My Brain's Not Broken

Over the years, I’ve learned a number of methods and techniques to manage my depression and anxiety. Some of those have worked very well (meditation and talk therapy), while others haven’t been as effective (I’m hoping to come back to journaling one day, but it’s not soon). Either way, I’ve learned a lot about what’s helpful for me on my mental health journey, and used those lessons to continue building my mental health toolkit and growing more certain in how I manage mental health. But as I’ve learned recently, there’s always space to find more ways and improve that relationship with mental health, which is what I want to talk about today.

A big inspiration for today’s post is a recent course I’ve started using on the Headspace app. At first, I was using Headspace to work on a healthier way of sleeping, and then I started delving into some of the meditations and breathing exercises, which is how I got back into meditation. But it wasn’t until I started taking this course on managing anxiety that I started learning something brand-new to me.

The app has a month-long course called ‘Managing Anxiety’ that encourages new ways of looking at our anxiety and some possible ways to manage it in a healthy and realistic way. Even though I’ve only been doing this course three days, I’ve already learned a few things about myself and the way I handle anxiety that I know I’d like to improve on long-term.

While I hope this course helps me improve how I manage my anxiety, I’ve already learned important lessons about managing mental health and wellness. When it comes to my mental health, there’s always room for improvement, and that’s the way I want it.

Even though I’ve found some healthy ways of managing my anxiety and depression, I’ll never stop trying to find new ways to manage my mental wellness. That’s not a knock on what I’ve learned so far, but I want to have a healthy relationship with my coping techniques and strategies so I don’t put pressure on them to ‘work’ when I need them.

Learning new ways to improve my wellness is one of the best ways I know to stay focused on my mental health. Looking for ways to improve doesn’t always signify failure, and this case I’d say it definitely doesn’t mean that my current strategies have any shortcomings. But when you’re managing mental wellness, it’s important to remain open to new ways of managing mental health so we can grow as strong as possible every day on our mental health journeys.