mental health

Ambition And Depression

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They gon’ love me for my ambition… – Wale

I’ve always had an interesting relationship with the word ambition. As long as I can remember, I’ve been told ambition is something you need. It’s hard to meet and necessary for success. Without ambition, we’re all floating around without a care in the world. I’ve always thought myself to be an ambitious person. I have dreams of what I want to do, what I want my life to look like. But some things get in the way of ambition and today, I want to share about one of those things.

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Getting to Know Ourselves Better

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Getting to know ourselves is a lifelong journey – full of twists, turns, surprises and disappointments. What doesn’t matter to us one year could be monumentally important the next, and so on and so forth throughout our lives. I used to think that learning new things about myself was more cinematic. Time would slow down, and my moment of clarity would spring forward. But as with many things in life, perception and reality don’t always link up. We don’t always choose to learn new things about ourselves, and dealing with that can be tricky.

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Having Conversations About Suicide Prevention

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After working on this blog for nearly five years, I understand how difficult conversations about mental health can be. There’s a level of nuance that must be applied to these conversations. Everyone is unique, which means that the way we handle certain issues and problems is also unique. That’s why, even though they can be difficult, conversations about suicide prevention are important – and each one of us can help.

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Sometimes, You Just Need to Cry

Nathan Smith7 Comments

Here on My Brain’s Not Broken I have a tendency to write blog posts that serve as reminders. Sometimes they’re reminders that would be beneficial for whoever’s reading the post. Other times, the reminders are things I’ve forgotten long ago, and what I need to hear in the moment. Either way, reminder posts serve a purpose; they can help ground us and help us remember where we are on our journey. So today, I come to you with a specific reminder. Sometimes, you need to feel how you feel – and getting that out is the best thing you can do for yourself.

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Finding More Ways to Reset and Recharge

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Recently, I noticed a lot of my posts this summer have focused on resting and recharging. This got me thinking about how this happened. I know people tend to focus on relaxing in the summer, which makes perfect sense. But all year, I’ve had a fixated interest in the concept of rest. At first, I wanted to unlearn the concept of rest that I’d practiced my entire life in favor of something new. But I learned something else invigorating about resting and recharging, and I’d like to share that today.

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Metaphors for Mental Health: Lifting Weights

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A couple of weeks ago, I started doing some weight training exercises for the first time in at least a few years. Lifting weights is something I’ve done on and off for years, but I’d fallen away from it for some time. But one day, kind of randomly, I went into the gym and headed for the weights. After the first session, my body was sore in places I’d forgotten I could be sore in, and these new exercises taught me a valuable lesson in how we can help ourselves adjust to things, not only physically, but mentally as well.

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Receiving Permission to Feel Tired

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I was reflecting on my most recent therapy session when I realized that there was a recurring phrase I was using over and over again. No matter what the topic was or how I felt about it, everything came back to me saying “I’m tired.” Listen – at some point or another, we all get tired. Physically, mentally, emotionally, we are tired and need rest to prepare for what’s next. But the way I was saying it – the tone I was using, the way I thought about it – is what caught my attention, and it’s what I’d like to talk about today.

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I Am Not My Anxiety

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This post comes on a heels of a similar post I wrote recently called “I Am Not My Depression” (you can check it out here!). A big part of my mental health journey is the way I’ve noticed that language has built up the stigma surrounding mental health, which means I’m constantly trying to find ways to break down that stigma. And just like in my recent post, I want to share why instead of saying that I’m more than my anxiety, I explicitly try to reinforce the notion that I am not my anxiety – and here’s why.

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Why Do I Always Need to ‘Keep Going’?

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There are many ways to combat mental health challenges, and one of them that I’ve been reflecting on recently is motivation. Using motivational techniques has been very helpful when it comes to my mental health. I’ll watch videos, listen to speeches, or find quotes that give me a boost. I want to find things that will give me the energy I need to get through this moment and on to the next. I was doing this recently when I came upon a phrase I’ve seen hundreds of times on the Internet: “keep going.” And I don’t know why, but this time it rubbed me the wrong way. Even though I understand the good intentions of the phrase, I want to challenge it. What does it really mean?

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What Are Mental Health Myths?

Nathan Smith12 Comments

I like to bounce around many topics here on My Brain’s Not Broken, especially surrounding anxiety and depression. However, one of my other favorite things to do is break down myths surrounding mental health. Usually it happens on a whim, when I feel there’s a need to debunk a certain aspect of mental health. The more that I do this, the more I see a need to debunk and breakdown these mental health myths. Right now I feel inspired to break down these myths, and I want to explain how I’ll work to do this in future posts.

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