally

No one I know wants the people who’ve hurt them to beat themselves up until the end of time for what they’ve done. They usually want actionable change. When I came to my parents and explained to them the hurt they caused over the years, it was their choice to double down to say I was the only one at fault. When I hurt someone and asked them for forgiveness, it was their choice to see my potential for change as enough to say they had forgiven me.

And by the way, I believe the same applied for neurodivergent folks with different social cue comprehension. I’ve said the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person in the wrong way and didn’t know how terrible the thing I’d said was until someone later took the time to explain it to me. My inability to control my impulses ( a large reason for my issues) might be an explanation for my behavior. But it’s not an excuse from consequences.

I may not know the right way to hold someone accountable. But I do know that not much is accomplished by doubling down when you are at fault. Grace, humility, and empathy are way more effective learning tools.

Here are the ones that I use daily for the conditions I live with: ADHD, Anxiety and Depression

People are too worried about themselves to worry about you

This is my anxiety buster. Every time. I worry about something I said. I worry about being a goof in front of strangers. And the reality is, most people are too preoccupied with themselves and how THEY look to know that you’ve done something wrong.

Someone out there doesn’t know who Lady Gaga is

Similar to the first one, I sometimes worry that I will be forgotten and anything I accomplish won’t matter. Then I think of Lady Gaga. Her Born This Way Foundation work is changing lives and mental health conversations everywhere. She’s a megastar and has toured this whole planet. Yet, there is still someone in the world who has no idea she is. That does not diminish what she does or reduce her impact. It’s not the number of people who know you that matters, it’s what you bring to the lives of those who need it.

Nothing has to be perfect. Ever.

I am a recovering perfectionist and I often INSIST to myself, in a very black-and-white manner, that if I don’t do something perfectly I might as well not even try doing it. But nothing in this world is perfect. It’s ok to want to be proud of what you create, but you can be proud of those things even if they’re not perfect too.

I am the bridge

This one is a great reminder that I am good at connecting people. I might not always have the answers, but that’s ok, because I can always lead someone in need to the right person who can help them. There is a lot of value in valuing others for their strengths, and yourself for your own.

A rising tide lifts all boats

Honestly, sometimes I get super jealous of other people’s accomplishments. Especially when it’s someone in the space of mental health awareness. I use this affirmation to remind me that my goals are to raise awareness and kindness to the world. That means everyone succeeding in the space is bringing something good to it and that should always be celebrated.

I deserve it too

I often tell myself I am not enough or that I don’t deserve the care and attention that I get when I am down or depressed. This is completely unfair. This affirmation reminds me that I should think of myself as my own friend. Do I believe my friends deserve good things? Would I ever let anyone tell them they don’t? Well, then I shouldn’t say that to myself either.

Thoughts are not actions
(CW: Suicidal ideation)

This one is a great reminder that thinking about suicide or ending my life is just my brain’s way of trying to find solutions to extreme pain. My actions are what matters more. Additionally, I have 40000000+ thoughts a day, what makes me stick to this one and decide I should act on it? I can let this thought pass like many others and I will be ok.

If I’ve done it before, I can do it again and more

This is a good reminder when I feel like I’ll never accomplish anything great with my life. I also like to say this to myself whenever I feel doubtful that I can overcome a challenge.

I hope this helps you be your own light when you feel like things dark.

If you have your own affirmations, tell me about them in the comments below!