Today’s guest post is written by freelance mental health writer Taylor Blanchard, who talks about toxic shame, what it looks like in our lives and how we can manage it.
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How To Start the New Year Off Right
I’ve said it too many times on this blog, but it’s another new year (and another new year during a pandemic!) and I thought it would be good to share this message again: I don’t like New Year’s Resolutions. It’s not that I think they’re foolish or misguided – to be honest I don’t have many opinions on them as a concept – but I know that they are not a realistic way for me to achieve my goals. Crafting New Year’s Resolutions and telling myself “this year I’ll start…” never created an impactful change on my life or how I do things. A few years ago, I finally owned up to the fact that ‘New Year, New Me’ just wasn’t for me, and that it would be better to focus on other things. So here’s how I start off my new year right.
Continue readingFive Ways to Take Care of Your Mental Health During the Holiday Season
It’s not easy to take care of your mental health during the holiday season. Whether it’s handling family dynamics, dealing with unpleasant memories or grieving during an especially sentimental time of year, the holidays can bring challenges for our mental health. Here are some reminders and ways you can check in on your mental health and wellness during this time of year.
Continue readingTaking a Look at Youth Mental Health: A Statistical Breakdown
Mental health matters for people of every age, race and demographic, but an area that doesn’t always get the attention it deserves is in young people. It might not be news to some, but the numbers are rising year after year when it comes to young people dealing with mental health disorders and mental illness. After an insightful Q&A earlier this week with Tilly’s Life Center, I decided I wanted to spotlight some of the important statistics about young people and mental health that are important to know.
Continue readingFive Ways to Manage Perfectionism
This week on My Brain’s Not Broken, we’re talking about perfectionism. While it’s something that comes up in everyday life, perfectionism can be hard to spot, and even harder to deal with. When I was looking up how to manage and deal with perfectionism, I saw the same results as when I looked up how to manage self-doubt, which was that every article I found used terms like overcoming and get rid of when talking about perfectionism (which seems like an example of perfectionism itself). So, rather than provide tips on how to get over perfectionism, I wanted to share five ways that I try to manage my perfectionist tendencies, with the long-term goal of changing my attitude toward perfectionism.
Continue readingHow Perfectionism Impacts Mental Health
When I wrote last week’s post about why I feel like I’m always playing catch up, I thought a lot about perfectionism. It’s not something that crosses my mind often, but when I have time to reflect on how I treat myself, that word comes up. When I was growing up, no one ever made a connection between perfectionism and mental health. Perfectionism was a personality trait, and some people had it and others didn’t. But the more I learn about mental health, the more I’ve learned that it’s not so black and white. It’s always existed, but perfectionism effects our mental health in very unique ways in 2021 – and that’s what I want to talk about today.
Continue readingGoing A Little Easier On Myself
One of the things I’ve learned on my mental health journey is that I can be extremely hard on myself. When I make mistakes or experience setbacks, I am quick to place the blame squarely on my shoulders. When I succeed, I’m reluctant to take any of the credit or share in any part of the praise. And while I know many of the reasons behind this (and since I don’t want to turn this post into a pseudo-therapy session), I’ve never really known what to do about it – which is what I’d like to talk about today.
Continue readingWhen It Comes to Mental Health, Simple Doesn’t Mean Easy
People say it all the time – easier said than done. That phrase can extend to a lot of different situations for a lot of different reasons. In fact I don’t think I realized just how often I said it (to myself or to others) during my day-to-day life. And while I think that this extends to plenty of situations in our lives, there’s no area where this plays out for me in a clearer way then when my mental health is involved. When it comes to mental health challenges and finding ways to improve my mental wellness, it is always, always, always easier said than done. Because even though mental health solutions might sound simple, they are anything but easy.
Continue readingThe Challenge of Celebrating Yourself
This past week was my birthday. I’ll be honest – historically speaking, I’m not big on birthdays. Actually, let me be more specific: I’m not that big on my birthday. I’ll help anyone else celebrate the day they were born. Name the time and place and I am in there, ready to do it up big. But when it comes to my own birthday, there have always been a few challenges that have gotten in the way of enjoying my birthday the way I’d like to. There are plenty of reasons for why I feel this way, but since this is a mental health blog, I’ll focus on what one of the most challenging reasons that birthdays are difficult for me, which is one of the simplest aspects of a birthday: celebrating yourself.
Continue readingWalking Out of the Darkness in 2021
This year, for the fifth year in a row, I raised money and participated in the Washington, D.C. Out of the Darkness Community Walk, an annual event held by the National Capital Area Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). I was very fortunate to learn about this organization and the work they do and every single year, I’m reminded about how much I’ve learned and grown from being part of this event.
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My Brain's Not Broken 